beneath a tree; Zeus; Hermes; Hera; Apollo and Artemis; Romulus and Remus.

CHAPTER V
THE TREE AS ORACLE

The oracular power a corollary to the belief in the tree-inhabiting god—Connection of the tree-oracle with the earth-oracle—The oracles of the Chaldaeans—Canaanite tree-oracles—“The tree of the soothsayers”—The oracular oak of Zeus at Dodona—The oracle of Zeus Ammon—The prophetic laurel of Delphi—Oracular trees in Armenia, in Arabia—Alexander the Great and the Persian tree-oracles—The prophetic ilex grove at Rome—Other Italian tree-oracles: at Tibur; at Preneste—Tree-omens—Legends of speaking trees—Oracle-lots—The origin of the divining-rod—Cut rods believed to retain some of the divine power resident in the tree—The life-rood—The divining-rod a survival of the tree-oracle—Its modern use—Divination by roots and leaves 93

CHAPTER VI
THE UNIVERSE-TREE

Wide distribution of the conception—Its plausibility to the primitive mind; especially to the inhabitants of level countries—Earliest version of the world-tree found in an Accadian hymn of great antiquity—Probably a poetical amplification of the sacred spirit-inhabited tree—The world-tree and the world-mountain—The two conceptions combined in the Norse Yggdrasil, as described in the Eddas—Indian and Persian versions of the world-tree—Buddhist development of the idea—The cosmogony of the Phoenicians—Egyptian variants; the Tât-pillar; the golden gem-bearing tree of the sky—Traces of the world-tree in Chinese and Japanese mythology—A similar tradition amongst North American Indians.

The Eastern conception of the stars as fruits of the world-tree, and as jewels hung thereon—A motive common in Oriental art—The golden apples of the Hesperides—Other instances of the world-tree in European legend—The monster oak of the Kalevala—Corresponding tradition amongst the Esthonians.

The food of the gods, a conception associated with that of the world-tree—The Persian haoma, a mystical tree, producing an immortalising juice—Its terrestrial counterpart; the haoma sacrament—The Vedic soma; not only a plant but a powerful deity—Identification of the plant—De Gubernatis on the soma ritual—The effect of the soma drink—Corresponding conceptions amongst the Greeks—Origin of the idea 109

CHAPTER VII
PARADISE

Varieties of the tradition: (1) as the seat of the gods; (2) as the home of the first parents; (3) as the abode of the blessed—All associated with the conception of a mystical tree, in itself an idealisation of the spirit-inhabited tree worshipped on earth—The paradise of the gods in Indian tradition; its five miraculous trees—The paradise of Genesis and of the Persian sacred books—The tree of paradise compared with sacred cedar of Chaldaea—paradise as the abode of the blessed, a post-exilic tradition amongst the Jews—The paradise of the Talmud; and of the Koran—The confusion in the ancient traditions of paradise partly due to a limited conception of space and to a belief in the propinquity of heaven—Greek conceptions of paradise—Milton’s description influenced by ancient traditions of an elevated paradise.

The earthly paradise—Persistence of the tradition; Sir John Maundeville’s version—Icelandic tradition—The lost Atlantis of Plato a variant of the paradise legend—St. Brandan and the Isle of Avalon—Christopher Columbus—Japanese tradition of an island of eternal youth, with its marvellous tree—Developments of the idea of the tree of paradise—Its representation in art 128

CHAPTER VIII
MAY CELEBRATIONS

Their ancient religious significance—The old English May-day—Fetching in the May—Puritan condemnation of the May-poles—Their removal “as a heathenish vanity”—Existing survivals of May customs—May-day rhymes.

Origin of the celebrations: 1. The bringing in of the May-bough—Wide distribution of the custom an evidence of its antiquity—Its original intention—“The May” related to the harvest-bush of France and Western Germany, and to the Greek eiresione—Their common purpose, to bring to the house a share of the blessings assumed to be at the disposal of the tree-inhabiting spirit.

2. The May-pole: its primitive intention to bring to the village, as the May-bough to the family, the newly-quickened generative potency resident in the woods—Wide prevalence of the custom—Association of the May-pole with a human image or doll, representing the vegetation spirit—The Greek festival of the little Daedala—The May-pole, originally renewed every year, became later a permanent erection, newly dressed on May-day—Assumed beneficent influence of the May-pole.

3. The May Queen, May Lady, or King and Queen of the May: Evidence that these personages were originally regarded as human representatives or embodiments of the generalised tree-soul—Often associated with its vegetable representative, the tree or bough; or clothed in leaves and flowers, e.g. the Green George of Carinthia and our Jack-in-the-Green—The custom general throughout Europe—Robin Hood and Maid Marian originally King and Queen of the May—In primitive times the human representative of the vegetation spirit probably sacrificed, in order that the spirit might pass to a more vigorous successor—Human sacrifice in Mexico—Survival in symbol of this ancient custom in Bavaria, Swabia, Saxony, etc. 144

CHAPTER IX
CHRISTMAS OBSERVANCES

Distinctly pagan in their origin, and adapted to Christian use under the influence of the Church—The Roman Saturnalia—The use of mistletoe a direct legacy from the Druids—The decoration of the