tus from a mere _pais_ or boy. Such a youth
survives in our King of the May and Jack-in-the-Green. Old men and women
are for death and winter, the young for life and spring, and most of
all the young man or bear or bull or tree just come to maturity.

And because life is one at the Spring Festival, the young man carries a
blossoming branch bound with wool of the young sheep. At Athens in
spring and autumn alike "they carry out the _Eiresione_, a branch of
olive wound about with wool ... and laden with all sorts of firstfruits,
_that scarcity may cease_, and they sing over it:

"Eiresione brings
Figs and fat cakes,
And a pot of honey and oil to mix,
And a wine-cup strong and deep,
That she may drink and sleep."

The Eiresione had another name that told its own tale. It was called
_Korythalia_,[34] "Branch of blooming youth." The young men, says a
Greek orator, are "the Spring of the people."

* * * * *

The excavations of Crete have given to us an ancient inscribed hymn, a
Dithyramb, we may safely call it, that is at once a spring-song and a
young man-song. The god here invoked is what the Greeks call a
_kouros_, a young man. It is sung and danced by young warriors:

"Ho! Kouros, most Great, I give thee hail, Lord of all that is wet
and gleaming; thou art come at the head of thy Daimones. To Dikte
for the Year, Oh, march and rejoice in the dance and song."

The leader of the band of _kouroi_, of young men, the real actual
leader, has become by remembrance and abstraction, as we noted, a
daimon, or spirit, at the head of a band of spirits, and he brings in
the new year at spring. The real leader, the "first kouros" as the
Greeks called him, is there in the body, but from the succession of
leaders year by year they have imaged a spirit leader greatest of all.
He is "lord of all that is wet and gleaming," for the May bough, we
remember, is drenched with dew and water that it may burgeon and
blossom. Then they chant the tale of how of old a child was taken away
from its mother, taken by armed men to be initiated, armed men dancing
their tribal dance. The stone is unhappily broken here, but enough
remains to make the meaning clear.

And because this boy grew up and was initiated into manhood:

"The Horae (Seasons) began to be fruitful year by year and Dike to
possess mankind, and all wild living things were held about by
wealth-loving