The Golden Bough (Third Edition, Vol. 7 of 12) - Mirrors

§ 1. Songs of the Corn Reapers. 255sheaf is treated elsewhere. It is reaped by the mistress herself,taken home and set in the place of honour near the holy pictures;afterwards it is threshed separately, and some of its grain is mixedwith the next year's seed-corn. 634 In Aberdeenshire, while thelast corn cut was generally used to make the clyack sheaf, 635 itwas sometimes, though rarely, the first corn cut that was dressed [216]up as a woman and carried home with ceremony. 636In Phoenicia and Western Asia a plaintive song, like thatchanted by the Egyptian corn-reapers, was sung at the vintage andprobably (to judge by analogy) also at harvest. This Phoeniciansong was called by the Greeks Linus or Ailinus and explained,like Maneros, as a lament for the death of a youth namedLinus. 637 According to one story Linus was brought up by ashepherd, but torn to pieces by his dogs. 638 But, like Maneros,the name Linus or Ailinus appears to have originated in a verbalmisunderstanding, and to be nothing more than the cry ai lanu,that is “Woe to us,” which the Phoenicians probably uttered inmourning for Adonis; 639 at least Sappho seems to have regardedAdonis and Linus as equivalent. 640634 W. R. S. Ralston, Songs of the Russian People (London, 1872), pp. 249 sq.635 See above, pp. 158 sq.636 W. Gregor, “Quelques coutumes du Nord-est du comté d'Aberdeen,” Revuedes Traditions populaires, iii. (1888) p. 487 (should be 535).637 Homer, Iliad, xviii. 570; Herodotus, ii. 79; Pausanias, ix. 29. 6-9; Conon,Narrat. 19. For the form Ailinus see Suidas, s.v.; Euripides, Orestes, 1395;Sophocles, Ajax, 627. Compare Moschus, Idyl. iii. 1; Callimachus, Hymn toApollo, 20. See Greve, s.v. “Linos,” in W. H. Roscher's Ausführliches Lexikonder griech, und röm. Mythologie, ii. 2053 sqq.638 Conon, Narrat. 19.639 F. C. Movers, Die Phönizier, i. (Bonn, 1841), p. 246; W. Mannhardt, AntikeWald- und Feldkulte (Berlin, 1877), p. 281. In Hebrew the expression wouldbe oï lanu (), which occurs in 1 Samuel, iv. 7 and 8; Jeremiah,iv. 13, vi. 4. However, the connexion of the Linus song with the lament forAdonis is regarded by Baudissin as very doubtful. See W. W. Graf Baudissin,Adonis und Esmun (Leipsic, 1911), p. 360, note 3.640 Pausanias, ix. 29. 8.Linus or Ailinus, aplaintive song sungat the vintage inPhoenicia.