animal, in whom we shall now have perhaps little difficulty in recognising the representative {343}of a human corn-god victim; and _a portion of this mess is placed in the mouth of each man by the king himself, here officiating in his capacity of ancestral priest_. By the light of such analogies, I think we need have no hesitation in reconstructing the primitive sacramental feast, where a man was sacrificed as an annual manufactured corn-god; seeds were mixed with his blood; his flesh was eaten sacramentally by the people, fed by the king; a part of his body was also eaten by the king himself, and a part was offered to the great gods, or to the tribal god, or the foundation god or goddess of the village or city. After putting together the various survivals already cited, I do not think this is too large an exercise of the constructive faculty. An interesting mixed case of god-eating, in which the cake was baked, not in the form of a man, but of a divine animal, I have seen myself in the house of Irish emigrants in Canada. The new corn was there made into loaves or buns in the shape of little pigs, with currants for eyes; and one of these was given to each of the children. Though merely regarded as a playful custom, this instance, I venture to think, has still its own illustrative value. The practice of kneading sacramental cakes from the blood of infants, which we saw to prevail in the case of a Mexican god, is parallelled in the practice of mixing them with shreds of the flesh from an animal victim in the Zulu ceremony. The cannibal form of the rite must, however, have been very widespread; as we gather from the fact that a Christian sect, the Paulicians, were accused of it as late as the eighth century. John of Osun, Patriarch of Armenia, wrote a diatribe against these sectaries, in which he mentions the fact that they moulded an image of wheaten flower with the blood of children, and eat therewith their unholy communion. Of course, there could have been no direct intercourse in the ninth century between Armenia and Mexico; but the accusation shows at least that similar ceremonies were known or remembered in {344}Asia as actual practices. Indeed, the Harranians in the middle ages annually sacrificed an infant, and boiling down its flesh, baked it into cakes, of which every freeman was allowed to partake. In both these cases, we have the two extremes of eating the god combined in one practice--the cannibal rite and the sacramental corn-cake.