There is another group of myths for which, although they lack this element of a substituted victim, mythologists find an origin in a reformation of religious sentiment leading to the abolition of human sacrifice. The classical legend of Perseus and Andromeda, the hagiological legend of St. George and the Dragon, the Teutonic legend of Beowulf and Grendel, are only types of innumerable tales in which the hero puts an end to the periodical death of a victim by slaying the monster who has enforced and profited by it[449]. What is such a story but the imaginative statement of the fact that such sacrifices at one time were, and are not? It is, however, noticeable, that in the majority of these stories, although not in all, the dragon or monster slain has his dwelling in water, and this leads to the consideration of yet another sophistication of the primitive notion of sacrifice. According to this notion sacrifice was necessarily bloody; in the shedding of blood and in the sacrament of blood partaken of by the worshippers, lay the whole gist of the rite: a bloodless sacrifice would have no _raison d’être_. On the other hand, the myths just referred to seem to imply a bloodless sacrifice by drowning, and this notion is confirmed by an occasional bit of ritual, and by the common superstition which represents the spirits of certain lakes and rivers as claiming a periodical victim in the shape of a drowned person[450]. Similarly there are traces of sacrifices, which must have been equally bloodless, by fire. At the Beltane festival, for instance, one member of the party is chosen by lot to be the ‘victim,’ is made to jump over the flames and is spoken of in jest as ‘dead[451].’ Various Roman writers, who apparently draw from the second-century B.C. Greek explorer Posidonius, ascribe to the Druids of Gaul a custom of burning human and other victims at quinquennial feasts in colossal images of hollow wickerwork; and squirrels, cats, snakes and other creatures are frequently burnt in modern festival-fires[452]. The constant practice, indeed, of burning bones in such fires has given them the specific name of bonfires, and it may be taken for granted that the bones are only representatives of more complete victims. I would suggest that such sacrifices by water and fire are really developments of the water-and fire-charms described in the last chapter; and that just as the original notion of sacrifice has been extended to give a new significance to the death of a human being at a religious festival, when the real reason for that death had been forgotten, so it has been still further extended to cover the primitive water-and fire-charms when they too had become meaningless. I mean that at a festival the victims, like the image and the worshippers, were doubtless habitually flung into water or passed through fire as part of the charm; and that, at a time when sacrifice had grown into mere oblation and the shedding