probably the special popularity of Lammas is due to its having coincided with or partially taken the place of an older nature festival, eg. in Ireland and Wales the great festival of the God Lug took place on or about August 1st.1

In southern climates it would doubtless be quite possible to have a harvest thanksgiving on Lammas Sunday, but further north the harvest is much later, and at South Queensferry, for example, the corn might often not be cut before the end of August, so that to offer on Aug. 1st a loaf made from the new corn would be an absolute impossibility. Harvest thanksgiving, as generally understood now, is the Harvest Home, a thanksgiving for perils past; but there is another possible aspect of harvest sacrifice, that of propitiating a higher power, in order that no disaster may overtake the growing corn before it is ripened and harvested. This view would appeal at least as forcibly to the primitive agricultural mind as the other, though it is not one which could be recognised by the Christian Church. It would be in accordance with the ordinary spirit of compromise for the Christian festival of Lammas, harvest thanksgiving, officially to take the place of harvest propitiation, though the older custom, shorn of its real meaning, still flourished among the people.

The flowers and leaves which decorate the Burryman are rather a symbol of the luxuriant growth of summer than of harvest thanksgiving. There are numerous instances of such summer figures, e.g. near Willings-Hausen, Lower Hesse, a boy is covered over and over with leaves, green branches are fastened to his body: other boys lead him by a rope and make him dance as a bear, for doing which a present is given.3

1 Rhys, Hibbert Lectures, p. 410; id. Welsh Folklore, i. 312.

2 Gregory to Abbot Meletus, 601 a.

3 Grimm, Teut. Myth. ii. 784; cf. id. 764, 776, 783.

Curiously enough, the first glance at the South Queensferry Burryman, without any idea of comparison, made one think of a bear walking on its hind legs. This impression was strengthened by the fact that the burry covering coming down over the forehead and between the eyes practically concealed the upper part of the face. This resemblance may be only a coincidence (it is much less evident in the photograph), but it suggests the direction in which the explanation lies.

=

Burry then would be the old Scots word meaning shaggy or hairy, as given above. There seems no legend to explain the symbolic use of ordinary burs. Bur, in the sense of fir-cones, would have a reasonable connection with wood spirits, but this is still a common meaning of the word, and fir-cones have apparently never been part of the costume. But burry shaggy is an old word, rare, and long out of use. The transference would not be unnatural, especially if the idea were to get a rough covering. At a distance, closely-set burs have somewhat the effect of locks of wool, in the same primitive fashion in which the stiff circles and holes of the pre-Pheidian Greek sculptors represent locks of hair. Similarly moss is used instead of fur in the dress of winter (Middle Rhine).1 In the same way the burry covering may be the survival of the fur dress, just as the Lancashire bear-mat may once have been a bear-skin.

There is little difficulty in finding instances of shaggy figures, either men or animals, possessing the power to work evil.

When Wolf Dieterich 2 sets forth to ask the help of Ortnit of Lombardy, he is warned to beware in crossing the deserts of Roumelia, lest he be caught by Rauch Else. Losing his way in the forest, he is found by a dark and terrible monster of appalling height, black and shaggy like a bear, with a voice like a bear's growl. The hero's 1 Grimm, Teut. Myth. ii. 764. 2 Wagner, Legends of the Amelungs.

promise to marry her breaks the spell, and the dark fleece falling off reveals the lovely princess. Cf. also the story of "Beauty and the Beast."

The same idea of a black shaggy horror appears in many old stories of haunting.1 Most people's childish recollections will bear witness to a shadowy bugbear, which was generally shaggy, sometimes black, sometimes both. As hobgoblins haunt dark corners, so shaggy monsters frequent forests and moors. The tradition is that Dalmeny 2 means Black heaths or gloomy spots.

Mr. Frazer has shown that the corn spirit has many and varied animal forms, and there are many sayings to show its kindly fertilising action, e.g. “The steer is running in the corn," when it is stirred by a gentle breeze. There are other proverbs showing the evil effect, eg. when the wind has laid the growing corn: "See the wolf slept there last night."

It is worth comparing with these a curious expression "to play the bear" to damage, spoil, ruin. A market gardener in Northamptonshire says: “A wet Saturday plays the bear with us." In Warwickshire they say: "The pigs have been in the garden and played the bear with it."

Every farmer knows that the really fatal time "to play the bear with" the standing crop is after the corn is fully in the ear, and before it is ripened. After a rain or wind storm the heavier the crop the more difficult it is for the bent stalks to straighten themselves, and lying on the ground the ears ripen very imperfectly. It is therefore very important to make sure of divine protection at this stage, rather than to wait and offer thanksgiving after the dangerous time is over.

1 Cf Mauthe Dog in the Isle of Man.

2 Till 1636 Queensferry was part of the parish of Dalmeny.

3 Golden Bough, 277, 284.

♦ Mannhardt, ii. 322.

5 Wright, Dial. Dict., ad loc.

• Id.

In the legends of the Calydonian Boar,1 of Adonis, of Iphigenia, the untimely death, the destruction of the unripe is insisted on, clearly because propitiation for the safety of the growing crops of the young enterprise had been neglected. Later ethical development may make propitiation and thanksgiving into one festival,2 but untimely death could never apply to ripened corn.

In the case of Scotland, climate and circumstances would tend to give even longer life to the propitiatory idea. If the orthodox date for offering first fruits is a month before the corn can be gathered in, it is a little difficult for the ignorant mind to distinguish such a harvest thanksgiving from a placating sacrifice to ensure a good harvest.

I would therefore suggest that the ceremony of the Burryman is a relic of an early propitiatory harvest rite. The Burryman himself represents an indeterminate being, possibly the wild man of the woods, possibly the angry spirit in the form of wolf, bear or boar, whose original hairy shaggy covering has, by corruption or misunderstanding of the word burrie, degenerated into a covering of burrs. His procession and collection of money from door to door are the modern form of the sacrifice required to ensure a fruitful season.

ISABEL A. DICKSON.

1 Hom. I. ix. 534.

2 Harrison, Prolegomena, 79.

3 There are at least two instances of openly propitiatory rites in Fife and Lothian in the thirteenth century, one conducted by the Parish Priest. Kemble, i. 356.

Note.-[It may also be suggested that the actual use of the burrs to form the shaggy covering may be due to a piece of popular etymology, an attempt to give a living meaning to the obsolete word 'burrie.' Ed.]

THE DISPOSAL OF THE DEAD IN

AUSTRALIA.

BY NORTHCOTE W. THOMAS.

IT has been generally recognised that the Australian blacks are a mixed race, and the most commonly accepted theory as to their origin sees in them a cross between a Melanesian stock, perhaps that of which the Tasmanians were the remnant, and a straight-haired people, identified, though for no valid reason, with the Dravidians of South India. Although the shape of the skull and the character of the hair vary to some extent in different areas, and though there are well-marked facial types associated with certain areas, neither somatological nor cultural evidence pointed to any well-marked racial differences between the populations of different areas, such as would lead us to infer the predominance of one stock in one region, and of another stock in another region.

There are, of course, well-marked cultural areas, but the conclusions drawn from the distribution of spear types are overthrown by the evidence derived from types of initiation ceremonies; and social organisation gives us a map whose forms differ from both the others. How far this is due to transmission rather than tribal migration need not occupy us here; for, at any rate in Australia, language is a more reliable test of race, and the great number of independent languages makes it improbable that they have been spread by other means than the actual expansion of the stock that speaks them.

It has often been assumed, though on insufficient