Note 210.1 — Chapter XI · SACRED WELLS AND TREES.

Looking over this long list, it is obvious that the second and third classes of cairns are practically the same. Burial-places are sacred all the world over. They are the residence of the dead, who must always be propitiated—all the more if they have died in a manner unusual or regarded with horror. And not only must they be propitiated, but their powers, which are much dreaded, must be secured in aid of the living. The Bushman’s fear that Satan may rise again is a Christian interpretation. It means that he feared lest the spirit which haunted the pile, whoever he might have been, should rise to injure him. The fact of pilgrimages being made to the spot unites it with holy places of the third class. Whatever, therefore, may be the meaning of the offerings at the latter, it is the same as that of the sticks and stones, and other things thrown upon grave-cairns. Now, no valid distinction can be drawn between these offerings and those at wells and trees and other shrines of the kind, enumerated in an earlier part of the present chapter. Alike—and this is a point of cardinal importance in the interpretation of all these practices—the gifts are in the main of small intrinsic worth. It is rarely that we read of gold or silver tribute. Occasionally, under favouring ecclesiastical and other influences, the offerings develop into things of value; but for the most part, whatever their significance may be, it is derived from the giver. The stone is flung, the nail is fixed, by his hand; the rag is torn from his clothes; the coca-quids are from his mouth. The Landnámabók mentions an early settler of Iceland named Thorsteinn Red-nose. He worshipped a certain waterfall, and into it all remnants had to be thrown.210.1 This was not a mere paltry economy of worship; for we are told he was “a great blót-man,” in other words, open-handed towards the gods. By casting his remnants into the waterfall he expected to secure the favour of the divinity; and in so doing he acted on the principle which animates the pilgrims at sacred wells and trees, and the travellers who never pass by a sacred cairn without contributing their quota to the pile.