to be
cut, or the king's symbolic branch secured before he could be slain.
This may explain Pliny's account of the mistletoe rite. The mistletoe or
branch was the soul of the tree, and also contained the life of the
divine representative. It must be plucked before the tree could be cut
down or the victim slain. Hypothetical as this may be, Pliny's account
is incomplete, or he is relating something of which all the details were
not known to him. The rite must have had some other purpose than that of
the magico-medical use of the mistletoe which he describes, and though
he says nothing of cutting down the tree or slaying a human victim, it
is not unlikely that, as human sacrifice had been prohibited in his
time, the oxen which were slain during the rite took the place of the
latter. Later romantic tales suggest that, before slaying some
personage, the mythico-romantic survivor of a divine priest or king, a
branch carried by him had to be captured by his assailant, or plucked
from the tree which he defended.[530] These may point to an old belief
in tree and king as divine representatives, and to a ritual like that
associated with the Priest of Nemi. The divine tree became the mystic
tree of Elysium, with gold and silver branches and marvellous fruits.
Armed with such a branch, the gift of one of its people, mortals might
penetrate unhindered to the divine land. Perhaps they may be regarded as
romantic forms of the old divine kings with the branch of the divine
tree.

If in early times the spirit of vegetation was feminine, her
representative would be a woman, probably slain at recurring festivals
by the female worshippers. This would explain the slaying of one of
their number at a festival by Namnite women. But when male spirits or
gods superseded goddesses, the divine priest-king would take the place
of the female representative. On the other hand, just as the goddess
became the consort of the god, a female representative would continue as
the divine bride in the ritual of the sacred marriage, the May Queen of
later folk-custom. Sporadically, too, conservatism would retain female
cults with female divine incarnations, as is seen by the presence of the
May Queen alone in certain folk-survivals, and by many Celtic rituals
from which men were excluded.[531]

FOOTNOTES:

[516] O'Grady, ii. 228.

[517] Ibid. ii. 203. Cf. Caesar, vi. 14, "the immortal gods" of Gaul.

[518] Cf. Ch. XXIV.; O'Grady, ii. 110, 172; Nutt-Meyer,