Themis, a study of the social origins of Greek ... - Warburg Institute

178 The Dithyramb, Spring-Festival, etc.
That is the prayer in the heart of the priestess, and she utters
it, emphasizes it, by her offering of water which she has poured
out of the high jug into the basin before her, over which she lays
her hands, perhaps in token that the water is the rain-bath (Xovrpd)
of the earth's bridal. Above are the fruit-shaped cakes (fid^ai),
for it is food that the cuckoo of spring is to bring her.
The picture speaks for itself; it is the passing of winter and
the coming of spring, the passing of the Old Year, the incoming
of the New, it is the Death and Resurrection of Nature, her New
Birth. Clearly though this is represented, it confuses us a little
at first by its fulness and by its blend of animal and vegetable
and atmospheric life, of tree and bull and bird and thunder-axe 1 .
All this, so natural, so inevitable to the primitive mind, to us, who
have lost the sense of common kinship and common mana, seems
artificial, metaphorical. We need first to meditate over it, to
disentangle its various strands, before, by an effort of imagination,
we can do what, if we would understand aright, is supremely
necessary, think ourselves back into the primaeval fusion of things,
a fusion always unconsciously present in the mind of poet and
primitive.
It is the springtime of man and bird and flower
Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.
For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone
The flowers appear on the earth ;
The time of the singing of birds is come,
And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.
The fig tree putteth forth her green figs,
And the vines with the tender grape give a good smell.
Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away 2 .
Again in the thirteenth-century roundel 3 :
Sumer is icumen in,
Lhude sing cuccu !
Groweth sed and bloweth med,
And springth the wde nu,
Sing cuccu
Awe bleteth after lomb,
Lhouth after calve cu,
Bulloc sterteth, bucke verteth,
Murie sing cuccu
1 Just such a blend of tree, bird, bull, thunder, dew and humanity, is found
in Semele's tree, see p. 173, note 3.
2 Song of Solomon, ii. 10.
3 See E. K. Chambers, Mediaeval Stage, 1903, i. 168.
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