160

THE PALASA ROD.

six calves with their dams, he struck each of the calves with the rod and drove them out saying, "Ye are winds." This done, he touched the cows, one for all, with the rod, and blessed them, bidding them be good milkers, good breeders, safe from sickness and robbers, and abidingly numerous in the possession of the master for whom the sacrifice was offered. Lastly, he stuck up the rod in front or eastward of one of the two places of the holy fire (the sacrificial and the domestic), and bade it protect the cattle of the same person. A Sanscrit commentator on this rite says that the calf is struck with the parna-rod in order that the soma contained in the latter may pass into the former and enrich its udder. Another states that the calves which have been commended to the protection of the rod will, in consequence thereof, be sure to come safely home from their pasture in the evening-a plain proof that the rod was regarded not as a thing but as a person; it was the incorporation of a god who was able from a distance to protect the young cattle from robbers and wild beasts.

Kuhn has compared with this ancient Hindu ceremony the custom of "quickening" the calves, as it is observed in the county of Mark in Westphalia.

On the first of May the herdsman gets out of bed

QUICKENING THE CALVES.

161

before dawn, and goes to that part of the hill on which the sun first shines. There he chooses that sapling quicken tree (rowan, mountain ash) on which the first rays fall, and fells it. This must be done at one stroke, otherwise it is a bad sign. He takes the sapling to the farm-yard, where the people of the house and the neighbours assemble, and the yearling heifer which is to be quickened is led on to the mixen. There the herdsman strikes it with a branch of the quicken tree, first on the loins, then on the haunches, repeating at each stroke a verse, in which he prays that, as sap comes into the birch and beech, and the leaf comes upon the oak, so may milk fill the young cow's, udder. Lastly, he strikes the heifer on the udder and gives her a name. After this, having been regaled with eggs, he adorns the sapling with the shells, buttercups, &c., and plants it in front of the cow-house or over the door.*

Throughout Dalsland, in Sweden, the first "midday driving" of the year is celebrated as follows, a day or two before or after Ascension Day, or Holy Thursday, formerly the high festival of Thor. When the cattle have been driven out to grass, a garland of flowers is set upon one of the posts of the nearest gate through which they will have to return home.

* Woeste, Volksüberlieferungen der grafschaft Mark, p. 25.

M

162

THRICE-A-DAY MILKING.

Meanwhile the herdsman trims their horns and tricks them out as gaily as he can with flowers. At noon, when he returns with the herd, that they may be milked for the first time in the year at that hour, he takes the garland off the gate post, and setting it on the top of a rowan sapling, which he carries erect in both hands, he marches before the herd to the homestead, and plants the rowan on the haystack, where it remains during the whole grazing season. The bells are then hung for the first time on the cows, and if there be any among them that have not yet got a name, the herdsman gives them one as he strikes them three times on the back with a rowan branch. The cows are fed at noon with the choicest fodder, and the people of the house take their dinner at the entrance of the cattle-yard.

In this ceremony, says Kuhn, the festive adornment of the cattle, the choice fodder set before them, the assemblage of the whole household, and their meal taken near the kine, are evidently relics of an old sacrificial feast in which the guardian god had his share, along with his votaries, in the freshdrawn milk. The holding of the feast on the day on which the thrice-a-day milking began, shows how important an event that was for an ancient pastoral people. That it occurred of old in May is plain

from the Anglo-Saxon name of the month. May was called Thrimilci, says Bede, because in that month the cows were milked thrice a day.

These German and Swedish customs reveal the cause of that reputation for magical powers which the rowan tree or mountain ash has enjoyed from time immemorial in all parts of our own country as well as on the continent. Like its congener the ash, and the palasa and sami of India, it is an embodiment of soma and lightning. It is observed to be frequent in the neighbourhood of what are commonly called druidical circles. A rowan stood in every churchyard in Wales, as the yew did in England; and on a certain day of the year every person wore a cross of the wood. It averted fascination and evil spirits.* For that reason "many," says Plot, "are very careful to have a walking staff of it, and will stick the boughs of it about their beds." In Cornwall, where it is called "care,” it "has still great repute among our countryfolk in the curing of ills arising from supernatural as well as ordinary causes. It is dreaded by evil spirits; it renders null the spells of the witch, and has many other wonderful properties. The countryman will * Evelyn, "Silva," ch. xvi.

"Nat. Hist. of Staffordshire," ch. vi., § 52.

carry for years a piece of the wood in his pocket as a charm against ill wish, or as a remedy for his rheumatism. If his cow is out of health, and he suspects her to be 'overlooked'-i.e., smitten by an 'evil eye-away he runs to the nearest wood, and brings home bunches of care, which he suspends over her stall, and wreathes round her horns; after which he considers her safe."* In Scotland "the dairymaid will not forget to drive the cattle to the shealing or summer pastures with a rod of the rowan tree, which she carefully lays up over the door of the sheal-boothy or summer house, and drives them home again with the same."+

"At Modrufell, on the north coast of Iceland, is, or was, a large rowan, always on Christmas-eve stuck full of torches, which no wind could possibly extinguish; and one of the Orkneys possessed a still more mysterious tree, with which the fate of the islands was bound up, since if a leaf was carried away they would pass to some foreign lord."+

Among the many English names of the mountain ash, are witchen tree, witch elm, witch hazel, witch wood; quicken tree, quick beam (quick-alive, beam

Dr. George Johnston, "Flora of Berwick-upon-Tweed," p. 110. "Quart. Rev.," July, 1863, p. 243.