from the table was thrown into the fire, and some into running water, some was buried in the earth, and some smeared on leaves and put on the chimney-top for the winds.[1] Relics of such ancient sacrifice may be found in Scandinavia to this day; to give but one example, the old country altars, rough earth-fast stones with cup-like hollows, are still visited by mothers whose children have been smitten with sickness by the trolls, and who smear lard into the hollows and leave rag-dolls as offerings.[2] France may be represented by the country-women's custom of beginning a meal by throwing down a spoonful of milk or bouillon; and by the record of the custom of Andrieux in Dauphiny, where at the solstice the villagers went out upon the bridge when the sun rose, and offered him an omelet.[3] The custom of burning alive the finest calf, to save a murrain-struck herd, had its last examples in Cornwall in the 19th century; the records of bealtuinn sacrifices in Scotland continue in the Highlands within a century ago; and Scotchmen still living remember the corner of a field being left untilled for the Goodman's Croft (i.e., the Devil's), but the principle of 'cheating the devil' was already in vogue, and the piece of land allotted was but a worthless scrap.[4] It is a remnant of old sacrificial rite, when the Swedes still bake at yule-tide a cake in the shape of a boar, representing the boar sacrificed of old to Freyr, and Oxford to this day commemorates the same ancestral ceremony, when the boar's head is carried in to the Christmas feast at Queen's College, with its appointed carol, 'Caput apri defero, Reddens laudes Domino.'[5] With a lingering recollection of the old
- ↑ Wuttke, 'Deutsche Volksaberglaube,' p. 86. See also Grimm, 'Deutsche Myth.' pp. 417, 602.
- ↑ Hyltén-Cavallius, 'Wärend och Wirdarne,' part i. pp. 131, 146, 157, &c.
- ↑ Monnier, 'Traditions Populaires,' pp. 187, 666.
- ↑ R. Hunt, 'Pop. Rom. of W. of England,' 1st Ser. p. 237. Pennant, 'Tour in Scotland,' in Pinkerton, vol. iii. p. 49. J. Y. Simpson, Address to Soc. Antiq. Scotland, 1861, p. 33; Brand, 'Pop. Ant.' vol. iii. pp. 74, 317.
- ↑ Brand, vol. i. p. 484. Grimm, 'D. M.' pp. 45, 194, 1188, see p. 250; 'Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer,' p. 900; Hyltén-Cavallius, part i. p. 175.
