Such trees would
thenceforth be encircled by a nimbus of glory as the visible seats
of the thundering sky-god. Certain it is that, like some savages,
both Greeks and Romans identified their great god of the sky and of
the oak with the lightning flash which struck the ground; and they
regularly enclosed such a stricken spot and treated it thereafter as
sacred. It is not rash to suppose that the ancestors of the Celts
and Germans in the forests of Central Europe paid a like respect for
like reasons to a blasted oak.
This explanation of the Aryan reverence for the oak and of the
association of the tree with the great god of the thunder and the
sky, was suggested or implied long ago by Jacob Grimm, and has been
in recent years powerfully reinforced by Mr. W. Warde Fowler. It
appears to be simpler and more probable than the explanation which I
formerly adopted, namely, that the oak was worshipped primarily for
the many benefits which our rude forefathers derived from the tree,
particularly for the fire which they drew by friction from its wood;
and that the connexion of the oak with the sky was an after-thought
based on the belief that the flash of lightning was nothing but the
spark which the sky-god up aloft elicited by rubbing two pieces of
oak-wood against each other, just as his savage worshipper kindled
fire in the forest on earth.
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