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Introduction xlx
Mrs Murray-Aynsley's eighth chapter on "Sacred Trees"
is also of great, because of still living, and wide-spread
interest. The tree has from the most primitive periods
played a part in the religion of all the races of mankind, as a
striking symbol of life, concrete and abstract, individual and
universal ; and as, moreover, in itself, a manifest divinity.
No religious symbol has impressed itself so ubiquitously, so
demonstratively, and so indissolubly, on the decorative arts
of the civilised world ; and
far enlio-htenincr are the
surprises in the path of those who turn to trace it
through its infinite artistic permutations in Greece, and
Rome, and under the Saracens, and in modern Europe,
back to its original hieratic forms in Egypt and Mesopo-
tamia. Even the worship of the tree still survives throughout
Christendom in a variety of popular customs, prehistorically
established in celebration of the annual revival of vegetation
between the Spring Equinox [25th March—Our Lady Day]
and the Summer Solstice [24th June—St John's Day]. Among
them are dancing round the Maypole, and the May mummery
of " Jack in the Green," once generally observed in this
country on the ist of May ;
the festival of " Green George," or
" St George in the Green," held in Carinthia on St George's
Day, [23rd April]; the Whitsuntide floral festivities of
Cyclamen hederc-Efolium, " Amiiletum," because, as they thought, [PHny xxv. 9
(67)] :— " Wherever it grows harmful spells have no effect." Symbola, in Arcadia,
was so called, because it marked the confluence [" meetings "] of a number of small
springs with the Alpheus, close by its source at Phylace \cf. Sanskrit, saiigama, and
Sungum, in the delta of the Ganges]. Balaklava was in ancient times called Symbolon
Portus, either because it was a " Semaphore Station," or because it was united,
as a defence against the Scyths, to Chersonesus [Sevastopol] and Eupatorium
[Inkerman] by a wall \cf. Sanskrit sanga, " a bridge "] ; or, possibly, because it was
a " Treaty Port " ; but why Symbolum, in Thrace, was so called, I do not know.