Myth and folk-lore also retain many traces of the primitive connexion. Thus, in the genuine American legend of Hiawatha, the hero wrestles with and vanquishes Mon-damin, and where he buries him springs up for the first time the maize, or Indian-corn plant. Similar episodes occur {295}in the Finnish Kalevala and other barbaric epics. According to Mr. Chalmers, the Motu tribe in New Guinea say that yams sprang first from the bones of a murdered man, which were buried in a grave. After some time, the grave was opened, and the bones were found to be no longer bones, but large and small yams of different colours. In order to complete our preliminary survey of these artificial gods of cultivation, before we proceed to the consideration of the great corn-gods and wine-gods, it may be well to premise that in theory at least the original victim seems to have been a king or chief, himself divine, or else at least a king’s son or daughter, one of the divine stock, in whose veins flowed the blood of the earlier deities. Later on, it would seem, the temporary king was often allowed to do duty for the real king; and for this purpose he seems frequently to have been clad in royal robes, and treated with divine and royal honours. Examples of this complication will crop up in the sequel. For the present I will only refer to the interesting set of survivals, collected by Mr. Gomme, where temporary kings or mayors in England are annually elected, apparently for the sake of being sacrificed only. In many of these cases we get mere fragmentary portions of the original rite; but by piecing them all together, we obtain on the whole a tolerably complete picture of the original ceremonial observance. At St. Germans in Cornwall, the mock mayor was chosen under the large walnut-tree at the May-fair; he was made drunk overnight, in order to fit him for office, and was in that state drawn round the nut-tree, much as we saw the mayor of Bovey rode round the Bovey stone on his accession to the mayoralty. The mayor of St. Germans also displayed his royal character by being mounted on the wain or cart of old Teutonic and Celtic sovereignty. At Lostwithiel, the mock mayor was dressed with a crown on his head, and a sceptre in his hand, and had a sword borne before him. At Penrhyn, the mayor was preceded by torch-bearers and town sergeants, and though he was not {296}actually burnt, either in play or in effigy, bonfires were lighted, and fireworks discharged, which connect the ceremony with such pyre-sacrifices of cremationists as the festival of the Tyrian Melcarth and the Baal of Tarsus. On Halgaver Moor, near Bodmin, a stranger was arrested, solemnly tried in sport, and then trained in the mire or otherwise ill-treated. At Polperro, the mayor was gen-rally “some half-witted or drunken fellow,” in either case, according to early ideas, divine; he was treated with ale, and, “having completed the perambulation of the town,” was wheeled by his attendants into the sea.