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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
(NOVEMBER, 1895.
to prevent smut in the wheat, farmers meet at the marching of twelve lands. They burn twelve straw fires in a row. Round the largest fire they drink cider, and going home feast on cakes made of caraways soaked in cider. These beliefs and customs are valuable. They shew that the object of toasting the apple tree, or apple-howling as it was called, and also of toasting the young wheat, was to scare out of the tree and the wheat the evil spirit of barrenness and other ill influences that had established themselves during the months of the sun's waning power. As the twelfth day or close of the great Christmas or winter Bolstice festival, the Epiphany (6th January), is a fit time to drive off evil influences and ensure full play to the guarding and enriching virtues of the new-born sun. In this case it seems probable that the drinkers were in effect scapes, taking into themselves with the liquor the ill-luck which would otherwise haunt the apple trees and the wheat crop. In the 16th century, at Zurich, at new year time, men used to meet and force one another to take wine, In Tibet, on the New Year, first footing and health-drinking are the order of the day; according to the saying :-"The Tibetan New Year is wine, the Chinese paper, the Nepalese noise." The fishers of North-East Scotland, besides carrying fire round the boats to bless them on the last night in the year, used (1689) to take meat and drink to the boat-side and sprinkle liquor on the boat.7 In Scotland, great drinking boute, called sprees, used to be held on Sundays. In 1766, no parish in Ireland was without its place of penance dedicated to a special saint, where, in the morning, the people, confessed, did penance, and heard Mase, and in the evening celebrated the greatest debauches. In Hungary, at a wedding, the chief of the tribe sprinkles a few drops of liquor on the heads of the couple, drinks the rest of the liquor, tosses the glass pitcher into the air, and lets it fall to the ground smashed. The more bits the more luck.ro Here that the guardian drinker took into himself the ill-luck of the couple is shewn by his letting the glass be broken to pieces. The practice of dashing the glass to the ground after drinking a toast is widespread. It seems to be an extreme form of the toaster's law “No heel taps," that is, no leavings, the sense being that the liquor, through which evil influences should have passed into the toaster, being left in the cap, may serve as a place of refage for some envious spirit. Similarly, if he heard any unlucky word, the Greek dashed the wine cup to the ground, the sense being that the evil influence in the unlucky word might pass into and harm the wine.' The Saturnalia, one of the chief spirit-scaring festivals in Rome, was marked by drankenness. And the December festival at Babylon was known as the dranken festival.13 At Rome, on the feast of St. John the Evangelist, on December 27th, ten days after the old Saturnalia, presents of blessed wine are sent to friends.13
At their public festivals the Dyaks of Borneo never fail to drink to excess.14 In their worship of Sôma or Haoma, the early Brahman and Persian priests drank to excess. This drinking was sacramental. The god was offered to the god; and the god passed into the offering and so into the partaker. So, at the feast of Mithrâs, the king of Persia was bound to be drunk.15 Except st sacrificial feasts, the ancient Greeks drank little. At sacrificial feasts it was proper to get drunk through the gods día déovs 'ouvoúsbal. To be drunk was termed petúely as if mera tò Cúcu after sacrificing, a punning derivation which shewed that the ceremonial drunkenness was dae either to the drinker taking the guardian into him or taking into himself haunting influences to guard the guardian.16 So, heavy drinking marked the Greek harvest home, because as the banquet Oiv took its name from déos, it was the husbandman's duty to the gods or ancestral field-guardians to get drunk.17 The noisy grave-feast of the early Christians, like
• Hone's Every Day Book, Vol. II. p. 38. Grimm's Teutonic Mythology, Vol. I. p. 379. • Waddell's Buddhism in 78bet, p. 650. Mitchell's Past in the Present, p. 261.
. Guthrio's Old Scottish Customs, p. 145. Gentleman'. Magarine Library, " Popular Superstition," p. 112. ** Victor Tissot's Unknown Hungary, Vol. II. p. 161. Potter's Antiquities, Vol. I. P. 401. 11 Hislop's Two Babylons, p. 189.
13 Smith's Christian Antiquities, p. 888, 14 Featherman's Social History, Vol. II. p. 259. 18 Rawlinson's Ancient Monarchias, Vol. II. p. 828 : Rawlinson's Herodotus, Vol. I. p. 374, n. 1, 1Compare Potter's Antiquitio, Vol. I. p. 274
11 Op. cit. Vol. I. p. 415.
