CHAPTER III

WOOD-DEMONS AND TREE-SPIRITS

In nearly all parts of the world, as at nearly all periods of history, we find evidences of a belief in the existence of wood-spirits and tree-spirits, which, however they may differ in outward form, are strangely similar in their general characteristics. It cannot be asserted of _all_ these beings that they were regarded as the actual spirits of individual trees, connected with them as closely as a man’s soul is with his body, but it is emphatically true of some of them. To the class of wood-spirits as a whole belong certain at least of the _jinni_ of Arabia, the woodland spirits of Greek and Roman mythology, and the wild men and elves of European folk-lore, besides the tree-inhabiting spirits of various uncivilised races. Though not always sharply demarcated from the gods, they differ from them, as a rule, in being regarded and spoken of generically, and in not having stated relations with man. Their alliances are rather with trees, plants, and animals, whose growth and prosperity are often believed to be under their protection, and their presence is often assumed to be expressed in natural phenomena, in the mysterious sounds of the woods, and in the fury of the storm. To man they are frequently unfriendly, and numerous observances, still practised in uncivilised parts, have arisen from the belief that it was necessary to propitiate their favour.

Broadly speaking, their friendliness to man is directly proportionate to their human semblance, and this in its turn would seem to depend on the extent to which man has been able to conquer the dangers of the regions where they dwell. The farther back they are traced the more animal-like and inhuman their appearance. They preceded the gods and outlasted them, flourishing in times when these were still animal and totemistic, and retaining their animal characteristics long after the gods had become anthropomorphic. To the peasant mind there was, perhaps, no very clear distinction between the two classes, and the line between them has never been an unpassable one, for demons may develop into gods, just as gods may degenerate into demons. It is not claimed that all, or indeed most demons were tree-spirits in their origin, but a large class of them at any rate were closely associated with vegetable life and the phenomena that foster or threaten it.

Chaldaean mythology recognised, side by side with gods emphatically human, a class of fabulous monsters who were essentially demons and inferior spirits. There is not much evidence to couple these monsters with trees, but in one of the Babylonian hymns the aid of the gods is invoked against a terrible demon who “makes all creatures hurry in fear,” and of whom it is stated that “his hand is the storm-demon, his eye is filled with the shadow of the forest, the sole of his foot is the lullub-tree.”[115]

In the case of the _jinni_ of Arabia the connection with trees is more clearly demonstrable. They were regarded as hairy monsters, more like beasts than men, haunting dense, untrodden thickets and endowed with the power of assuming various shapes. Such an uncouth and alarming presentment may well have arisen from their presumed association with places, which, as the natural lairs of dangerous animals, were perilous to man, but “the association of certain kinds of _jinni_ with trees must in many cases be regarded as primary, the trees themselves being conceived as animated demoniac beings.”[116] They have apparently had a longer career than most demons of the class, for their existence is still firmly believed in by certain Bedouins, who asseverate that they have actually seen them. Mr. Theodore Bent found the same superstitious dread of the _jinni_ both in the Hadramaut and in Dhofar. They are described as semi-divine spirits, who live by rocks near the streams, under trees, or in the lakes. Mr. Bent could not induce the Bedouins of his escort to gather a certain water-plant for fear of offending the _jinn_ of the lake. In fact in the Gara Mountains the fear of the _jinni_, and the skill of certain magicians in keeping them friendly, appear to constitute the only tangible forms of religion.[117]

Under the word sĕīrīm, hairy monsters, E.V. “satyrs” and “devils,” the Bible makes occasional mention of mythical creatures who were presumably related to the Arabian _jinni_.[118] They are represented as frequenting waste-places, forsaken by man and given over to nettles and brambles. In one passage the word is used of the heathen gods of Canaan,[119] whose close association with trees has already been noticed.

The fantastic monsters of the Egyptian desert, thought to appear only at the moment when the minor functions assigned to them had to be performed, and at other times to conceal themselves in inanimate objects, are represented as sometimes dwelling in trees or in stakes planted in the ground.[120] Their assumed complete incorporation in such objects is proved by the expressive term used by the Egyptians—the objects “ate them up.” Their existence and their unfriendliness to man were firmly believed in. The shepherd feared them for his flock, the hunter for himself. Similar beasts roamed through the Egyptian Hades and threatened the wayfaring spirits of the dead.

These fragmentary evidences are important as casting a side-light on the parallel superstitions of the Aryan races, amongst which, as we shall see, the belief in wood-demons and tree-spirits was almost universal.

In Greek and Roman mythology there is a whole gallery of wild creatures inhabiting the mountains and woods, and more or less closely associated with vegetable life—centaurs and cyclops, Pans and satyrs, fauns and silvani, nymphs and dryads. Mannhardt has diligently compared these mythical beings with the wild people and wood-spirits of European folk-lore, and has clearly demonstrated a remarkable relationship.[121] In their evolution they present a distinctly progressive humanisation. The earliest of them, the centaurs and cyclops, remind us of the fabulous monsters of Semitic legend, and their contests with, and eventual disappearance before the higher powers seem paralleled in the similar conflict between the gods and demons of Chaldaea. Mannhardt adduces many arguments to prove that the centaurs first originated as local wood and mountain spirits. Their earliest haunt was the thickly wooded Pelion; one of them is represented as the son of the dryad Philyra or the linden; another as the son of Melia or the ash. Their weapons were uprooted trees. Like the European wild men of the woods they were covered with long shaggy hair. Chiron, the most friendly of them, was skilled in the use of simples and in the hidden powers of nature. Lastly, their presence was assumed in the whirlwind and other violent atmospheric phenomena. All these features class the archaic centaurs with the undoubted wood-spirits of a later mythology. The same is probably true of the cyclops, whose characteristics—their single eye, their use of uprooted trees for weapons, and their connection with sheep and goats—may be paralleled amongst the legendary wood-spirits of modern Europe.

In later times the place of the extinct centaurs and cyclops was taken by a tribe, half men half goats, known as Pan, satyrs, and sileni, who originally were in all probability local wood-spirits, Pan proceeding from Arcadia, the satyrs from Argos, the sileni from Phrygia. In the case of Pan we seem to see a class of doubtfully amicable wood-spirits developing into a more or less benevolent god. The Greek poets of the Periclean age speak of a whole tribe of wood-demons known as Panes or Panisci, from which eventually an individual, “the Great Pan,” seems to have emerged. The son of a nymph, Pan is called in the Classics “god of the wood,” “companion of kids,” “goatherd.” He is represented with horns and goat’s legs, standing beside a sacred oak or pine, a fir-wreath on his head, and a branch in his hand. He leads the revels of the satyrs, pipes and dances amongst the wood-nymphs under the trees, and woos a pine-tree personified as Pithys. Like other wood-spirits he protects the herds, and, as befits a demon on the way to apotheosis, is for the most part friendly to man. But he never, apparently, quite lost his original character, for he is sometimes classed with incubi and spirits who cause evil dreams.

The satyr was a degraded, or rather unhumanised Pan, more sensual and malicious in character, coarser in feature, and more bestial in form. Hesiod calls the satyrs “a useless and crafty tribe.” They were originally wood-demons, and men represented as satyrs took part in the festivals of Dionysus, the chief of vegetation spirits. Silenus, like Pan, the individualised head of a class, was also closely associated with Dionysus. The sileni, in fact, were but Phrygian variants of the satyrs, and are represented in the Homeric hymn to Aphrodite as consorting with the hamadryads. In Art they appear clothed in goatskins. It may be added that the modern Greek peasant still believes in malicious goat-footed demons who inhabit the mountains.[122]

In Roman mythology the fauns and silvani played the same part as Pan and the satyrs in Greece, and the same confusion existed as to whether they were individual or generic. The fauns seldom appeared to mortal sight, but their presence was made known in the weird noises and the ghostly appearances of the dark forest. When seen they had horns and goat’s feet, though in a later rendering they are more human in appearance. They guarded the flocks pasturing in the woods and, like other wood-spirits, also protected the cornfield. Silvanus and the silvani, as their name denotes, were tree-spirits even more emphatically than the fauns. According to Virgil the oldest inhabitants of Latium allotted to Silvanus a sacred grove and a special festival;[123] in later times he was universally regarded as the patron of the garden and field. At harvest time an offering of milk was poured over the roots of his sacred tree. In Art, Silvanus is represented as covered with hair (_horridus_) and standing under, or growing out of a garlanded tree, a crown of pine sprays on his head, a large pine bough in one hand and a sickle in the other. An inscription speaks of him as half enclosed in a sacred ash (_sacrâ semiclusus fraxino_). Another account associates the silvani with the fig-tree, and states that they were called by some _fauni ficarii_. Both fauns and silvani had an evil reputation for their supposed propensity to assault women, to carry off children, and to disturb the dreams of sleepers. The peasants of North Italy and Sicily still believe in wood-spirits, _gente selvatica_, closely resembling the old silvani. A Sicilian incantation is addressed to the spirit of the fig-tree and the devils of the nut-trees.[124]

Taking the sum of their characteristics, Mannhardt is doubtless right in classing these legendary beings with the wood-spirits met with in the folk-lore of Northern Europe.

It is, however, in the female counterparts of these woodland creatures that the idea of an actual tree-soul is most clearly exemplified. The most striking instance is the familiar one of the hamadryads, the deep-bosomed nymphs of wooded Ida, to whose care Aphrodite entrusted the infant Aeneas, and whose very name expresses their intimate connection with their trees. To quote the Homeric hymn to Aphrodite, which was probably written under Phrygian influence, “They belong neither to the mortals nor to the immortals: they live long, indeed, enjoying immortal food, and with the immortals they join in the lordly dance. The sileni mate with them, and Hermes, too, in the privy recesses of delightful grottoes. With them, when they were born, upon the mountains lofty pines and oaks sprang forth from the earth that gives food to man. Yet when at last the fate of death overtakes them, first the beautiful trees wither upon the earth, the bark dies around them, their branches fall away, and therewith the souls of the nymphs leave the light of the sun.”[125]

Pindar, who would appear to have first given them the name of hamadryads, speaks of them as having the same length of life as a tree.[126]

But the case of the hamadryads is by no means an isolated example of the Greek belief in spirits whose life was bound up with the life of the tree. In the Homeric hymn to Ceres the nymphs rejoice when the oaks are in leaf, and weep when their branches become bare.[127] Elsewhere a nymph is depicted imploring that the oak wherein she dwelt should not be hewn down, and as bringing vengeance on him who ignored her entreaty.[128] It was not only the oak and the pine that might be inhabited by a spirit. Amongst the names of nymphs that have come down to us is Philyra (the linden), Daphne (the laurel), Rhoea (the pomegranate), and Helike (the willow). In later times an attempt was made in some cases to explain the connection by metamorphosis, a living nymph being supposed to have been converted into a tree, but it is extremely probable that this was an inversion of the primitive nexus.

There are many instances closely parallel to these classical myths in mediaeval and modern legend. The story of Alexander and the flower-maidens, for instance, which was a favourite with the troubadours, and was subsequently popularised by Lamprecht, and later by Uhland, was presumably founded on a legend current in ancient Greece. The story goes that in a certain wood, when spring came, numbers of enormous flower buds appeared out of the ground, from each of which, as it opened, there leapt forth a beautiful maiden. Their robes were a part of their growth, and in colour they were just like their flowers, red and white. They played and danced in the shade, and their singing rivalled the birds’. All past heartaches were wiped away, and a life of joy and abundance seemed to open to him who saw them. But it was death for a maiden to leave her shady retreat and encounter the scorching sun. When summer was past, and the flowers withered and the birds were silent, the beautiful creatures died. Alexander and his knights, coming upon this magical wood, mated with the flower-maidens, and for more than three months lived in perfect happiness, till one by one the flowers faded, one by one the nymphs died, and the king and his companions had sorrowfully to resume their travels.[129]

Legends of this sort no doubt provided Lucian with the motive for that “true history” of his, wherein he tells of the wonderful vines growing on the far side of a certain river that ran wine instead of water. These vines below had a very thick stem, but above bore maidens’ bodies of perfect form. Bunches of grapes grew from their finger-tips, and vine leaves and grapes formed their hair. They gave the travellers a friendly greeting, and bade them welcome, most speaking Greek, others Lydian or Indian. Whoever accepted their kisses felt a sudden drunken bewilderment. They shrieked aloud with pain when one attempted to pluck their grapes. Two of the travellers who surrendered themselves to their embraces could not get free again, but took root and budded forth vine leaves.[130]

The above, of course, was intended as a literary parody, but stories, not a whit less wonderful, are found in the folk-lore of many modern countries, and are no doubt recited and received in good faith. There is a modern Greek legend, for instance, of a childless wife, to whom Heaven, in answer to her prayer for children, sent a golden laurel berry. Despising the gift she threw it away. From it there grew a laurel-tree with golden sprays. A prince, following the chase, was so struck by its beauty that he ordered his dinner to be prepared beneath it. In the absence of the cook the tree opened and a fair maiden stepped forth, and after strewing a handful of salt over his food, withdrew to the tree, which immediately reinclosed her. The following day the prince again found his dinner spoilt, and on the third day he determined to keep watch. The maid came forth and was captured by the prince before she could regain her tree. After a time she escaped, and coming back to the tree called upon it to open and receive her. But it remained closed, and she was obliged to return to her prince, with whom, after various mischances, she lived happily for ever after.[131]

The Czekhs have a similar story of a nymph who roamed the forest by day, but at night invariably returned to her willow. She married a mortal and bore him a child. One day the willow was cut down and the nymph died. A cradle fashioned out of its wood had the power of lulling her child to sleep, and when he grew up he was able to hold converse with his mother by means of a pipe formed from the twigs which grew about the stump.[132]

That the soul of the nymph was thought actually to inhabit the tree is further proved by the belief current both in ancient and modern myth, that blood would flow when the tree was injured. It was firmly held in primitive times that the blood was the very life, the soul of an animal, and hence in primitive ritual it was the blood of the sacrifice that was offered to the god. It is interesting to note that in some cases wine—“the blood of the grape”—and the juices of fruits and vegetables, _i.e._ the vehicle of the plant-soul, were used as substitutes for blood.[133] In a later chapter we shall see that herbs and flowers were fabled to grow from the blood of the dead and so to re-embody his spirit, and it will be remembered how Virgil makes the cornel and myrtle which grew upon the grave of Polydorus at once bleed and speak when torn up by the hand of Aeneas.[134] So Ovid, recounting a similar occurrence in the case of the dryads’ oak, sacrilegiously felled by Eresicthon, was probably only giving a poetic version of a familiar belief:—

He it was Whose impious axe mid Ceres’ sacred grove Dared violate her immemorial shades. Huge with the growth of ages in its midst An ancient oak there stood, itself a grove, With votive tablets hung and grateful gifts For vows accomplished. Underneath its shade The dryads wove their festal dance.

Eresicthon, in spite of warnings, refused to stay his hand.

The trembling tree sent forth an audible groan! From its pale leaves and acorns died the green, Dark oozing sweat from every branch distilled, And as the scoffer smote it, crimson-red Gushed from the wounded bark the sap, as streams When at the altar falls some mighty bull The life-blood from his neck.

Then from its heart Issued a voice, “Thou strikest in this trunk A nymph whom Ceres loves, and for the deed Dearly shalt pay. With my last voice thy doom I prophesy, and in thy imminent fate Find solace for my own.”[135]

Mannhardt quotes several mediaeval and modern instances of the belief in bleeding trees.[136] And stories of punishment incurred for destroying a spirit-inhabited tree are not uncommon in folk-lore. There is a German legend of an old crone who attempted to uproot the trunk of an ancient fir-tree. In the midst of her labours a sudden weakness fell upon her, insomuch that she was scarcely able to walk. While endeavouring to crawl home she met a mysterious stranger, who, hearing her story, at once pronounced that in her attempts to uproot the tree she had wounded an elf inhabiting it. If the elf recovered, he said, so would she; if not, she would die. As the old woman perished that self-same night we are left to infer that the elf died also. From India comes a similar recital. While felling a tree the youthful Satyavant broke out into a profuse sweat, and overcome with sudden weakness, fainted and died upon the spot: he had mortally wounded the indwelling spirit.

Such stories have no doubt arisen from the dread inspired by wood-spirits amongst all people who believe in them. In short, the wild inhabitants of the woods have always retained some of the awe with which their forerunners, the demons, were regarded. Often they are credited with quite a wanton vindictiveness. A Bengal folk-tale tells of a certain banian-tree haunted by spirits who had a habit of wringing the necks of all who ventured to approach the tree by night.[137] In another Indian story a tree that grew beside a Brahman’s house was inhabited by a _sankchinni_, a female spirit of white complexion, who one day seized the Brahman’s wife and thrust her into a hole in the tree.[138] Sometimes the tree-spirit will be wicked and foolish enough to enter into a human being, and then the exorcist’s services are called in. The presence of the spirit is easily discovered. The exorcist has only to set fire to a piece of turmeric root, it being of common knowledge that no spirit can endure the smell of burning turmeric.

The Shánárs of India believe that disembodied spirits haunt the earth, dwelling in trees and taking especial delight in dark forests and solitary places.[139] When a Burman starts upon a journey he hangs a branch of plantains or a spray of the sacred _Eugenia_ on the pole of his buffalo cart, to conciliate any spirit upon whom he may be unfortunate enough to intrude. The hunter following his lonely quest in the forest will deposit some rice and a little bundle of leaves at the foot of any more than usually majestic tree, hoping thereby to propitiate the _nat_ or spirit dwelling therein.[140]

Something of the same fear is felt by the peasants for the fairies, elves, pixies, and all the tribe of little people familiar to European folk-lore. These, too, are all more or less associated with trees, being supposed to dwell either amongst the branches or in the hollow trunks. German elves have a partiality for the oak and elder, and the holes in the trunks are the doorways by which they pass in and out. A similar idea exists amongst the Hindus. Though, as a rule, these forest-elves bear a good character, they are not to be lightly offended, or more will be heard of it. Hence prudent country-folk will never injure trees inhabited by fairies, for when aggrieved they have ample means of avenging themselves by inflicting some malady or causing some ill-luck.

Even in England, especially in Devon and Cornwall, there still exist people who believe that oaks are inhabited by elves—

Fairy elves, whose midnight revels By a forest side or fountain Some belated peasant sees.

And it is not yet quite an obsolete custom to turn the coat for luck when passing through elf-haunted groves. It was on St. John’s eve that the fairies held their special revels, and in old days many a timorous hand might be found attaching to his doorway branches of St. John’s wort, gathered at midnight on St. John’s eve, to protect his dwelling from an invasion of elves. Similarly the peasants living near Mount Etna never sleep beneath trees on St. John’s eve, lest the spirits who then issue freely from their leafy dwelling-places should enter into the sleeper.[141]

But it is in Central and North Europe, in the Tyrol and the Vosges, in the German forests, in Russia, Scandinavia, and Finland, that the belief in wood-spirits is most deeply rooted and persistent. Mannhardt, who has diligently collected an enormous mass of evidence on the subject, states that traditions concerning the wild people of the woods are current in all the more wooded countries of Europe. He sees in these traditions an amalgamation of the idea of tree-spirits with that of wind-spirits, and rejects the hypothesis that they arose out of remembrances of savage half-bestial aborigines who took to the woods on the advance of more civilised races.[142] He thus summarises the character of the wild people of Germany, Russia, and Scandinavia. They are often of gigantic proportions, dwell in woods or mountains, and originally were no doubt closely connected with the spirits of trees, their knowledge of “simples” and remedies for sick cattle connecting them with the spirits of vegetation. From head to foot they are clothed in moss, or covered with rough shaggy hair, their long locks floating behind them in the wind. Occasionally they assume an animal form. They announce their presence in the wind and tempest. The male spirits carry as weapons uprooted pines or other trees, and in their fights with each other use tree trunks and pieces of rock. They are almost invariably of a wanton disposition.[143]

Of all the various spirits of the woods, the moss-woman of Central Germany appears to be the most definite example of a tree-spirit. As with the Greek dryad, her life is bound up with that of a tree.[144] The moss-women bear different names and somewhat different characters in different localities, but the following description by the author of _The Fairy Family_ represents the common tradition:—

“A moss-woman,” the haymakers cry And over the fields in terror they fly, She is loosely clad from neck to foot In a mantle of moss from the maple’s root, And like lichen gray on its stem that grows Is the hair that over her mantle flows. Her skin like the maple-rind is hard, Brown and ridgy and furrowed and scarred; And each feature flat like the bark we see, When a bough has been lopped from the bole of a tree, When the newer bark has crept healingly round And laps o’er the edge of the open wound; Her knotty, root-like feet are bare, And her height is an ell from heel to hair.

Sometimes, however, the moss-women and their relatives the wood-maidens are more friendly to man, and will help him industriously in the harvest-field; they have even been known to enter his service and bring prosperity to all his undertakings.

The wild women of Tyrol, known locally as Wild-fanggen, are much more terrifying individuals. Gigantic in stature, their whole body is covered with hair and bristles, and their face distorted with a mouth that stretches from ear to ear. They live together in the woods, with which their lives are bound up. If their special wood is destroyed they disappear; if the tree from which a fangga takes her name dies or is felled, she passes out of existence.[145]

The peasants in the Swiss Canton of the Grisons, which by the way has a “wild-man” for its heraldic device, believe in wood-spirits of great strength and agility, who are skilled in weather-lore and the recovery of strayed cattle.[146] The female spirits, some of whom have been known to marry mortals, are clothed in skins; but the males, who are hairy, content themselves with a crown of oak leaves. They are sometimes helpful to men, but more often mischievous, having a propensity for stealing the milk and carrying off the children of the peasants.

The white and green ladies of Franche Comté and Neufchatel belong to the same family, their special proclivity being to entice men away, to drag them through brake and brier, and leave them stripped of their possessions.[147] In Neufchatel there is a rock, “La roche de la Dame Verte,” which young men are especially warned to avoid; and in the Jura, a wood where beneath an oak the green ladies are wont to light a fire, and may be heard singing and dancing around it. The peasants when they see the wild flowers and the young corn waving in the wind, whisper to each other that the green lady is passing over them with her companions.

The Swedish conception of the tree-spirit is very similar. He also delights to lead astray those who intrude upon his forest domain. The well-known tendency of man, after losing himself, to wander round and round until he regains his starting-place, is attributed to the wood-spirit. He looks like a man when you meet him, but touch him and he shoots to the height of the loftiest tree. You cry out in terror, and he laughs “Ha, ha!” Hunters seek the friendship of these lords of the forest, for he who stands well with them never misses his aim.[148]

The wood-demon of the Russians, Ljeschi, calls to mind both classical and modern traditions. He is of human form, with the horns, ears, and feet of a goat, his fingers are long claws, and he is covered with rough hair, often of a green colour. He can assume many forms, and vary his stature at will; in the fields he is no higher than the grass, in the woods as tall as the trees. Sometimes he is like a man, clothed in sheepskins, and often, like the cyclops, with only one eye. Like other wood-demons, he announces his presence in the storm and the wind. He springs from tree to tree, and rocks himself in the branches, screeching and laughing, neighing, lowing, and barking. He delights to mislead the traveller and plunge him in difficulties. However unfriendly to man, Ljeschi is on good terms with animals; all the birds and beasts of the wood are under his protection, and the migrations of squirrels, field-mice, and such small deer are carried out under his guidance. The peasants are at pains to propitiate him. In the province of Olonitz the shepherds offer him a cow every summer, to secure his favour for the herd; elsewhere the hunter gives him the first thing he shoots, leaving it for him in an oak-wood, or places a piece of bread or pancake strewed with salt upon a tree stump. There are certain ways of conjuring his presence and his aid by means of birch-twigs, or by uttering a given formula while standing on a tree-stump, from which it would appear that he is thought of as dwelling in these vegetable fragments.[149] The Russians also believe in female wood-spirits of terrifying appearance, but they are of less importance than the male.

In the folk-lore of the Finns the spirits of the woods bear a more benign character. The chief of them, “Tapio,” is termed “the gracious god of the woodlands,” and is represented as very tall and slender, with a long brown beard, a coat of tree moss, and a high-crowned hat of fir leaves. His consort is Mielikki, “the honey rich mother of the woodland,” “the hostess of glen and forest.” The neighbouring Esthonians have their “grass-mother” who, besides presiding over the home-field, is also queen of the woods.

It is not perhaps singular to find that the traditions with regard to wood-spirits current amongst contiguous peoples should exhibit such a strong resemblance to each other, but when almost exactly the same conceptions are met with in such distant parts as Japan and South America, we can only conclude that the human mind, wherever it exists, is similarly constituted, and, granted the same phenomena, falls back upon the same ideas to explain them.

The Tengus of Japanese legend have many of the characteristic marks of the wood-spirit. They dwell in the topmost branches of lofty trees, are skilled in the language and lore of animals and plants, and are a terror to untruthful children. They have the body of a man, the head of a hawk, with a long proboscis, and powerful claws on their hands; on their feet, also provided with claws, are stilt-like clogs a foot high. They are hatched from eggs, and in their youth have feathers and wings.[150]

A traveller in Peru only sixty years ago found the tradition of a living wood-ghost, who dwelt in the darkest part of the forest, the haunt of night-birds, and issued forth to decoy the Indians to their destruction.[151] The idea of a wild man of the woods also exists in Brazil. The Indians call him Curupira, and attribute to his agency all such forest sounds as they cannot understand.[152]

Some of the foregoing traditions present a glimpse of the transition towards a later and more highly developed conception, in which the many spirits once believed in become generalised into a single “spirit of vegetation.” It is not indeed contended that this belief is necessarily destructive of the earlier. Indeed it is possible that in the loosely working mind of the peasant the two conceptions may exist side by side. The many interesting ceremonies and observances which arose out of this generalised conception will be dealt with in a later chapter.

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