near it a laurel tree. The story went
that Apollo had made himself a crown from this very laurel, and _taking
in his hand a branch of this same laurel_, i.e. as Laurel-Bearer, had
come to Delphi and taken over the oracle.

"And to this day the people of Delphi send high-born boys in procession
there. And they, when they have reached Tempe and made a splendid
sacrifice return back, after wearing themselves wreaths from the very
laurel from which the god made himself a wreath."

We are inclined to think of the Greeks as a people apt to indulge in the
singular practice of wearing wreaths in public, a practice among us
confined to children on their birthdays and a few eccentric people on
their wedding days. We forget the intensely practical purport of the
custom. The ancient Greeks wore wreaths and carried boughs, not because
they were artistic or poetical, but because they were ritualists, that
they might bring back the spring and carry in the summer. The Greek
bridegroom to-day, as well as the Greek bride, wears a wreath, that his
marriage may be the beginning of new life, that his "wife may be as the
fruitful vine, and his children as the olive branches round about his
table." And our children to-day, though they do not know it, wear
wreaths on their birthdays because with each new year their life is
re-born.

* * * * *

Apollo then, was, like Dionysos, King of the May and--saving his
presence--Jack-in-the-Green. The god manifestly arose out of the rite. For
a moment let us see _how_ he arose. It will be remembered that in a
previous chapter (p. 70) we spoke of "personification." We think of the
god Apollo as an abstraction, an unreal thing, perhaps as a "false god."
The god Apollo does not, and never did, exist. He is an idea--a thing made
by the imagination. But primitive man does not deal with abstractions,
does not worship them. What happens is, as we saw (p. 71), something like
this: Year by year a boy is chosen to carry the laurel, to bring in the
May, and later year by year a puppet is made. It is a different boy each
year, carrying a different laurel branch. And yet in a sense it is the
same boy; he is always the Laurel-Bearer--"Daphnephoros," always the
"Luck" of the village or city. This Laurel-Bearer, the same yesterday,
to-day, and forever, is the stuff of which the god is made. The god arises
from the rite, he is gradually detached from the rite, and as soon as he
gets a li