The Golden Bough (1890)/Chapter 3/Section 4

by James George Frazer

 

§ 4.—Adonis

But it is in Egypt and Western Asia that the death and resurrection of vegetation appear to have been most widely celebrated with ceremonies like those of modern Europe. Under the names of Osiris, Adonis, Thammuz, Attis, and Dionysus, the Egyptians, Syrians, Babylonians, Phrygians, and Greeks represented the decay and revival of vegetation with rites which, as the ancients themselves recognised, were substantially the same, and which find their parallels in the spring and midsummer customs of our European peasantry. The nature and worship of these deities have been discussed at length by many learned writers; all that I propose to do is to sketch those salient features in their ritual and legends which seem to establish the view here taken of their nature. We begin with Adonis or Thammuz.

The worship of Adonis was practised by the Semitic peoples of Syria, from whom it was borrowed by the Greeks as early at least as the fifth century before Christ. The name Adonis is the Phoenician Adon, “lord.”^[1] He was said to have been a fair youth, beloved by Aphrodite (the Semitic Astarte), but slain by a boar in his youthful prime. His death was annually lamented with a bitter wailing, chiefly by women; images of him, dressed to resemble corpses, were carried out as to burial and then thrown into the sea or into springs;^[2] and in some places his revival was celebrated on the following day.^[3] But the ceremonies varied somewhat both in the manner and the season of their celebration in different places. At Alexandria images of Adonis and Aphrodite were displayed on two couches; beside them were set ripe fruits of all kinds, cakes, plants growing in flower pots, and green bowers twined with anise. The marriage of the lovers was celebrated one day, and on the next the image of Adonis was borne by women attired as mourners, with streaming hair and bared breasts, to the sea-shore and committed to the waves.^[4] The date at which this Alexandrian ceremony was observed is not expressly stated; but from the mention of the ripe fruits it has been inferred that it took place in late summer.^[5] At Byblus the death of Adonis was annually mourned with weeping, wailing, and beating of the breast; but next day he was believed to come to life again and ascend up to heaven in the presence of his worshippers.^[6] This celebration appears to have taken place in spring; for its date was determined by the discoloration of the river Adonis, and this has been observed by modern travellers to occur in spring. At that season the red earth washed down from the mountains by the rain tinges the water of the river and even the sea for a great way with a blood-red hue, and the crimson stain was believed to be the blood of Adonis, annually wounded to death by the boar on Mount Lebanon.^[7] Again, the red anemone^[8] was said to have sprung from the blood of Adonis; and as the anemone blooms in Syria about Easter, this is a fresh proof that the festival of Adonis, or at least one of his festivals, was celebrated in spring. The name of the flower is probably derived from Naaman (“darling”), which seems to have been an epithet of Adonis. The Arabs still call the anemone “wounds of the Naaman.”^[9]

The resemblance of these ceremonies to the Indian and European ceremonies previously described is obvious. In particular, apart from the somewhat doubtful date of its celebration, the Alexandrian ceremony is almost identical with the Indian. In both of them the marriage of two divinities, whose connection with vegetation seems indicated by the fresh plants with which they are surrounded, is celebrated in effigy, and the effigies are afterwards mourned over and thrown into the water.^[10] From the similarity of these customs to each other and to the spring and mid-summer customs of modern Europe we should naturally expect that they all admit of a common explanation. Hence, if the explanation here adopted of the latter is correct, the ceremony of the death and resurrection of Adonis must also have been a representation of the decay and revival of vegetation. The inference thus based on the similarity of the customs is confirmed by the following features in the legend and ritual of Adonis. His connection with vegetation comes out at once in the common story of his birth. He was said to have been born from a myrrh-tree, the bark of which bursting, after a ten months’ gestation, allowed the lovely infant to come forth. According to some, a boar rent the bark with his tusk and so opened a passage for the babe. A faint rationalistic colour was given to the legend by saying that his mother was a woman named Myrrh, who had been turned into a myrrh-tree soon after she had conceived the child.^[11] Again the story that Adonis spent half, or according to others a third, of the year in the lower world and the rest of it in the upper world,^[12] is explained most simply and naturally by supposing that he represented vegetation, especially the corn, which lies buried in the earth half the year and reappears above ground the other half. Certainly of the annual phenomena of nature there is none which suggests so obviously the idea of a yearly death and resurrection as the disappearance and reappearance of vegetation in autumn and spring. Adonis has been taken for the sun; but there is nothing in the sun’s annual course within the temperate and tropical zones to suggest that he is dead for half or a third of the year and alive for the other half or two-thirds. He might, indeed, be conceived as weakened in winter,^[13] but dead he could not be thought to be; his daily reappearance contradicts the supposition. Within the arctic circle, where the sun annually disappears for a continuous period of from twenty-four hours to six months, according to the latitude, his annual death and resurrection would certainly be an obvious idea; but no one has suggested that the Adonis worship came from those regions. On the other hand the annual death and revival of vegetation is a conception which readily presents itself to men in every stage of savagery and civilisation; and the vastness of the scale on which this yearly decay and regeneration takes place, together with man’s intimate dependence on it for subsistence, combine to render it the most striking annual phenomenon in nature, at least within the temperate zones. It is no wonder that a phenomenon so important, so striking, and so universal should, by suggesting similar ideas, have given rise to similar rites in many lands. We may, therefore, accept as probable an explanation of the Adonis worship which accords so well with the facts of nature and with the analogy of similar rites in other lands, and which besides is countenanced by a considerable body of opinion amongst the ancients themselves.^[14]

The character of Thammuz or Adonis as a corn-spirit comes out plainly in an account of his festival given by an Arabic writer of the tenth century. In describing the rites and sacrifices observed at the different seasons of the year by the heathen Syrians of Harran, he says:—“Thammuz (July). In the middle of this month is the festival of el-Bûgât, that is, of the weeping women, and this is the Tâ-uz festival, which is celebrated in honour of the god Tâ-uz. The women bewail him, because his lord slew him so cruelly, ground his bones in a mill, and then scattered them to the wind. The women (during this festival) eat nothing which has been ground in a mill, but limit their diet to steeped wheat, sweet vetches, dates, raisins, and the like.”^[15] Thammuz (of which Tâ-uz is only another form of pronunciation) is here like Burns’s John Barleycorn—

“ They wasted, o’er a scorching flame,
 The marrow of his bones;
But a miller us’d him worst of all,
 For he crush’d him between two stones.”^[16]

But perhaps the best proof that Adonis was a deity of vegetation is furnished by the gardens of Adonis, as they were called. These were baskets or pots filled with earth, in which wheat, barley, lettuces, fennel, and various kinds of flowers were sown and tended for eight days, chiefly or exclusively by women. Fostered by the sun’s heat, the plants shot up rapidly, but having no root withered as rapidly away, and at the end of eight days were carried out with the images of the dead Adonis, and flung with them into the sea or into springs.^[17] At Athens these ceremonies were observed at midsummer. For we know that the fleet which Athens fitted out against Syracuse, and by the destruction of which her power was permanently crippled, sailed at midsummer, and by an ominous coincidence the sombre rites of Adonis were being celebrated at the very time. As the troops marched down to the harbour to embark, the streets through which they passed were lined with coffins and corpse-like effigies, and the air was rent with the noise of women wailing for the dead Adonis. The circumstance cast a gloom over the sailing of the most splendid armament that Athens ever sent to sea.^[18]

These gardens of Adonis are most naturally interpreted as representatives of Adonis or manifestations of his power; they represented him, true to his original nature, in vegetable form, while the images of him, with which they were carried out and cast into the water, represented him in his later anthropomorphic form. All these Adonis ceremonies, if I am right, were originally intended as charms to promote the growth and revival of vegetation; and the principle by which they were supposed to produce this effect was sympathetic magic. As was explained in the first chapter, primitive people suppose that by representing or mimicking the effect which they desire to produce they actually help to produce it; thus by sprinkling water they make rain, by lighting a fire they make sunshine, and so on. Similarly by mimicking the growth of crops, they hope to insure a good harvest. The rapid growth of the wheat and barley in the gardens of Adonis was intended to make the corn shoot up; and the throwing of the gardens and of the images into the water was a charm to secure a due supply of fertilising rain.^[19] The same, I take it, was the object of throwing the effigies of Death and the Carnival into water in the corresponding ceremonies of modern Europe. We have seen that the custom of drenching a leaf-clad person (who undoubtedly personifies vegetation) with water is still resorted to in Europe for the express purpose of producing rain.^[20] Similarly the custom of throwing water on the last corn cut at harvest, or on the person who brings it home (a custom observed in Germany and France, and till quite lately in England and Scotland), is in some places practised with the avowed intent to procure rain for the next year’s crops. Thus in Wallachia and amongst the Roumanians of Transylvania, when a girl is bringing home a crown made of the last ears of corn cut at harvest, all who meet her hasten to throw water on her, and two farm-servants are placed at the door for the purpose; for they believe that if this were not done, the crops next year would perish from drought.^[21] So amongst the Saxons of Transylvania, the person who wears the wreath made of the last corn cut (sometimes the reaper who cut the last corn also wears the wreath) is drenched with water to the skin; for the wetter he is the better will be next year’s harvest, and the more grain there will be threshed out.^[22] At the spring ploughing in Prussia, when the ploughmen and sowers returned in the evening from their work in the fields, the farmer’s wife and the servants used to splash water over them. The ploughmen and sowers retorted by seizing every one, throwing them into the pond, and ducking them under the water. The farmer’s wife might claim exemption on payment of a forfeit; but every one else had to be ducked. By observing this custom they hoped to ensure a due supply of rain for the seed.^[23] Also after harvest in Prussia, the person who wore a wreath made of the last corn cut was drenched with water, while a prayer was uttered that “as the corn had sprung up and multiplied through the water, so it might spring up and multiply in the barn and granary.”^[24] In a Babylonian legend, the goddess Istar (Astarte, Aphrodite) descends to Hades to fetch the water of life with which to restore to life the dead Thammuz, and it appears that the water was thrown over him at a great mourning ceremony, at which men and women stood round the funeral pyre of Thammuz lamenting.^[25] This legend, as Mannhardt points out, is probably a mythical explanation of a Babylonian festival resembling the Syrian festival of Adonis. At this festival, which doubtless took place in the month Thammuz (June-July)^[26] and therefore about midsummer, the dead Thammuz was probably represented in effigy, water was poured over him, and he came to life again. This Babylonian legend is, therefore, of importance, since it confirms the view that the purpose for which the images and gardens of Adonis were thrown into the water was to effect the resurrection of the god, that is, to secure the revival of vegetation. The connection of Thammuz with vegetation is proved by a fragment of a Babylonian hymn, in which Thammuz is described as dwelling in the midst of a great tree at the centre of the earth.^[27]

The opinion that the gardens of Adonis are essentially charms to promote the growth of vegetation, especially of the crops, and that they belong to the same class of customs as those spring and midsummer folk-customs of modern Europe which have been described, does not rest for its evidence merely on the intrinsic probability of the case. Fortunately, we are able to show that gardens of Adonis (if we may use the expression in a general sense) are still planted, first, by a primitive race at their sowing season, and, second, by European peasants at midsummer. Amongst the Oraons and Mundas of Bengal, when the time comes for planting out the rice which has been grown in seed-beds, a party of young people of both sexes go to the forest and cut a young Karma tree, or the branch of one. Bearing it in triumph they return dancing, singing. and beating drums, and plant it in the middle of the village dancing-ground. A sacrifice is offered to the tree; and next morning the youth of both sexes, linked arm-in-arm, dance in a great circle round the Karma tree, which is decked with strips of coloured cloth and sham bracelets and necklets of plaited straw. As a preparation for the festival, the daughters of the head-man of the village cultivate blades of barley in a peculiar way. The seed is sown in moist, sandy soil, mixed with turmeric, and the blades sprout and unfold of a pale yellow or primrose colour. On the day of the festival the girls take up these blades and carry them in baskets to the dancing-ground, where, prostrating themselves reverentially, they place some of the plants before the Karma tree. Finally, the Karma tree is taken away and thrown into a stream or tank.^[28] The meaning of planting these barley blades and then presenting them to the Karma tree is hardly open to question. We have seen that trees are supposed to exercise a quickening influence upon the growth of crops, and that amongst the very people in question—the Mundas or Mundaris—“the grove deities are held responsible for the crops.”^[29] Therefore, when at the season for planting out the rice the Mundas bring in a tree and treat it with so much respect, their object can only be to foster thereby the growth of the rice which is about to be planted out; and the custom of causing barley blades to sprout rapidly and then presenting them to the tree must be intended to subserve the same purpose, perhaps by reminding the tree-spirit of his duty towards the crops, and stimulating his activity by this visible example of rapid vegetable growth. The throwing of the Karma tree into the water is to be interpreted as a rain-charm. Whether the barley blades are also thrown into the water is not said; but, if my interpretation of the custom is right, probably they are so. A distinction between this Bengal custom and the Greek rites of Adonis is that in the former the tree-spirit appears in his original form as a tree; whereas in the Adonis worship he appears in anthropomorphic form, represented as a dead man, though his vegetable nature is indicated by the gardens of Adonis, which are, so to say, a secondary manifestation of his original power as a tree-spirit.

In Sardinia the gardens of Adonis are still planted in connection with the great midsummer festival which bears the name of St. John. At the end of March or on the 1st of April a young man of the village presents himself to a girl and asks her to be his comare (gossip or sweetheart), offering to be her compare. The invitation is considered as an honour by the girl’s family, and is gladly accepted. At the end of May the girl makes a pot of the bark of the cork-tree, fills it with earth, and sows a handful of wheat and barley in it. The pot being placed in the sun and often watered, the corn sprouts rapidly and has a good head by Mid-summer Eve (St. John’s Eve, 23d June). The pot is then called Erme or Nenneri. On St. John’s Day the young man and the girl, dressed in their best, accompanied by a long retinue and preceded by children gambolling and frolicking, move in procession to a church outside the village. Here they break the pot by throwing it against the door of the church. Then they sit down in a ring on the grass and eat eggs and herbs to the music of flutes. Wine is mixed in a cup and passed round, each one drinking as it passes. Then they join hands and sing “Sweethearts of St. John” (Compare e comare di San Giovanni) over and over again, the flutes playing the while. When they tire of singing, they stand up and dance gaily in a ring till evening. This is the general Sardinian custom. As practised at Ozieri it has some special features. In May the pots are made of cork-bark and planted with corn, as already described. Then on the Eve of St. John the window-sills are draped with rich cloths, on which the pots are placed, adorned with crimson and blue silk and ribbons of various colours. On each of the pots they used formerly to place a statuette or cloth doll dressed as a woman, or a Priapus-like figure made of paste; but this custom, rigorously forbidden by the Church, has fallen into disuse. The village swains go about in a troop to look at the pots and their decorations and to wait for the girls, who assemble on the public square to celebrate the festival. Here a great bonfire is kindled, round which they dance and make merry. Those who wish to be “Sweethearts of St. John” act as follows. The young man stands on one side of the bonfire and the girl on the other, and they, in a manner, join hands by each grasping one end of a long stick, which they pass three times backwards and forwards across the fire, thus thrusting their hands thrice rapidly into the flames. This seals their relationship to each other. Dancing and music go on till late at night.^[30] The correspondence of these Sardinian pots of grain to the gardens of Adonis seems complete, and the images formerly placed in them answer to the images of Adonis which accompanied his gardens.

This Sardinian custom is one of those midsummer customs, once celebrated in many parts of Europe, a chief feature of which is the great bonfire round which people dance and over which they leap. Examples of these customs have already been cited from Sweden and Bohemia.^[31] These examples sufficiently prove the connection of the midsummer bonfire with vegetation; for both in Sweden and Bohemia an essential part of the festival is the raising of a May-pole or Midsummer-tree, which in Bohemia is burned in the bonfire. Again, in the Russian midsummer ceremony cited above,^[32] the straw figure of Kupalo, the representative of vegetation, is placed beside a May-pole or Midsummer-tree and then carried to and fro across a bonfire. Kupalo is here represented in duplicate, in tree-form by the Midsummer-tree, and in anthropomorphic form by the straw effigy, just as Adonis was represented both by an image and a garden of Adonis; and the duplicate representatives of Kupalo, like those of Adonis, are finally cast into water. In the Sardinian custom the Gossips or Sweethearts of St. John probably correspond to the Lord and Lady or King and Queen of May. In the province of Blekinge (Sweden), part of the midsummer festival is the election of a Midsummer Bride, who chooses her bridegroom; a collection is made for the pair, who for the time being are looked upon as man and wife.^[33] Such Midsummer pairs are probably, like the May pairs, representatives of the spirit of vegetation in its reproductive capacity; they represent in flesh and blood what the images of Siva and Pârvatî in the Indian ceremony, and the images of Adonis and Aphrodite in the Alexandrian ceremony, represented in effigy. The reason why ceremonies whose aim is to foster the growth of vegetation should thus be associated with bonfires; why in particular the representative of vegetation should be burned in tree-form or passed across the fire in effigy or in the form of a living couple, will be explained later on. Here it is enough to have proved the fact of such association and therefore to have obviated the objection which might have been raised to my interpretation of the Sardinian custom, on the ground that the bonfires have nothing to do with vegetation. One more piece of evidence may here be given to prove the contrary. In some parts of Germany young men and girls leap over midsummer bonfires for the express purpose of making the hemp or flax grow tall.^[34] We may, therefore, assume that in the Sardinian custom the blades of wheat and barley which are forced on in pots for the midsummer festival, and which correspond so closely to the gardens of Adonis, form one of those widely-spread midsummer ceremonies, the original object of which was to promote the growth of vegetation, and especially of the crops. But as, by an easy extension of ideas, the spirit of vegetation was believed to exercise a beneficent influence over human as well as animal life, the gardens of Adonis would be supposed, like the May-trees or May-boughs, to bring good luck to the family or to the individual who planted them; and even after the idea had been abandoned that they operated actively to bring good luck, omens might still be drawn from them as to the good or bad fortune of families or individuals. It is thus that magic dwindles into divination. Accordingly we find modes of divination practised at midsummer which resemble more or less closely the gardens of Adonis. Thus an anonymous Italian writer of the sixteenth century has recorded that it was customary to sow barley and wheat a few days before the festival of St. John (Midsummer Day) and also before that of St. Vitus; and it was believed that the person for whom they were sown would be fortunate and get a good husband or a good wife, if the grain sprouted well; but if they sprouted ill, he or she would be unlucky.^[35] In various parts of Italy and all over Sicily it is still customary to put plants in water or in earth on the Eve of St. John, and from the manner in which they are found to be blooming or fading on St. John’s Day omens are drawn, especially as to fortune in love. Amongst the plants used for this purpose are Ciuri di S. Giuvanni (St. John’s wort?) and nettles.^[36] In Prussia two hundred years ago the farmers used to send out their servants, especially their maids, to gather St. John’s wort on Midsummer Eve or Midsummer Day (St. John’s Day). When they had fetched it, the farmer took as many plants as there were persons and stuck them in the wall or between the beams; and it was thought that the person whose plant did not bloom would soon fall sick or die. The rest of the plants were tied in a bundle, fastened to the end of a pole, and set up at the gate or wherever the corn would be brought in at the next harvest. This bundle was called Kupole; the ceremony was known as Kupole’s festival; and at it the farmer prayed for a good crop of hay, etc.^[37] This Prussian custom is particularly notable, inasmuch as it strongly confirms the opinion expressed above that Kupalo (doubtless identical with Kupole) was originally a deity of vegetation.^[38] For here Kupalo is represented by a bundle of plants specially associated with midsummer in folk-custom; and her influence over vegetation is plainly signified by placing her plant-formed representative over the place where the harvest is brought in, as well as by the prayers for a good crop which are uttered on the occasion. A fresh argument is thus supplied in support of the conclusion that the Death, whose analogy to Kupalo, Yarilo, etc., has been shown, was originally a personification of vegetation, more especially of vegetation as dying or dead in winter. Further, my interpretation of the gardens of Adonis is confirmed by finding that in this Prussian custom the very same kind of plants are used to form the gardens of Adonis (as we may call them) and the image of the deity. Nothing could set in a stronger light the truth of the view that the gardens of Adonis are merely another manifestation of the god himself.

The last example of the gardens of Adonis which I shall cite is the following. At the approach of Easter, Sicilian women sow wheat, lentils, and canary-seed in plates, which are kept in the dark and watered every two days. The plants soon shoot up; the stalks are tied together with red ribbons, and the plates containing them are placed on the sepulchres which, with effigies of the dead Christ, are made up in Roman Catholic and Greek churches on Good Friday,^[39] just as the gardens of Adonis were placed on the grave of the dead Adonis.^[40] The whole custom—sepulchres as well as plates of sprouting grain—is probably nothing but a continuation, under a different name, of the Adonis worship.

1. Baudissin, Studien zur semitischen Religionsgeschichte, i. 299; W. Mannhardt, Antike Wald-und Feldkulte, p. 274.
2. Plutarch, Alcibiades, 18; Zenobius, Centur. i. 49; Theocritus, xv. 132 sq.; Eustathius on Homer, Od. xi. 590.
3. Besides Lucian (cited below) see Jerome, Comment, in Ezcchiel. viii. 14, in qua (solemnitate) plangitur quasi mortuus, et postea reviviscens, canitur atque laudatur . . . interfectionem et resurrectionem Adonidis planctu et gaudio prosequens.
4. Theocritus, xv.
5. W. Mannhardt, op. cit. p. 277.
6. Lucian, De dea Syria, 6. The words ἐς τὸν ἠέρα πέμπουσι imply that the ascension was supposed to take place in the presence, if not before the eyes, of the worshipping crowds.
7. Lucian, op. cit. 8. The discoloration of the river and the sea was observed by Maundrell on 17/27th March 1696/1697. See his “Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem,” in Bohn’s Early travelsin Palestine, edited by Thomas Wright, p. 411. Renan observed the discoloration at the beginning of February; Baudissin, Studien, i. 298 (referring to Renan, Mission de Phénicie, p. 283). Milton’s lines will occur to most readers.
8. Ovid, Metam. x. 735, compared with Bion i. 66. The latter, however, makes the anemone spring from the tears, as the rose from the blood of Adonis.
9. W. Robertson Smith, “Ctesias and the Semiramis legend,” in English Historical Review, April 1887, following Lagarde.
10. In the Alexandrian ceremony, however, it appears to have been the image of Adonis only which was thrown into the sea.
11. Apollodorus, Biblioth. iii. 14, 4 ; Schol. on Theocritus, i. 109; Antoninus Liberalis, 34; Tzetzes on Lycophron, 829; Ovid, Metam. x. 489 sqq.; Servius on Virgil, Aen. v. 72, and on Bucol. x. 18; Hyginus, Fab. 58, 164; Fulgentius, iii. 8. The word Myrrha or Smyrna is borrowed from the Phoenician (Liddell and Scott, Greek Lexicon, s.v. σμύρνα). Hence the mother’s name, as well as the son’s, was taken directly from the Semites.
12. Schol. on Theocritus, iii. 48; Hyginus, Astronom. ii. 7; Lucian, Dialog. deor. xi. 1; Cornutus, De natura deorum, 28, p. 163 sq. ed. Osannus; Apollodorus, iii. 14, 4.
13. Thus, after the autumnal equinox the Egyptians celebrated the “nativity of the sun’s walking-sticks,” because, as the sun declined daily in the sky, and his heat and light diminished, he was supposed to need a staff with which to support his steps. Plutach, Isis et Osiris, 52.
14. Schol. on Theocritus, iii. 48, ὁ Ἄδωνις, ἤγουν ὁ σῖτος ὁ σπειρόµενος, ἓξ μῆνας ἐν τῇ γῇ ποιεῖ ἀπὸ τῆς σπορᾶς, καὶ ἓξ μῆνας ἔχει αὐτὸν ἡ Ἀϕροδίτη, τουτέστιν ἡ εὐκρασία τοῦ ἀέρος. καὶ ἐκτότε λαμβάνουσιν αὐτὸν οἱ ἄνθρωποι. Jerome on Ezech. c. viii. 14. Eadem gentilitas hujuscemodi fabulas poetarum, quae habent turpitudinem, interpretatur subtiliter inferfectionem et resurrectionem Adonidis planctu et gaudio prosequens: quorum alterum in seminibus, quae moriuntur in terra, alterum in segetibus, quibus mortua semina renascuntur, ostendi putat. Ammianus Marcellinus, xix. i, 11, in sollemnibus Adonidis sacns, quod simulacrum aliquod esse frugum adultarum religiones mysticae docent. Id. xxii. 9, 15, amato Veneris, ut fabulae fingunt, apri dente ferali deleto, quod in adulto flore sectarum est indicium frugum. Clemens Alexandr. Hom. 6, 11 (quoted by W. Mannhardt, Antike Wald- unt Feldkulte, p. 281), λάμβανουσι δὲ καὶ Ἄδωνιν εἰς ὡραίους καρπούς. Etymolog. Magn. Ἄδωνις κύριον · δύναται καὶ ὁ καρπὸς εἶναι ἄδωνις · οἷον ἁδώνειος καρπός, ἀρέσκων. Eusebius, Praepar. Evang. iii, 11, 9, Ἄδωνις τῆς τῶν τελείων καρπῶν ἐκτομῆς σύμβολον.
15. D. Chwolsohn, Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus, ii. 27; id., Ueber Tammûz und die Menschenverehrung bei den alien Babyloniern, p. 38.
16. The comparison is due to Felix Liebrecht (Zur Volkskunde, p. 259).
17. For the authorities see W. Mannhardt, Antike Wald- und Feldkulte, p. 279, note 2, and p. 280, note 2 ; to which add Diogenianus, i. 14; Plutarch, De sera num. vind. 17. Women only are mentioned as planting the gardens of Adonis by Plutarch, l.c.; Julian, Convivium, p. 329 ed. Spanheim (p. 423 ed. Hertlein); Eustathius on Homer, Od. xi. 590. On the other hand Diogenianus, l.c. says φυτεύοντες ἢ φυτεύουσαι.
18. Plutach, Alcibiades , 18; id., Nicias, 13. The date of the sailing of the fleet is given by Thucydides, vi. 30, θέρους μεσοῦντος ἤδη.
19. In hot southern countries like Egypt and the Semitic regions of Western Asia, where vegetation depends chiefly or entirely upon irrigation, the purpose of the charm is doubtless to secure a plentiful flow of water in the streams. But as the ultimate object and the charms for securing it are the same in both cases, it has not been thought necessary always to point out the distinction.
20. See above, p. 16.
21. W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 214; W. Schmidt, Das Jahr und seine Tage in Meinung und Branch der Romänen Siebenbürgens, p. 18 sq.
22. G. A. Heinrich, Agrarische Sitten und Gebräuche unter den Sachsen Siebenbürgens (Hermanstadt, 1880), p. 24; Wsissocki, Sitten und Branch der Siebenbürger Sachsen (Hamburg, 1888), p. 32.
23. Matthaus Praetorius, Deliciae Prussicae, 55; W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 214 sq. note.
24. Praetorius, op. cit., 60; W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 215, note.
25. A. H. Sayce, Religion of the ancient Babylonians (Hibbert Lectures, 1887), p. 221 sqq.; W.Mannhardt, Antike Wald-und Feldkulte, p. 275.
26. According to Jerome (on Ezechiel, viii. 14), Thammuz was June; but according to modern scholars the month corresponded rather to July, or to part of June and part of July. Movers, Die Phoenizier, i. 210; Mannhardt, A.W.F. p. 275. My friend, Prof. W. Robertson Smith, informs me that owing to the variations of the local Syrian calendars the month Thammuz fell in different places at different times, from mid-summer to autumn, or from June to September.
27. A. H. Sayce, op. cit. p. 238.
28. Dalton, Ethnology of Bengal, p. 259.
29. Above, p. 67.
30. Antonio Bresciani, Dei costumi dell’ isola di Sardegna comparati cogli antichissimi popoli orientali (Rome and Turin, 1866), p. 427 sq.; R. Tennant, Sardinia and its Resources (Rome and London, 1885), p. 187; S. Gabriele, “Usi dei contadini della Sardegna,” Archivio per lo studio delle tradizioni popolari, vii. (1888) p. 469 sq. Tennant says that the pots are kept in a dark warm place, and that the children leap across the fire.
31. See ch. i. p. 78 sq.
32. P. 272.
33. L. Lloyd, Peasant Life in Sweden, p. 257.
34. W. Mannhardt, Baumkultus, p. 464; Leoprechting, Aus dem Lechrain, p. 183.
35. G. Pitrè, Spettacoli e fesfe popolari siciliane, p. 296 sq.
36. G. Pitrè, op. cit. p. 302 sq.; Antonio de Nino, Usi Abruzzesi, i. 55 sq.; Gubernatis, Usi Nuziali p. 39 sq. Cp. Archivio per lo studio delle tradizioni popolari, i. 135. At Smyrna a blossom of the agnus castas is used on St. John’s Day for a similar purpose, but the mode in which the omens are drawn is somewhat different, Archivio per lo studio delle tradizioni popolari, vii. (1888) p. 128 sq.
37. Matthäus Praetorius, Deliciae Prussicae, herausgegeben von Dr. W. Pierson (Berlin, 1871), p. 56.
38. See p. 274 sq.
39. G. Pitrè, Spettacoli e feste popolari siciliane, p. 211. A similar custom is observed at Cosenza in Calabria. Vincenzo Dorsa, La tradizione greco-latina, etc., p. 50. For the Easter ceremonies in the Greek Church, see R. A. Arnold, From the Levant (London, 1868), i. 251 sqq.
40. κήπους ὡσίουν ἐπιταφίοθς Ἀδὠνιδι, Eustathius on Homer, Od. xi. 590.