Note 81.3 — Chapter XVIII · THE RESCUE OF ANDROMEDA: ITS RELATION TO HUMAN SACRIFICES.

All these customs are perfectly unambiguous. Whatever their agricultural significance (and I see no reason to doubt that the sense attached to them by Mannhardt and Frazer is accurate) they are unquestionably relics of human sacrifice to water. The victim may have been identified with the spirit of vegetation or with some more concrete expression of the same idea, and the ceremonies themselves may have been dramatic in character; but that is in no way inconsistent with their being also sacrificial. Moreover, we have other traces of the same kind of oblation, in the superstition so widely prevalent in this island, as well as in Germany, of the periodical victim demanded by a river or lake. On the banks of the Saal in Thuringia, especially among the fisher-folk of Jena, it is even yet believed that the Saal-nixe requires a sacrifice every year; and the lake at Salzungen boils with rage unless it obtain its yearly offering.81.3 On the island of Rügen there is a vague tradition of a lake which would rise and overwhelm the entire country, unless a maiden were offered to it every year. At Trampke in Pomerania a peasant was once ploughing near the Lake of Madüe, when he heard a voice out of the pool cry: “Now, come! Now is the time!” He looked around him puzzled, and again the voice exclaimed in more imperious tones: “Now, come! Now is the time!” Thereupon, mastered by an uncontrollable impulse, he left the plough, rushed to the mere and flung himself in. His farm-servant, who was spreading manure, ran to his assistance and drew him out of the water; but an instant later he plunged in again and was dragged by the water-maiden down to the bottom.82.1 Always before anybody is drowned in the Lahn near Giessen there is heard—the millers and bleachers engaged on the river are ready to vouch for it—between eleven and twelve o’clock in the day a loud cry: “The time is here, the hour is here; where is the man?” It is said that two lads were one evening by the Mümmling, not far from Michelstadt, when a voice called from under the bridge: “The hour is here, but not the man!” At that moment a man hurried down the hill and was about to jump into the river. The lads caught him, held him back, and spoke to him; but he answered never a word. They took him to the inn and pressed some wine upon him. His head, however, sank forward on the table; and he was dead. Among other German rivers which demand an annual human victim are the Fulda and the Neckar.82.2 The Lorelei is a nixe of the Rhine, famous for the number of her slain. Nor is she alone in her misdeeds; but the legends of sirens haunting German rivers are too numerous and too well known to require illustration. An old spring at Friedberg used every year to require an offering, and if it happened that no one fell in during the year, it cried out: “Come down, come down!” and anybody who was in the neighbourhood and heard the voice would be irresistibly drawn into the fountain.83.1 The Drome in Normandy, according to a local proverb, has every year horse or man.83.2 Peg Powler, Nanny Powler, Peg o’ Nell, and Jenny Greenteeth, are spirits that haunt various rivers and pools in the north of England; and they are not less bloodthirsty;83.3 while in Scotland, the kelpie and his congeners are familiar.