2. The Burning of Men and Animals in the Fires
IN THE POPULAR customs connected with the fire-festivals of Europe
there are certain features which appear to point to a former
practice of human sacrifice. We have seen reasons for believing that
in Europe living persons have often acted as representatives of the
tree-spirit and corn-spirit and have suffered death as such. There
is no reason, therefore, why they should not have been burned, if
any special advantages were likely to be attained by putting them to
death in that way. The consideration of human suffering is not one
which enters into the calculations of primitive man. Now, in the
fire-festivals which we are discussing, the pretence of burning
people is sometimes carried so far that it seems reasonable to
regard it as a mitigated survival of an older custom of actually
burning them. Thus in Aachen, as we saw, the man clad in peas-straw
acts so cleverly that the children really believe he is being
burned. At Jumi?ges in Normandy the man clad all in green, who bore
the title of the Green Wolf, was pursued by his comrades, and when
they caught him they feigned to fling him upon the midsummer
bonfire.
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