"THE PRIEST WHO SLEW THE SLAYER"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 100, 23 May 1941, Page 11

"THE PRIEST WHO SLEW

THE SLAYER"

O boys still read Macaulay’s Lays? If they do, they may wonder, as my generation did, what the meaning is in these lines: From beneath the still glassy lake that sleeps Beneath Aricia’s treesThose trees in whose dim shadow The ghastly priest doth reign, The priest who slew the slayer, And shall himself be slain. There was something very sinister about this. Well, a great man died the other day in England who devoted most of his life to the elucidation of the mystery of that priesthood on the woodland lake of Nemi, in the Alban Hills, not far from Rome. The priest slew his predecessor, and must be on watch night and day lest he too be slain. He guarded a certain tree, the Golden Bough. Only a runaway slave could pluck a bough from it, and if he did this it entitled him to fight the priest and reign in his stead as King of the Wood. But what a reign! The grim figure of the king prowled round the tree, sword in hand. "Year in, year out, in summer and winter, in fair weather and foul, he had to keep his lonely watch, and whenever he snatched a troubled slumber, it was at peril of his life." In a whole shelf-full of volumes Sir James Frazer traced the roads and byways of myth, magic, folklore, religion and ancient custom in many lands, to account for that recurring drama in the Italian landscape. In doing so he established himself as one of the greatest anthropologists of this or any time. The twelve volumes of The Golden Bough were condensed into one, and that runs to over 700 pages. Beautifully written, clothed with learning lightly worn, this work is one of the great literary-scien-tific monuments of modern times. The labours of Sir James Frazer and other anthropologists have had an im-

portant influence on our attitude towards primitive races. We see the "savage," not as a carefree child of nature, but a being hedged round all his hours and days by taboos, customs and beliefs which he is terrified of violating. Indeed we have taken the word "taboo," or the Maori "tapu," into our language. But if the "savage" is not free, and is fearful of breaking the iron code of his religion and tribal customs, we have to admit that we, too, are subject to an elaborate system of restrictions. The man who is pained by seeing somebody wearing the wrong sort of tie has a dim affinity with the primitive who surrenders to death because he has offended against tribal law. So The Golden Bough helps us to understand that civilised and uncivilised man have a great deal in common. It is largely a result of the research of anthropologists that the belief is growing that it is not wise to try to civilise primitive man completely on Western lines, but that there is much in his culture that is worth preserving; indeed it must be preserved if he is to survive. Indeed The Golden Bough might be described as a text-book for officials who have to govern primitive peoples.

A.

M.