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

278 The Golden Bough (Third Edition, Vol. 7 of 12)continue their benefactions in time to come. Primitive man hasgenerally a shrewd eye to the main chance: he is more prone toprovide for the future than to sentimentalise over the past.Passing strangerstreated as the spiritof the madderroots.[236]Thus when the spirit of vegetation is conceived as a beingwho is robbed of his store and impoverished by the harvesters, itis natural that his representative—the passing stranger—shouldupbraid them; and it is equally natural that they should seekto disable him from pursuing them and recapturing the stolenproperty. Now, it is an old superstition that by easing natureon the spot where a robbery is committed, the robbers securethemselves, for a certain time, against interruption. 722 Hencewhen madder-diggers resort to this proceeding in presence ofthe stranger whom they have caught and buried in the field,we may infer that they consider themselves robbers and him asthe person robbed. Regarded as such, he must be the naturalowner of the madder-roots, that is, their spirit or demon; and thisconception is carried out by burying him, like the madder-roots,in the ground. 723 The Greeks, it may be observed, were quitefamiliar with the idea that a passing stranger may be a god.Homer says that the gods in the likeness of foreigners roam upand down cities. 724 Once in Poso, a district of Celebes, when anew missionary entered a house where a number of people weregathered round a sick man, one of them addressed the newcomerin these words: “Well, sir, as we had never seen you before,and you came suddenly in, while we sat here by ourselves, we722 W. Mannhardt, Mythologische Forschungen, pp. 49 sq.; A. Wuttke,Der deutsche Volksaberglaube 2 (Berlin, 1869), p. 254, § 400; M. Töppen,Aberglaube aus Masuren 2 (Danzig, 1867), p. 57. The same belief is held andacted upon in Japan (L. Hearn, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, London, 1904,ii. 603).723 The explanation of the custom is W. Mannhardt's (MythologischeForschungen, p. 49).724 Odyssey, xvii. 485 sqq. Compare Plato, Sophist, p. 216 A.