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Slavonic Elements in Greek Religion

George Calderon

The Classical Review / Volume 27 / Issue 03 / May 1913, pp 79 - 81 DOI: 10.1017/S0009840X00004765, Published online: 27 October 2009

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0009840X00004765

How to cite this article: George Calderon (1913). Slavonic Elements in Greek Religion. The Classical Review, 27, pp 79-81 doi:10.1017/S0009840X00004765

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Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/CAR, IP address: 61.129.42.30 on 02 May 2015 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW 79

SLAVONIC ELEMENTS IN GREEK RELIGION.1 THE strong general resemblance be- resemblance of ritual is not sufficient tween Slavonic folk rites and early evidence for historical connection; but Greek ceremonies for rain-getting and the classical student who will go to the fertility suggest a historical connection, excellent collections of Slavonic folklore which, if it can be established, is of now available 2 will find enough agree- considerable importance for the study ment in detail to suggest many illumin- of Greek religion. The first condition ating comparisons, and in one or two for establishing that connection is to cases at least the hypothesis of historical show an initial probability of communi- connection can be supported by philo- cation between the ancestors of the logical evidence. Slavonians and the founders of the The Delphic ceremony of the Funeral Greek rites. The link may be sought of Charila, described by Plutarch in Thrace. (Quaestiones Graecae, 12), combines The Greeks themselves ascribed a characteristics both of the South large part of their religion to Thracian Slavonic procession of the living Dodola, influence; Olympus, the home of the for rain-getting, and of the Russian gods, was originally Thracian; the Funerals of Kostroma and Yarilo, for priestly families of Delphi and Eleusis annual fertility;3 and connects on the were Thrakidae; Dionysus, Orpheus, Greek side, through the myth of Eri- Linus and Eumolpus were confessedly gone, with the Dionysian system" of Thracian. rituals. It was alleged to be an ex- History reveals nothing of the piation for the death of Charila, an Slavonians till the sixth century A.D. orphan who had hanged herself in a But they must have existed many time of drought because the King re- centuries before Christ as speakers of a fused her alms and struck her. A distinct Indo-European dialect; and procession of women and girls brought their situation in the Indo-European the image of the dead Charila to the system, as members of the Eastern King's door; he distributed pulse and branch, which sibilates the forward grain to all comers, and struck the gutturals, and of that central group image with a shoe. It was then buried which identified original medials and outside the town with a rope about its aspirated medials, coincides with that neck. of the Thracians, who alone of the In the South Slavonic rite water- Indo-Europeans in Europe combined pouring takes the place of striking, and the same two linguistic characters the Dodola, being alive, is not buried; (Kretschmer, Einleitung, p. 229 et sqq.). but there is detailed agreement in the And this, taken in connection with orphanhood of the central figure and in many striking coincidences of vocab- the distribution of grain. In the ulary, and the evidence of ' Nestor's' Slavonic rite the orphanhood un- Chronicle, which places the early home doubtedly symbolises the forlorn con- of the Slavonians on the Danube, and dition of the parched earth (soldiers' assigns them the same customary diet wives replace the orphan in a similar of millet as the Thracians (an assertion Russian ceremony), and the distribution supported by the fact that Russian of grain is expressly interpreted in the pshenitsa, wheat, is a diminutive deriva- accompanying songs as a magic for the tive of pshend, millet), makes it over- scattering of raindrops. The Russian whelmingly probable that they formed funeral-ceremonies are of Yarilo, a male part of that congeries of tribes known to the Greeks as Thracians. 2 Such as P. Shein's Russian collection, pub- lished by the Academy of Sciences, the Lemberg In view of the universality of the Shevchenko Academy's Zbirnyk, and the volume principles of magic, a merely general issued annually by the Bulgarian Ministry of Public Instruction. 1 Extracted from a paper read at the Fourth 3 Descriptions of which, after Ralston and International Congress for the History of Re- Mannhardt, may be found in Frazer's Golden ligions, held at Leiden in 1912. Bough. 8o THE CLASSICAL REVIEW figure, sometimes phallic, which is Greeks as Semele, by the Etruscans as Semla, in connection with Phrygian buried and then declared to have come 2 to life again; and of Kostroma, a girl, zemelo, ' catachthonic,' has already represented by a figure of rags or rushes, been identified with Lithuanian zemele, or frequently by a tree, which is thrown Slavonic zemla, the earth. And I into the river. venture to propose a further identifica- Kostroma is dressed as a bride, which tion between ' Charila' and ' Yarilo.' is not otherwise a Slavonic funeral The name Yarilo, known in Bulgaria, custom; and the purpose of her des- and firmly established in Russia by truction seems expressly to effect a derivative place-names, is derived from sexual union in the unseen world as a ydro, Spring, and means 'the Spring- magic for the fertility of the fields; a god.' If Charila is rightly identified view supported by the testimony of with Erigone,' daughter of the Spring,' Ibn Fotzlan, the Arab traveller, from the orphan bride of Dionysus who also which it appears to have been the hanged herself, the resemblance of her ancient Russian custom to sacrifice a name to that of Yarilo can hardly be virgin as wife for a man who died accidental; and I suggest that it is the unmarried. The same end is achieved Slavonic original of which Erigone is a by the dispatch of a male figure if the Greek translation, and stands for Yarila, earth-spirit is regarded as female. In the initial X representing an aspirated the Dionysian and Demetrian cycles ' y' sound, XlapiXa (X was already used the myth of a lost bride is common, as to transliterate a fricative guttural in in the tales of Erigone, of Eurydice, of the fifth century B.C., as in 'A^at/*ev?;9 Semele and of Cora, and in the case of the for Hakhamanish), the form being sup- Daedala (Pausanias 9,3); and I suggest ported by assimilation to the Doric that the ground-type underlying the man's name Xa/wWo?. fertility-magics of the Greeks and There are detailed agreements be- Slavonians was not a mere death and tween Greek and Slavonic fertility- resurrection of vegetation, as Mr. Frazer rituals in jumping, swinging, stone- proposes in explaining the Slavonic throwing, and the use of /j^porra, or funerals, but the endeavour to effect a plaited vegetable whips; and the union and a new birth. In Russia the Charila shoe appears, perhaps accident- union was sealed analogically, before ally, as a censer in the funeral of the girl was killed, per coitum cum vivo,1 Yarilo. as the union of Demeter and the under- The Slavonic Spring-rites very gener- world power was sealed at Eleusis. ally include fighting between two The South Slavonic word Dodola is organised parties. As a rule, while the possibly a corruption of Did Lado, women are singing and dancing round Didilia, the name of the old Slavonic the tree or a switch stuck in the and Lithuanian goddess of marriage, ground, the men burst in and cut it invoked, in songs belonging to the down or tear it in pieces. From the Dodola season, as Didolado and Didilo. example of the Ruthenian festival, And, if these ceremonies are essentially where a circle of women is broken by a for spirit-marriage, it is tempting to tower of men, standing on one another's compare the name of Sabazius, the backs, and of Bulgarian weddings, Phrygian Dionysus, which, as Kretsch- where the bridegroom is finally attacked mer shows, stands for an original with fists and chairs and guns, so that 'Savadios,' with the Russian svadl- he makes a running entry into the ba, s&vadi-ba, a wedding, and the bridal chamber, this fighting would Bacchanal cry of i\e\ev with the seem to have a phallic significance, Russian wedding-cry of ' oi lelio,' used being intended to procure vigour for at the Kostroma festival, and the ' oi the male principle in the nature-union ; Iyul6' of Bulgarians at Dodola. The and the same meaning may be attri- Thracian name transliterated by the buted to the athletic contests at the Eleusinia and the sham fighting of the 1 Kotlyarevsky, O pogrebalnich obyczajach, p. 66. 2 Kretschmer, p. 226. THE ^CLASSICAL REVIEW 81 Boedromia, to which the Greeks them- affords also a possible explanation for selves assigned a choice of impossible the frequency of Greek legends of the historic origins. While the thing capture of women by foreigners at attacked and defended in such rites Dionysian festivals, as in Lemnos and represents, not a national religious Naxos, and at Brauron in Attica. For symbol invidious to foreigners, as the the festival of Yarilo, the Slavonic pseudo-historical myths alleged, but Dionysus, seems to have been the femininity itself. regular occasion for the collusive The Russian Spring-fight is some- capture of brides among ihe primitive times enacted by two parties of women, Slavonians;* the occasion is still used with their hair flying, like the Maenads; for betrothals in the province of Tver; and, where the body of the Whitsun and if the songs at the Greek feasts had doll is made of straw, it is torn up, , the same narrative character as those when victory declares itself, and sung by the Slavonians at the capture- scattered over the fields, in order to games in use at such festivals, they distribute the productive energy con- might easily have been interpreted as a centrated in the figure. The existence record of historical events. of such a custom among the Thracians GEORGE CALDERON. would afford the most satisfying ex- 42, Well Walk, Hampstead. planation for the frequency of the legend of a man being torn to pieces in con- 1 Nestor says : 'They had no regular mar- nection with Dionysian rites, as Orpheus, riage customs, but when they met for devil Pentheus, and Dionysus himself. dances and songs, the men carried off wives for themselves, each as he had agreed with a Comparison with the Slavonians woman.'

SOME NOTES ON VIRGILIUS MARO GRAMMATICUS. THIS strange grammarian is now one was considered more appropriate for being taken seriously by scholars, and poetry. Thus senchas = senex became in it is satisfactory to find that the authori- poetry fenchas, and anim became anuim. ties on Celtic literature are at present This strange result may be set down to investigating his influence upon old the Celtic fancy and great imitative Irish literature. The late Professor faculty. The name of Virgil is not Zimmer, in the Sitzungsberichte der directly mentioned in Irish literature, K. Preussichen Ak. der Wissenschaften but Zimmer assumes that the name of 1910, proved that certain singular the author of an old Irish work called methods of contorting Latin, presumably Uraicept nan Ices (the poet's handbook), for cryptic purposes, were found also in Fercertne fili is in fact no other than the Old Irish: in some words letters were Gaulish grammarian. He takes the first 'decapitated' at the commencement; syllable Fer as an abbreviation of Fergil, to some words unmeaning letters were the -certne as connected with KepSo? and added; and again in some cases syllables cerdo and signifying ' the poet's craft,' were inserted into the body of the word, and fili as the seer or poet. The data in other cases the letters composing the on which he arrives at this conclusion body of the word were transposed, as are too numerous to be set down here: germen for regnum, nodo for dono, gelo it may suffice to state that they are for lego, etc. It appears that this method accepted by Celtic scholars like Pro- of disguising words came in process of fessor Kuno Meyer. It is significant time to affect the diction of Irish bards, that the oldest title of Virgil's work is who were taught as a part of their pro- Virgilii Maronis ars = certne. The MSS. fession that some of their changes were of Virgil date from the ninth or tenth permissible, and were in fact part of the centuries A.D., and by that time the technique of poetry, so that some of the belief had grown up that Fercertne was Old Irish words changed their form, and the name of a person. others maintained two forms, of which Now the question arises, What brought