folk-custom

There is every reason to think that the commemoration of the deliverance from "gunpowder | 199 | treason and plot" is but a modern meaning attached to an ancient traditional practice, for the burning of the effigy has many parallels in folk-custom.

Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan Clement A. Miles

Night "king," and he appears to be a courtly example of the temporary monarch of folk-custom, though his name is sometimes extended to "kings" of quite vulgar origin elected not by court or gentry but by the common people.

Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan Clement A. Miles

Both the Lityerses story and European folk-custom show that passing strangers were regarded as manifestations of the corn-spirit escaping from the cut or threshed corn, and as such were seized and slain.

Chapter 47. Lityerses. § 4. The Corn-spirit slain in his Human Representatives 1922

This seems to be the outline of a legend like that of Lityerses; but neither ancient writers nor modern folk-custom enable us to fill in the details.

Chapter 47. Lityerses. § 4. The Corn-spirit slain in his Human Representatives 1922

There is therefore no improbability in the supposition that they may once have been killed for a like purpose in Phrygia and Europe; and when Phrygian legend and European folk-custom, closely agreeing with each other, point to the conclusion that men were so slain, we are bound, provisionally at least, to accept the conclusion.

Chapter 47. Lityerses. § 4. The Corn-spirit slain in his Human Representatives 1922

Viewed in the light of the Lityerses story and of European folk-custom, this disappearance of Bormus may be a reminiscence of the custom of binding the farmer himself in a corn-sheaf and throwing him into the water.

Chapter 47. Lityerses. § 4. The Corn-spirit slain in his Human Representatives 1922

But there is a third possibility, to which ancient legend and modern folk-custom alike point.

Chapter 47. Lityerses. § 4. The Corn-spirit slain in his Human Representatives 1922

I have dwelt on the Lityerses song at length because it affords so many points of comparison with European and savage folk-custom.

Chapter 47. Lityerses. § 4. The Corn-spirit slain in his Human Representatives 1922

It may have been so; but, on the other hand, the analogy of European folk-custom warns us that amongst the same people two distinct deities of vegetation may have their separate personal representatives, both of whom are slain in the character of gods at different times of the year.

Chapter 47. Lityerses. § 4. The Corn-spirit slain in his Human Representatives 1922

The analogy of Lityerses and of folk-custom, both European and savage, suggests that in Phoenicia the slain corn-spirit—the dead Adonis—may formerly have been represented by a human victim; and this suggestion is possibly supported by the Harran legend that Tammuz (Adonis) was slain by his cruel lord, who ground his bones in a mill and scattered them to the wind.

Chapter 47. Lityerses. § 4. The Corn-spirit slain in his Human Representatives 1922