In Young Akin (Motherwell's MS. p. 554) Lady Margaret goes to a wood, and plucks two nuts. Young Akin appears, asking:
"O why pu' ye the nut, the nut,
O why brake ye the tree,
I am the forester o' this wood,
Ye should speir leave at me."
In the ballad of Hynde Etin, an enigmatic being "wha ne'er got christendame," the same incident occurs, also in The King's Dochier, Lady Jean, where the heroine "pu's the nut and bows the tree." The end is tragic. (Can the appearance of Hades, when Persephone plucks the first narcissus that ever bloomed, be a case in point?)
In the ballads, the breaking of the bough is an assertion of a claim to property in the wood, and a challenge to the being who dwells there. Possibly these facts corroborate the opinion proposed by me in Magic and Religion, that the breaking of the bough of the tree in the Arician grove was no more than a challenge to the priest to defend the tree, and his own possession of the priesthood. The priest of Diana, in fact, might very well say to any one who broke the branch:
"O why brake ye the bough, the bough,
O why brake ye the tree,
I hold the priesthood of this grove,
Ye mauna lichtly me!"
Then they fight. This explanation of the bough-breaking is simple and natural. Perhaps other cases in folk-lore may occur to the memory of some students.
After writing the above, my eye fell on a passage (pp. 465, 466), in Major Leonard's "The Lower Niger and its Tribes" (Macmillan & Co., 1906). I have elsewhere suggested that the Arician tree had been a sanctuary tree, and Major Leonard mentions among "sacred places of refuge" the Bu Jpri, "a small but sacred bush. . . . A twig or branch broken off, no matter how small, immediately secures the hoped-for freedom, and invests the culprits or runaways with the inviolate halo of divine tabu."
