"Come hither to the god with ivy bound. Bromios we mortals name
Him, and Him of the mighty Voice.... The clear signs of his
Fulfilment are not hidden, whensoever the chamber of the
purple-robed Hours is opened, and nectarous flowers lead in the
fragrant spring. Then, then, are flung over the immortal Earth,
lovely petals of pansies, and roses are amid our hair; and voices
of song are loud among the pipes, the dancing-floors are loud with
the calling of crowned Semele."
Bromios, "He of the loud cry," is a title of Dionysos. Semele is his
mother, the Earth; we keep her name in Nova _Zembla_, "New Earth." The
song might have been sung at a "Carrying-in of Summer." The Horæ, the
Seasons, a chorus of maidens, lead in the figure of Spring, the Queen of
the May, and they call to Mother Earth to wake, to rise up from the
earth, flower-crowned.
You may _bring back_ the life of the Spring in the form of a tree or a
maiden, or you may summon her to rise from the sleeping Earth. In Greek
mythology we are most familiar with the Rising-up form. Persephone, the
daughter of Demeter, is carried below the Earth, and rises up again year
by year. On Greek vase-paintings[20] the scene occurs again and again. A
mound of earth is represented, sometimes surmounted by a tree; out of
the mound a woman's figure rises; and all about the mound are figures of
dancing dæmons waiting to welcome her.
All this is not mere late poetry and art. It is the primitive art and
poetry that come straight out of ritual, out of actual "things done,"
_dromena_. In the village of Megara, near Athens, the very place where
to-day on Easter Tuesday the hills are covered with throngs of dancing
men, and specially women, Pausanias[21] saw near the City Hearth a rock
called "_Anaklethra_, 'Place of Calling-up,' because, if any one will
believe it, when she was wandering in search of her daughter, Demeter
called her up there"; and he adds: "The women to this day perform rites
analogous to the story told."
These rites of "Calling up" must have been spring rites, in which, in
some pantomimic dance, the uprising of the Earth Spirit was enacted.
Another festival of Uprising is perhaps more primitive and instructive,
because it is near akin to the "Carrying out of Winter," and also
because it shows clearly the close connection of these rites with the
food-supply. Plutarch[22] tells us of a festival held every nine years
at Delphi. It was called from the name of the puppet used _Charila_, a
word which originally meant Spring-Maiden, and is connected with the
Russian word _yaro_, "Spring," and is also akin to the Greek _Charis_,
"grace," in the sense of increase, "Give us all _grace_." The rites of
_Charila_, the Gracious One, the Spring-Maiden, were as follows:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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