Thus it has been shown that the leading incidents of the Balder myth
have their counterparts in those fire-festivals of our European
peasantry which undoubtedly date from a time long prior to the
introduction of Christianity. The pretence of throwing the victim
chosen by lot into the Beltane fire, and the similar treatment of
the man, the future Green Wolf, at the midsummer bonfire in
Normandy, may naturally be interpreted as traces of an older custom
of actually burning human beings on these occasions; and the green
dress of the Green Wolf, coupled with the leafy envelope of the
young fellow who trod out the midsummer fire at Moosheim, seems to
hint that the persons who perished at these festivals did so in the
character of tree-spirits or deities of vegetation. From all this we
may reasonably infer that in the Balder myth on the one hand, and
the fire-festivals and custom of gathering mistletoe on the other
hand, we have, as it were, the two broken and dissevered halves of
an original whole. In other words, we may assume with some degree of
probability that the myth of Balder's death was not merely a myth,
that is, a description of physical phenomena in imagery borrowed
from human life, but that it was at the same time the story which
people told to explain why they annually burned a human
representative of the god and cut the mistletoe with solemn
ceremony.
Pages:
1829
1830
1831
1832
1833
1834
1835
1836
1837
1838
1839
1840
1841
1842
1843
1844
1845
1846
1847
1848
1849
1850
1851
1852
1853