pPant "bore, begeq^/, cmi. bqnc/. ®JRe ©Y^orPi— o^ tRe eNaolení/.
Indians as a dragon, the spoiler of harvests, and the ravisher
of the Apas, or brides of the gods. Peris who navigate the
celestial sea.
S'fte J\(É)/á>qnar2 ^ a e r c i l— iJTee,
In intimate connection with the worship of Assur, the supreme
deity of the Assyrians, “ the God who created himself,” was the
Sacred Tree, regarded by the Assyrian race as the personification
of life and generation. This tree, which was considered coeval
with Assur, the great First Source, was adored in conjunction with
the g o d ; for sculptures have been found representing figures
kneeling in adoration before it, and bearing mystic offerings to hang
upon its boughs. In these sculptured effigies of the Sacred Tree
the simplest form consists of a pair of ram’s horns, surmounted by
a capital composed of two pairs of rams’ horns, separated by
horizontal bands, above which is a scroll, and then a fiower
resembling the Honeysuckle ornament of the Greeks. Sometimes
this blossoms, and generally the stem also throws out a number of
smaller blossoms, which are occasionally replaced by Fir-cones
and Pomegranates. In the most elaborately-portrayed Sacred
Trees there is, besides the stem and the blossoms, a network of
branches, which forms a sort of arch, and surrounds the tree as it
were with a frame.
The Phoenicians, who were not idolaters, in the ordinary
acceptation of the word—inasmuch as they did not worship images
of their deities, and regarded the ever-burning fire on their altars
as the sole emblem of the Supreme Being,—paid adoration to this
Sacred Tree, effigies of which were set up in front of the temples,
and had sacrifices offered to them. This mystic tree was known
to the Jews as Asherah. At festive seasons the Phoenicians adorned
it with boughs, fiowers, and ribands, and regarded it as the central
object of their worship.
MotRer W7e.e o [ tRe (SjreeRíá), í^omaruá), ^euforná).
The Greeks appear to have cherished a tradition that the first
race of men sprang from a cosmogonic Ash. This cloud Ash
became personified in their myth as a daughter of Océanos, named
Melia, who married the river-god Inachos, and gave birth to
Phoroneus, in whom the Peloponnesian legend recognised the fire-
bringer and the first man. According to Hesychius, however,
Phoroneus was not the only mortal to whom the Mother Ash gave
birth, for he tells us distinctly that the race of men was “ the fruit
of the Ash.” Hesiod also repeats the same fable in a somewhat
different guise, when he relates how Jove created the third or
brazen race of men out of Ash trees. Homer appears to have been
acquainted with this tradition, for he makes Penelope say, when
addressing Ulysses : “ Tell me thy family, from whence thou art ;
for thou art not sprung from the olden tree, or from the rock.”
The Ash was generally deemed by the Greeks an image of the
clouds and the mother of men,—the prevalent idea being that the
Meliai, or nymphs of the Ash, were a race of cloud goddesses,
daughters of sea gods, whose domain was originally the cloud sea.
But besides the Ash, the Greeks would seem to have regarded
the Oak as a tree from which the human race had sprung, and to
have called Oak trees the first mothers. This belief was shared b}
the Romans. Thus Virgil speaks
“ Of nymphs and fauns, and savage men, who took
Their birth from trunks of trees and stubborn Oak.”
In another passage the great Latin poet, speaking of the .iFsculus,
a species of Oak, sacred to Jupiter, gives to it attributes which
remind us in a very striking manner of Yggdrasill, the cloud-tree
of the Norsemen.
xSsculus in prwtis^ quce quantum vortice ad auras
yEtherias, tantum radice in Tartara tenditi— Geor£, ii.
High as his topmost boughs to heaven ascend,
So low his roots to hell’s dominion tend.”— Dryden.
In the ^Lneid, Book IV., speaking of the Oak as Quercus,
Virgil uses the same expression with regard to the roots of Jo v e ’s
tree descending to the infernal regions. Juvenal, also, in his sixth
sàtire, alluding to the beginning of the world, speaks of the human
race as formed of clay or born of the opening Oak, which thus
becomes the mystical mother-tree of mankind, and, like a mother,
sustained her offspring with food she herself created. Thus Ovid
tells us that the simple food of the primal race consisted largely
of “ Acorns dropping from the tree of J o v e ; ” and we read in
Homer and Hesiod that the Acorn was the common food of the
Arcadians.
The belief of the ancient Greeks and Romans that the
progenitors of mankind were born of trees was also common to the
Teutons. At the present day, in many parts of both North and
South Germany, a hollow tree overhanging a pool is designated as
the first abode of unborn infants, and little children are taught to
believe that babies are fetched by the doctor from cavernous trees
or ancient stumps. “ Frau Holda’s tre e ” is a common name in
Germany for old decayed boles ; and she herself, the cloud-goddess,
is described in a Hessian legend as having in front the form of a
beautiful woman, and behind that of a hollow tree with rugged
bark.
But besides Frau Holda’s tree the ancient Germans knew a
cosmogonic tree, assimilating to the Scandinavian Yggdrasill. The
trunk of this Teutonic world-tree was called Irminsul, a name
implying the column of the universe, which supports everything.