Mr. Frazer now harms his cause, perhaps, by proving that just as, in Esther, Mordecai had a royal ride, so, in Persia, a beardless, and if possible one-eyed buffoon rode in mock royalty through the streets, collecting money or goods, exactly like our Robin Hood before and even after the Scottish Reformation.[13] It was _une quête_; examples are endless. After his second round he fled, for the people might beat him if they caught him, obviously in revenge, I think, for his robberies. But Mr. Frazer, as usual, supposes the right to beat the buffoon to 'point plainly enough to the harder fate' of the sacrificed mock-king. No date is given for this Persian custom, but, if it existed when the Jews were in Persia, did it coexist with sacrifice of a mock-king? If not, if it was a substitute for that obsolete cruelty, why are the Jews supposed to have borrowed the cruelty no longer practised? This is a question of dates, which may be implied, but are not given, though I understand Mr. Frazer to mean that the buffoon's ride is later than the origin of Purim.[14] On the other hand, Lagarde, one of the most learned of Orientalists, thinks that the ride of the beardless was already customary at the time when the stories about Esther and Purim were composed. The Persians, says Lagarde, had the Feast of Farwardîgân, a feast of jollity, the rich making presents to the poor, as at Purim. They had also the Feast of the Massacre of the Magi (Magophonia), and, thirdly, they had the popular diversion of the Bide of the Beardless. Now the authors of the Esther legend 'had these three colours on their palette, and with these three painted, not a portrait of one feast, but a kind of mixed caricature for the Jewish carnival.'[15] The Magophonia lent the colours of the massacre, Farwardîgân lent the jollity and the presents, the ride of the beardless lent the procession of Mordecai. In that case, and if Lagarde is right, the Jews found at Babylon, not a slaying of a mock-king, but the ride of the beardless. So they did not borrow the slaying of a mock-king, but introduced into the Esther legend an incident of a ride suggested by the ride of Mordecai, which Mr. Frazer calls 'a degenerate copy of the original,' namely the reign and death of the mock-king.[16] Whether Lagarde's view be correct or not, this part of the evidence is far too sandy a foundation for a theory about a matter of solemn importance. The Jews could not borrow the hanging of a victim from the Sacæa, if in their exile they only found the ride of the beardless one, as in Lagarde's theory--not that he mentions the Sacæa.