James Frazer - The Golden Bough - A Study in Magic and Religion (Third Edition, Vol. 11 of 12)

Above, vol. i. pp. 248, 250, 251, 257, 258, 260, 263. Elsewhere the Yule log has been made of fir, beech, holly, yew, crab-tree, or olive. See above, vol. i. pp. 249, 257, 263.

The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings , ii. 140 sq.

A curious use of an oak-wood fire to detect a criminal is reported from Germany. If a man has been found murdered and his murderer is unknown, you are recommended to proceed as follows. You kindle a fire of dry oak-wood, you pour some of the blood from the wounds on the fire, and you change the poor man's shoes, putting the right shoe on the left foot, and vice versa . As soon as that is done, the murderer is struck blind and mad, so that he fancies he is riding up to the throat in water; labouring under this delusion he returns to the corpse, when you can apprehend him and deliver him up to the arm of justice with the greatest ease. See Montanus, op. cit. pp. 159 sq.

Pliny, Nat. Hist. xiii. 119: “ Alexander Cornelius arborem leonem appellavit ex qua facta esset Argo, similem robori viscum ferenti, quae neque aqua neque igni possit corrumpi, sicuti nec viscum, nulli alii cognitam, quod equidem sciam. ” Here the tree out of which the ship Argo was made is said to have been destructible neither by fire nor water; and as the tree is compared to a mistletoe-bearing oak, and the mistletoe itself is said to be indestructible by fire and water, it seems to follow that the same indestructibility may have been believed to attach to the oak which bore the mistletoe, so long at least as the mistletoe remained rooted on the boughs.

Taboo and the Perils of the Soul , pp. 26 sqq.

A number of the following examples were collected by Mr. E. Clodd in his paper, “The Philosophy of Punchkin,” Folk-lore Journal , ii. (1884) pp. 288-303; and again in his Myths and Dreams (London, 1885), pp. 188-198. The subject of the external soul, both in folk-tales and in custom, has been well handled by G. A. Wilken in his two papers, “De betrekking tusschen menschen- dieren- en plantenleven naar het volksgeloof,” De Indische Gids , November 1884, pp. 595-612, and “De Simsonsage,” De Gids , 1888, No. 5. In “De Simsonsage” Wilken has reproduced, to a great extent in the same words, most of the evidence cited by him in “De betrekking,” yet without referring to that paper. When I wrote this book in 1889-1890 I was unacquainted with “De betrekking,” but used with advantage “De Simsonsage,” a copy of it having been kindly sent me by the author. I am the more anxious to express my obligations to “De Simsonsage,” because I have had little occasion to refer to it, most of the original authorities cited by the author being either in my own library or easily accessible to me in Cambridge. It would be a convenience to anthropologists if Wilken's valuable papers, dispersed as they are in various Dutch periodicals which are seldom to be met with in England, were collected and published together. After the appearance of my first anthropological essay in 1885, Professor Wilken entered into correspondence with me, and thenceforward sent me copies of his papers as they appeared; but of his papers published before that date I have not a complete set. (Note to the Second Edition.) The wish expressed in the foregoing note has now been happily fulfilled. Wilken's many scattered papers have been collected and published in a form which leaves nothing to be desired ( De verspreide Geschriften van Prof. Dr. G. A. Wilken , verzameld door Mr. F. D. E. van Ossenbruggen, in four volumes, The Hague, 1912). The two papers “De betrekking” and “De Simsonsage” are reprinted in the third volume, pp. 289-309 and pp. 551-579. The subject of the external soul in relation to Balder has been fully illustrated and discussed by Professor F. Kauffmann in his Balder, Mythus und Sage (Strasburg, 1902), pp. 136 sqq. Amongst the first to collect examples of the external soul in folk-tales was the learned Dr. Reinhold Köhler (in Orient und Occident , ii., Göttingen, 1864, pp. 100-103; reprinted with additional references in the writer's Kleinere Schriften , i., Weimar, 1898, pp. 158-161). Many versions of the tale were also cited by W. R. S. Ralston ( Russian Folk-tales , London, 1873, pp. 109 sqq. ). (Note to the Third Edition.)

Mary Frere, Old Deccan Days , Third Edition (London, 1881), pp. 12-16.

Maive Stokes, Indian Fairy Tales (London, 1880), pp. 58-60. For similar Hindoo stories, see id. , pp. 187 sq. ; Lai Behari Day, Folk-tales of Bengal (London, 1883), pp. 121 sq. ; F. A. Steel and R. C. Temple, Wide-awake Stories (Bombay and London, 1884), pp. 58-60.

Mary Frere, Old Deccan Days , pp. 239 sqq.

Lal Behari Day, Folk-tales of Bengal , pp. 1 sqq. For similar stories of necklaces, see Mary Frere, Old Deccan Days , pp. 233 sq. ; F. A. Steel and R. C. Temple, Wide-awake Stories , pp. 83 sqq.

J. H. Knowles, Folk-tales of Kashmir , Second Edition (London, 1893), pp. 49 sq.

J. H. Knowles, op. cit. p. 134.

J. H. Knowles, op. cit. pp. 382 sqq.

Lal Behari Day, Folk-tales of Bengal , pp. 85 sq. ; compare id. , pp. 253 sqq. ; Indian Antiquary , i. (1872) p. 117. For an Indian story in which a giant's life is in five black bees, see W. A. Clouston, Popular Tales and Fictions (Edinburgh and London, 1887), i. 350.

Indian Antiquary , i. (1872), p. 171.

A. Bastian, Die Voelker des oestlichen Asien , iv. (Jena, 1868) pp. 304 sq.

Lal Behari Day, Folk-tales of Bengal , p. 189.

F. A. Steel and R. C. Temple, Wide-awake Stories (Bombay and London, 1884), pp. 52, 64. In the Indian Jataka there is a tale (book ii. No. 208) which relates how Buddha in the form of a monkey deceived a crocodile by pretending that monkeys kept their hearts in figs growing on a tree. See The Jataka or Stories of the Buddha's former Births translated from the Pali by various hands, vol. ii. translated by W. H. D. Rouse (Cambridge, 1895), pp. 111 sq.

G. W. Leitner, The Languages and Races of Dardistan , Third Edition (Lahore, 1878), p. 9.

Apollodorus, Bibliotheca , i. 8; Diodorus Siculus, iv. 34; Pausanias, x. 31. 4; Aeschylus, Choeph. 604 sqq. ; Antoninus Liberalis, Transform. ii.; Dio Chrysostom, Or. lxvii. vol. ii. p. 231, ed. L. Dindorf (Leipsic, 1857); Hyginus, Fab. 171, 174; Ovid, Metam. viii. 445 sqq. In his play on this theme Euripides made the life of Meleager to depend on an olive-leaf which his mother had given birth to along with the babe. See J. Malalas, Chronographia , vi. pp. 165 sq. ed. L. Dindorf (Bonn, 1831); J. Tzetzes, Scholia on Lycophron , 492 sq. (vol. ii. pp. 646 sq. , ed. Chr. G. Müller, Leipsic, 1811); G. Knaack, “Zur Meleagersage,” Rheinisches Museum , N. F. xlix. (1894) pp. 310-313.