At a later time, as I have suggested, his
annual tenure of office was lengthened or shortened, as the case
might be, by the rule which allowed him to live so long as he could
prove his divine right by the strong hand. But he only escaped the
fire to fall by the sword.
Thus it seems that at a remote age in the heart of Italy, beside the
sweet Lake of Nemi, the same fiery tragedy was annually enacted
which Italian merchants and soldiers were afterwards to witness
among their rude kindred, the Celts of Gaul, and which, if the Roman
eagles had ever swooped on Norway, might have been found repeated
with little difference among the barbarous Aryans of the North. The
rite was probably an essential feature in the ancient Aryan worship
of the oak.
It only remains to ask, Why was the mistletoe called the Golden
Bough? The whitish-yellow of the mistletoe berries is hardly enough
to account for the name, for Virgil says that the bough was
altogether golden, stems as well as leaves. Perhaps the name may be
derived from the rich golden yellow which a bough of mistletoe
assumes when it has been cut and kept for some months; the bright
tint is not confined to the leaves, but spreads to the stalks as
well, so that the whole branch appears to be indeed a Golden Bough.
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