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As the sudden appearance of a stranger near
the harvest-field or threshing-floor is, to the primitive mind,
enough to identify him as the spirit of the corn escaping from the
cut or threshed corn, so the sudden appearance of an animal issuing
from the cut corn is enough to identify it with the corn-spirit
escaping from his ruined home. The two identifications are so
analogous that they can hardly be dissociated in any attempt to
explain them. Those who look to some other principle than the one
here suggested for the explanation of the latter identification are
bound to show that their theory covers the former identification
also.


XLIX. Ancient Deities of Vegetation as Animals

1. Dionysus, the Goat and the Bull
HOWEVER we may explain it, the fact remains that in peasant
folk-lore the corn-spirit is very commonly conceived and represented
in animal form. May not this fact explain the relation in which
certain animals stood to the ancient deities of vegetation,
Dionysus, Demeter, Adonis, Attis, and Osiris?
To begin with Dionysus.


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