Note 346 — Chapter XV · TAOISM, LOCAL DEITIES, TREE-WORSHIP

This detestable custom was practised in many European countries as well as in Africa, Polynesia, Borneo, Japan, Indo-China and India. [See Tylor's Primitive Culture (4th ed.), vol. i. pp. 104 seq.; Lyall's Asiatic Studies (2nd ed.), First Series, p. 25, Second Series, pp. 312-13; Grant Allen, The Evolution of the Idea of God, p. 265 (see footnote).] Prof. S. R. Driver in one of his Schweich Lectures (delivered before the British Academy on April 2, 1908) described some recent archæological discoveries of great interest in Palestine and the neighbouring countries. Some of these discoveries clearly prove that foundation-sacrifices existed in those regions. At Gezer, Taanach and Megiddo were actually discovered the skeletons of numbers of miserable people who had been buried under the corners of walls or under towers. That the custom of sacrificing boys and girls was practised in ancient Persia we know from Herodotus (Book vii. 114). It is not so generally known that it was apparently practised in the British Isles not merely in savage times but after the introduction of Christianity and even in connection with the foundation of ecclesiastical buildings. According to a legend which may be founded on fact, Oran, the companion of St. Columba, was buried under the foundations of the great monastery of Iona. For this and many other cases see G. Laurence Gomme's Folk-lore Relics of Early Village Life, pp. 24-58.