a people hidebound by custom--had gone on from mere
conservatism. Where the sun returns at a longer interval, and is even,
as among the Esquimaux, hidden for the long space of six months, ritual
inevitably arises. They play at cat's-cradle to catch the ball of the
sun lest it should sink and be lost for ever.

Round the moon, whose cycle is long, but not too long, ritual very early
centred, but probably only when its supposed influence on vegetation was
first surmised. The moon, as it were, practises magic herself; she waxes
and wanes, and with her, man thinks, all the vegetable kingdom waxes and
wanes too, all but the lawless onion. The moon, Plutarch[16] tells us,
is fertile in its light and contains moisture, it is kindly to the young
of animals and to the new shoots of plants. Even Bacon[17] held that
observations of the moon with a view to planting and sowing and the
grafting of trees were "not altogether frivolous." It cannot too often
be remembered that primitive man has but little, if any, interest in sun
and moon and heavenly bodies for their inherent beauty or wonder; he
cares for them, he holds them sacred, he performs rites in relation to
them mainly when he notes that they bring the seasons, and he cares for
the seasons mainly because they bring him food. A season is to him as a
_Hora_ was at first to the Greeks, _the fruits of a season_, what our
farmers would call "a good _year_."

* * * * *

The sun, then, had no ritual till it was seen that he led in the
seasons; but long before that was known, it was seen that the seasons
were annual, that they went round in a _ring_; and because that annual
ring was long in revolving, great was man's hope and fear in the winter,
great his relief and joy in the spring. It was literally a matter of
death and life, and it was as death and life that he sometimes
represented it, as we have seen in the figures of Adonis and Osiris.

Adonis and Osiris have their modern parallels, who leave us in no doubt
as to the meaning of their figures. Thus on the 1st of March in
Thueringen a ceremony is performed called "Driving out the Death." The
young people make up a figure of straw, dress it in old clothes, carry
it out and throw it into the river. Then they come back, tell the good
news to the village, and are given eggs and food as a reward. In Bohemia
the children carry out a straw puppet and burn it. While they are
burning it they sing--