nimal
worship and may be totemistic in origin. In spite of its small size, the
wren was known as the king of birds, and in the Isle of Man it was
hunted and killed on Christmas or S. Stephen's day. The bird was carried
in procession from door to door, to the accompaniment of a chant, and
was then solemnly buried, dirges being sung. In some cases a feather was
left at each house and carefully treasured, and there are traces of a
custom of boiling and eating the bird.[751] In Ireland, the hunt and
procession were followed by a feast, the materials of which were
collected from house to house, and a similar usage obtained in France,
where the youth who killed the bird was called "king."[752] In most of
these districts it was considered unlucky or dangerous to kill the bird
at any other time, yet it might be ceremonially killed once a year, the
dead animal conferred luck, and was solemnly eaten or buried with signs
of mourning. Similar customs with animals which are actually worshipped
are found elsewhere,[753] and they lend support to the idea that the
Celts regarded the wren as a divine animal, or perhaps a totem animal,
that it was necessary to slay it ritually, and to carry it round the
houses of the community to obtain its divine influence, to eat it
sacramentally or to bury it. Probably like customs were followed in the
case of other animals,[754] and these may have given rise to such
stories as that of the eating of MacDatho's wonderful boar, as well as
to myths which regarded certain animals, e.g. the swine, as the immortal
food of the gods. Other examples of ritual survivals of such sacramental
eating have already been noted, and it is not improbable that the eating
of a sacred pastoral animal occurred at Samhain.

(4) _Exogamy._--Exogamy and the counting of descent through the mother
are closely connected with totemism, and some traces of both are found
among the Celts. Among the Picts, who were, perhaps, a Celtic group of
the Brythonic stock, these customs survived in the royal house. The
kingship passed to a brother of the king by the same mother, or to a
sister's son, while the king's father was never king and was frequently
a "foreigner." Similar rules of succession prevailed in early Aryan
royal houses--Greek and Roman,--and may, as Dr. Stokes thought, have
existed at Tara in Ireland, while in a Fian tale of Oisin he marries the
daughter of the king of Tir na n-Og, and succeeds him as king partly for
that reas