No maiden will raise her eye
Since the mould has gone over thy visage fair...
Blue without rashness in thine eye!
Passion and beauty behind thy curls!...
Oh, yesternight it was green the hillock,
Red is it this day with Diarmid's blood.[112]
Tammuz died with the dying vegetation, and Diarmid expired when the
hills apparently were assuming their purple tints.[113] The month of
Tammuz wailings was from 20th June till 20th July, when the heat and
dryness brought forth the demons of pestilence. The mourners chanted:
He has gone, he has gone to the bosom of the earth,
And the dead are numerous in the land....
Men are filled with sorrow: they stagger by day in gloom ...
In the month of thy year which brings not peace hast thou gone.
Thou hast gone on a journey that makes an end of thy people.
The following extract contains a reference to the slaying of the god:
The holy one of Ishtar, in the middle of the year the fields
languish...
The shepherd, the wise one, the man of sorrows, why have they
slain?...
In his temple, in his inhabited domain,
The child, lord of knowledge, abides no more...
In the meadows, verily, verily, the soul of life perishes.
There is wailing for Tammuz "at the sacred cedar, where the mother
bore thee", a reference which connects the god, like Adonis and
Osiris, with tree worship:
The wailing is for the herbs: the first lament is, "they are not
produced".
The wailing is for the grain, ears are not produced.
The wailing is for the habitations, for the flocks which bring
forth no more.
The wailing is for the perishing wedded ones; for the perishing
children; the dark-headed people create no more.
The wailing is also for the shrunken river, the parched meadows, the
fishpools, the cane brakes, the forests, the plains, the gardens, and
the palace, which all suffer because the god of fertility has
departed. The mourner cries:
How long shall the springing of verdure be restrained?
How long shall the putting forth of leaves be held back?
Whither went Tammuz? His destination has already been referred to as
"the bosom of the earth", and in the Assyrian version of the "Descent
of Ishtar" he dwells in "the house of darkness" among the dead, "where
dust is their nourishment and their food mud", and "the light is never
seen"--the gloomy Babylonian Hades. In one of the Sumerian hymns,
however, it is stated that Tammuz "upon the flood was cast out". The
reference may be to the submarine "house of Ea", or the Blessed Island
to which the Babylonian Noah was carried. In this Hades bloomed the
nether "garden of Adonis".
The following extract refers to the garden of Damu (Tammuz)[114]:--
Damu his youth therein slumbers ...
Among the garden flowers he slumbers; among the garden flowers
he is cast away ...
Among the tamarisks he slumbers, with woe he causes us to be
satiated.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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