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

§ 4. The Corn-spirit slain in his Human Representatives. 301with corn may have been only such an extension of the power ofa tree-spirit as is indicated in customs like the Harvest-May. 785Again, the representative of Attis appears to have been slain inspring; whereas Lityerses must have been slain in summer orautumn, according to the time of the harvest in Phrygia. 786 Onthe whole, then, while we are not justified in regarding Lityersesas the prototype of Attis, the two may be regarded as parallelproducts of the same religious idea, and may have stood to eachother as in Europe the Old Man of harvest stands to the Wild [256]Man, the Leaf Man, and so forth, of spring. Both were spiritsor deities of vegetation, and the personal representatives of bothwere annually slain. But whereas the Attis worship becameelevated into the dignity of a State religion and spread to Italy,the rites of Lityerses seem never to have passed the limits oftheir native Phrygia, and always retained their character of rusticceremonies performed by peasants on the harvest-field. At most afew villages may have clubbed together, as amongst the Khonds,to procure a human victim to be slain as representative of thecorn-spirit for their common benefit. Such victims may havebeen drawn from the families of priestly kings or kinglets, whichwould account for the legendary character of Lityerses as the sonof a Phrygian king or as himself a king. When villages did not soclub together, each village or farm may have procured its ownrepresentative of the corn-spirit by dooming to death either apassing stranger or the harvester who cut, bound, or threshed thelast sheaf. Perhaps in the olden time the practice of head-huntingas a means of promoting the growth of the corn may have been ascommon among the rude inhabitants of Europe and Western Asiaas it still is, or was till lately, among the primitive agriculturaltribes of Assam, Burma, the Philippine Islands, and the Indian785 See The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings, ii. 47 sqq.786 I do not know when the corn is reaped in Phrygia; but the high uplandcharacter of the country makes it likely that harvest is later there than on thecoasts of the Mediterranean.