CHAPTER 2
THE MICHAELMAS GOOSE
IN the previous chapter we have briefly reviewed some of the earliest evidence of man’s interest in birds and noted the possibility that some ideas about them dating from the remote past may survive in more or less modified form into the present. In this and subsequent chapters we shall, in the main, follow the reverse course and starting from modern customs and beliefs trace them as far as possible into the past. We should find, if the views already suggested are sound, that some of these beliefs originated in prehistoric times.
In spite of the gastronomic havoc wrought during this century by food standardisation there are still some localities in England where the traditional custom of dining on roast goose at Michaelmas or Martinmas continues. At first glance it might seem absurd to suppose any further explanation necessary than the obvious fact that geese are in season then:
So stubble geese at Michaelmas are seen
Upon the spit; next May produces green;
as King’s cookery book of 1709 reminded the careful housewife.1
Indeed, when the Gregorian calendar was introduced on 2 September, 1752, one of the objections raised was that geese would not be in their greatest perfection when Michaelmas was celebrated eleven days earlier, according to the new reckoning. As recently as 1 January, 1954, Compton Mackenzie, writing in The Spectator, “regretted that the traditional fat goose at Michaelmas is hardly ever attainable because it is difficult to fatten a goose satisfactorily by September 29th.”
The sceptic who doubts that feasting on goose could have had a ritual origin has a variety of other explanations from which to choose. It was said that Queen Elizabeth I heard the news of the defeat of the Armada while dining on goose on Michaelmas Day and therefore commemorated the victory annually in the same way, her people following suit. This story, which is still sometimes quoted as the correct explanation, is easily discredited. The battle with the Spanish fleet was fought at the end of July, 1588. Moreover, Englishmen were celebrating the feast of St. Michael and All Angels by dining on goose long before Philip of Spain tried to invade these shores. In the tenth year of the reign of Edward IV, “John de la Hay was bound to render to William Barneby, Lord of Lastres, in the county of Hereford, for a parcel of the demesne lands, one goose fit for the Lord’s dinner on the feast of St. Michael the Archangel.” In 1575 George Gascoigne wrote:
And when the tenauntes come to paie their quarter’s rent,
They bring some fowl at Midsummer, a dish offish in Lent,
At Christmasse a capon, at Michaelmas a goose;
And somewhat else at New Yere’s tide, for feare their lease flies loose.
Two other explanations of the custom appear in verses published in 1709 in the British Apollo:
Q. Yet my wife would persuade me, (as I am a sinner,) To have a fat goose on St. Michael for dinner; And then all the year round, I pray you would mind it, I shall not want money—oh! grant that I find it. Now several there are that believe this is true, Yet the reason of this is desired from you.
A. We think you’re so far from having of more, That the price of the goose you have less than before; The custom came up from the tenants presenting Their landlords with geese, to incline their relenting On following payments.
Thus one of these explanations amounts to little more than the common explanation of customs whose origin has been forgotten—that they bring luck. There was a saying, “If you eat goose on Michaelmas Day you will never want money all the year round.” The other explanation, taking account of the payment of rents at Michaelmas, attributes the origin of the custom to the desire to keep landlords in good humour. Another story—an Irish version recorded by Lady Wilde which may have had only limited currency—explains that geese are killed at Michaelmas because the son of a king was enjoying a feast when he began choking on a goose bone. Fortunately St. Patrick came on the scene in the nick of time and saved the prince’s life.1
So the king ordered geese to be sacrificed every year on the anniversary of the event to commemorate it and in honour of St. Michael. This tale is of unusual interest in view of the prejudice in some Celtic areas against eating goose. It may be a rationalisation in which the intervention of the patron saint of Ireland is invoked to explain and condone the abandonment of an ancient food tabu. The incident of the prince nearly dying through being choked by a goose bone recalls the revulsion and nausea felt by primitive people when threatened with having to eat tabued food.
The most sophisticated explanation is that quoted in Blount’s Popular Antiquities, published in 1679. It was said that the “common people” interpreted the ending of the Latin collect for Trinity XVI—ac bonis operibus jugiter praestet esse intentos—as a reference to a goose with ten toes! Brand dismissed the problem by remarking, “Probably no other reason can be given for this custom but that Michaelmas Day was a great feast, and geese at that time most plentiful.” In place of the romantic and fantastic the antiquarian gives us a douche of the prosaic.
The number of these explanations weakens the plausibility of any of them but we can learn from their variety one of the characteristics of what we may call, for want of a better term, the folk mind. Its uneasiness when unable to account satisfactorily for a custom whose origin has been forgotten impels it to manufacture rationalisations—just as a man who performs some action suggested to him under hypnosis concocts an explanation. Moreover, when the stories of a custom’s origin are various and mutually exclusive or absurd there is usually reason to believe the custom to be of considerable antiquity. To attribute the Michaelmas goose feast to a great national heroine is a typical folk rationalisation, illustrating how legends accumulate around eminent personages. But this story, for all its falsity, has an element of truth not contained in the down-to-earth views of the antiquarian. It assumes rightly, as we shall see, that the celebration was connected with important events in the past.
Even if there were no other evidence than the holding of the goose feast at festival seasons we would have good reason to suspect that it had ritualistic antecedents. In England, as the quotations show, the goose feast was usually held at Michaelmas but in a few localities the roasted bird was served at Martinmas, 11 November. Thus in Farndale, Yorkshire, according to a writer in the Yorkshire Evening Post of 14 November, 1934, it was, and presumably still is, the custom to eat goose on Martinmas Sunday. This dale, he says, “has been noted for ages for its goose pies.” The date links the practice with observances on the continent, for it is mainly at Martinmas that goose is eaten there. In Norway the day is honoured with roast goose and the gourmandising is justified by relating how the modest St. Martin, being unwilling to accept a bishopric, concealed himself, only to have his hiding-place betrayed by a goose.1
In Denmark a roasted goose is eaten on St. Martin’s Eve and in Germany geese are included in the celebrations of Saint Martin’s Day. In Paris geese were eaten then as well as on Twelfth Day.2
Early documents attest the eating of goose at Martinmas on the continent. In 1171 Othelricus of Svalenburg presented a silver goose to the monastery of Corvei on the feast of St. Martin. “Unblessed is that house which has not a goose to eat that night” wrote Sebastian Franck (1500-1545) in his Weltbuch. Dr. Hartlieb, physician to Duke Albrecht of Bavaria, writing in 1455, mentions that goose was eaten on St. Martin’s Day or Night. This authority gives what is apparently the first reference to divination by the wish-bone. As this is one of the few ritual acts concerned with birds still commonly maintained amongst us it deserves comment. Hartlieb remarks: “When the goose has been eaten on St. Martin’s Day or Night, the oldest and most sagacious keeps the breast-bone and allowing it to dry until the morning examines it all round, in front, behind and in the middle. Thereby they divine whether the winter will be severe or mild, dry or wet, and are so confident in their prediction that they will wager their goods and chattels on its accuracy.” Hartlieb describes a conversation with an officer who asked him on St. Nicholas’ Day what sort of winter he supposed it would be. He replied: “Lord Saturn goeth this month into a fiery sign, likewise other stars are so arranged that in three years no harder winter shall have been.” “This valiant man, this Christian Captain drew forth out of his doublet that heretical object of superstition, the goose-bone, and showed me that after Candlemas an exceeding severe frost should occur, and could not fail. What I had said he endorsed and told me that the Teutonic knights in Prussia waged all their wars by the goose-bone; and as the goose-bone predicted so did they order their two campaigns, one in summer and one in winter.”
Such importance was attached to the goose as an oracle that it was said that a goat and a goose led all Christendom in the First Crusade of 1096 A.D. The goose-bone oracle is mentioned in the Calendarium Oeconomicum of J. Colerus, published in 1591, and other works of about this date. In the seventeenth century Protestant German preachers inveighed against the custom as a superstitious heathen practice. The British Apollo of 1708 contains the query: “For what reason is the bone next the breast of a fowl, etc., called the Merry Thought, and when was it first called so?” The answer given shows that the origin of the custom had been forgotten: “The original of that name was doubtless from the pleasant fancies that commonly arise from the breaking of that bone, and ‘twas then first certainly so called, when these merry notions were first started.” Some, however, took these prognostications seriously, for a writer in The Spectator, quoted by Brand, stated: “I have seen a man turn pale and lose his appetite from the plucking of a Merry Thought.” The custom of scrutinising a breast-bone and deducing from it the nature of the coming winter continued well into last century in Hampshire, for a contributor to Notes and Queries in 1875 stated: “In Richmondshire some persons say that the breastbones of ducks after being cooked are observed to be dark coloured before a severe winter, and much lighter coloured before a mild winter.” Yorkshire folk predicted the weather by examining the flesh of geese. Similar prognostications were made in France. Welsh people carried about a small bone called the “goose’s tooth” to ensure good luck and prevent toothache but this custom may not have been derived from the wish bone tradition.1
Thus this ritual, which has become a dinner-time children’s amusement, can be traced back to its performance as an act of augury to determine the auspicious time to wage war. As belief faded the duck and the chicken took the place of the lordly goose. The sequence illustrates the process whereby oracular traditions become weather-forecasting and eventually pastimes. Many rites have followed a somewhat similar course.
Ancient sources furnish further evidence of the ritual importance of geese in western Europe. The Swedes and some other peoples of the time of the Germanic invasions made use of the bird as a grave offering. Goose bones found in a Swedish ship burial may have been sacrificed or intended as food for the dead. The ancient Germans sacrificed geese to Odin at the autumnal equinox and there seems to have been a cult of a goose goddess at Cologne.2 Undoubtedly the modern goose feast is connected with, and is probably a survival of, the practice of sacrificing animals at pre-Christian festivals. Pagan rites in which geese were concerned survived well into the Middle Ages. During the thirteenth century Pope Gregory IX preached a crusade against the Stedingers of Friesland, declaring that they worshipped the devil under the name Asmodi, and that during their rites he appeared to them in the form of a duck, a goose or a youth.3 After the worshippers had kissed him and danced around he enveloped them in darkness and the people gave themselves up to sexual orgies. The description is strongly reminiscent of the proceedings at a witches’ sabbath, which appears to have been essentially a gathering where fertility rites of pre-Christian origin were celebrated. The goose has had erotic associations for many centuries. We may interpret the Stedingers’ ritual as a fertility ceremony presided over by a pagan divinity.
Perhaps the tangled mythology of “Bloody Bertha,” called in Germany Perhta, Berchta and Perchta, embodies reminiscences of a supernatural goose. This personage has one goose- or swan-foot and is associated with the Wild Hunt. In ancient times the goose was said to be a holy bird which flew in front of the earth-mother Berchta. This seems to link it with the early mother goddesses. The explanation of her large flat foot as a deformity caused by working the treadle of a spindle seems to be a late rationalisation. She is closely connected with fertility, and in South Germany, her dancers, the Berchten, wear masks representing mammals and birds and jump in the fields to ensure their fruitfulness. At Shrove-tide in the Erz mountains bird masks are worn (Fig. 27). During Bloody Bertha celebrations on St. Nicholas’ Eve a boy wearing a hideous mask goes around in Czecho-Slovak villages sporting goose wings on his shoulders and threatening children with a wooden knife. In Basque villages boys escort one of their number masked as an ogre from house to house singing and begging much as Irish “wren boys” do at the same season—the winter solstice. In Germany Bertha’s festival is on Twelfth Night, corresponding with the winter solstice before the change of the calendar. Freya was goose- or swan-footed. In the cult of this goddess German warriors undertook vows while partaking of a sacred meal. French folklore also tells of women with one goose foot, notably la reine pédauque. The House of Cleves was said to be descended from the offspring of a woman and a swan.
FIG. 27. Shrovetide masqueraders representing a stork and a bear. Erz Mountains. (After a photograph by Berliner Illustrations Gesell-schaft).
Evidence is lacking of goose sacrifices among the ancient Celtic peoples but the bird was held sacred by them. Julius Caesar (De Bello Gallico, v. 12) noted that the Britons “may not eat hare, domestic fowl or goose but kept these animals for entertainment.” He misunderstood the significance of these customs. The hare and the goose were tabu, and perhaps the fowl also.1
Many later observers in other parts of the world have made similar mistakes and supposed dances and other celebrations to be merely for diversion when in fact they were religious or magical. Prejudices against eating goose flesh still persist in Celtic areas, such as some parts of Ireland. Thus D’Arcy Thompson remarks that “geese were kept, but not eaten, by the Celtic inhabitants of Britain—very much as at the present day.” Similar prejudices in regard to the hare, a highly magical, lunar animal, survive in parts of Ireland, Wales and Brittany. Across Eurasia and into the New World it is regarded as having supernatural qualities. The disfavour with which horse flesh is viewed in Britain probably lingers from the time when this animal was ritually important among the Indo-European peoples. As late as 1185 Giraldus Cambrensis described the remarkable ceremony at the enthronement of an Irish chieftain. He walked on all fours and then ate slices from a white mare while sitting in a bath of broth made from its flesh.
Before tracing goose lore further a few comments are needed on the dates of the seasonal celebrations. Why should the feast be held usually at Martinmas on the continent and at Michaelmas in England, apart from a few exceptions such as the festivities at Farndale? This question raises the complicated issue of the division of the year in early times but the essential fact is that Michaelmas is a more recent festival than Martinmas. It was not until 813 A.D. that the ecclesiastical festival of St. Michael and All Angels was instituted. Martinmas is the successor of an early Germanic festival, probably alluded to by Tacitus (I.xliv) and it has been kept as a Christian festival from about the middle of the sixth century. The pagan festival coincided with the slaughter of domestic animals which took place, owing to the scarcity of fodder, in the first half of November. The Venerable Bede refers to November as the month in which cattle used to be offered to the gods before being killed (De temporum ratione, xv). Until as late as the reign of King David of Scotland (1124-1153) cattle, sheep and swine were slaughtered from Martinmas until Christmas and these 44 days were in legal language the “tyme of slauchter.” The season thus naturally became one of sacrifice, feasting and revelry—and to a considerable extent still retains these characteristics on the continent. The festival was closely connected with stock-breeding. This gives some indication of its geographical distribution and extension in time. The Germanic and Celtic years were originally determined by agricultural and pastoral activities, though there are traces of some solstitial, equinoctial and lunar observances among both Germanic and Celtic peoples. With Roman and Christian influences solar festivals received increased emphasis. Thus in some places celebrations connected with Martinmas were shifted to Michaelmas. In Gaul, under Roman rule, many of the observances of Samhain were transferred to the calends of January.1
FIG. 28. Designs of birds from pottery of Susa, showing progressive conventionalisation. (After Breuil, 1906).
Where Germanic influences prevailed we find Samhain celebrations occurring at Yule. Christianity substituted All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days for the Celtic festival, and Hallow Eve remains a great occasion in many Celtic areas. At my home in Ulster it was kept with festivities almost comparable with those of Christmas. On that day we sometimes dined on capercaillie. Perhaps, although we did not realise it, ancient prejudices prevented roast goose from appearing on the table.
FIG. 29. Design from a Geometric vase showing snakes hanging from the mouth of a horse and the beak of a bird. The horse and the bird are solar symbols. The unnatural design of the horse holding the snake suggests a symbolical significance. (After Roes 1933; Heraeum, VI).
FIG. 30. Design of bird with snake on Rhodian vase, c. 3rd. century B.C. The bird has become modified from the anserine type, the sun symbols have also become modified and the snake has been detached from the bird’s mouth. This suggests decay of the original symbolism. (After Roes, 1933; Louvre, inv. 335).
FIG. 31. Gaulish coin showing birds with modified sun symbols and a detached snake as in Fig. 30. (After Roes, 1933).
Having traced the spiritual ancestors of the festive English goose from the present day to ancient Germanic altars and Celtic sacred enclosures we must now approach the problem from the other direction, seeking to discover links between the goose lore of early times and such practices as we have been considering.
FIG. 32. Bird of prey on a dolphin from a coin of Sinope struck by a Persian governor. (After Roes, 1933).
FIG. 33. Bird on a fish from a vase found at Phaistos. (After Roes, 1933; Monum Ant. XIV).
FIG. 34. Carving on base of Cross of Kells, Ireland, depicting the bird-on-fish design and other eastern motifs. (After Allen, 1887).
Engravings found at prehistoric settlements show that at least as early as the Old Stone Age anserine birds aroused man’s interest (Fig. 13). They were probably among the first creatures to be domesticated, for some species are easily caught while moulting and newly-hatched goslings become fixated or “imprinted” on the first large moving object they see. They will follow a man who happens upon newly-hatched birds and remain permanently attached psychologically to him. Pliny (x.26) describes such geese. However, in domestication geese require more care than they would be likely to get from people before the Neolithic or Bronze epochs. The goose may have been revered before it was domesticated. Indeed, the maintenance of animals in sacred enclosures was, apparently, the first step towards the domestication of a number of species. Geese were kept in Egypt during the New Kingdom (B.C. 1530-1050) and perhaps during the Old Kingdom (c. B.C. 3100-2500). Penelope had a herd of twenty (Od. xix, 538). One of the earliest religious representations in which the goose appears is a diorite statuette from Ur showing the goddess Gula the Healer seated upon four geese which bear her over waves—perhaps the ocean of the sky. She was a creative divinity, identified with the Sumerian fertility goddess Bau, the Great Mother, who was later absorbed into Ishtar. Images of Baubo, and later, shiela-na-gigs, carried this complex of ideas into the mediaeval period, as house wall paintings and carved work on some English churches show.
FIG. 35A. Pottery jug from Tepe Sialk, Iran. (9th. century B.C.) showing a bird on an ibex-like animal. Moussa Collection, Boston Fine Arts Museum.
b. Syro-Hittite seal (2nd. millennium B.C.) showing a bird on a horned animal. Pierpont Morgan Library.
c. Shard found in Sumeria showing a bird on an ibex or goat. (After A. L. Gourhan, 1938. Revue des Arts Asiatiques, 12: 150).
d. Design showing a bird and deer on a Geometric pyxis. Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Drawn by T. Armstrong. (Cf. B. Segall, 1943. Bull. Mus. Fine Arts, Boston, 41: 72-76).
FIG. 36. Design on scarlet vase from Tell Agrat showing birds, fish, antelopes and trees. (After Delougaz, P. 1952. Pottery from the Diyala region. Chicago Univ. Oriental Inst.).
Anserine birds of the Proto-Elamite cultures of Susa I and Susa II are almost the first natural objects represented on pottery. They are sometimes conventionalized with excessively long necks (Fig. 28). From these early times onwards such designs were used in culture after culture down to our own day. Because there are close associations between goddesses and water it has been maintained that these water birds represent female divinities, but this is doubtful. Their significance may have changed at an early period. It is generally considered that veneration of powers associated with femininity preceded the worship of masculine, solar powers. Anserine birds soon appear in combination with symbols, such as the fish or snake (Figs. 29, 30 and 31). The two types of animal in conjunction may represent contrasting or complementary concepts, such as the union of earthly and heavenly powers. The history of such designs suggests that the symbols were brought together for doctrinal or ritual reasons and only later assumed a more naturalistic form. Anserine birds do not seize snakes or fish as they are represented as doing on early pottery, though some raptors feed on these creatures. Later symbolism appears to have adapted itself to observed fact to some extent, but no bird of prey would attack a dolphin and no goose would devour a huge fish (Figs. 32, 33 and 34). Any interpretation of such designs in naturalistic terms is inadequate.
FIG. 37. Map illustrating culture streams from the Pontic area, after Heine-Geldern (1954). The diffusion westwards to Yugoslavia is added on the evidence brought forward by Kunst (1954) showing similarities between Indonesian and Yugo-Slav music, musical instruments, dances and artistic motifs. (Cf. also Heine-Geldern, 1950). The crosses indicate Scandinavian settlements about 800 B.C. The most northerly of the five arrows indicates the region of the Ordos bronzes. Their art motifs show strong affinities with those of ornamental metal-work found as far west as Sweden and Carinthia. The southerly arrows show the direction taken by culture streams to Indonesia which may have continued across the Pacific. The culture streams eastwards are shown from the point where they diverged.
From Asia these anserine birds were carried over into Mycenaean and Geometric, Hallstatt and La Tène art and thus into the broad stream of European culture. In Geometric art anserine symbols are particularly common (Plate 10) but it is when they are associated with other patterns that the probability of transmission rather than independent invention becomes impressive. Thus in Proto-Elamitic pottery of Susa II a bird perches on a goat, and similar designs occur much later in Villanovan art as well as on an object showing Hallstatt influence found in Denmark. The goat and bird motif appears also in Cappadocian and Luristan art, also on a Syro-Hittite cylinder and a sherd found in Palestine. The bird on goat and bird on deer are represented on a Bosnian tomb and the bird on deer on an Indonesian shroud (Plate 8). The latter motif is known from ancient India (Harappa) and the bird on ibex from Sumeria. The bird and deer also occur on Geometric pottery (Fig. 35). An Egyptian design on a coffin lid depicts the soul bird above the mummy, which is placed on the back of a bull (Plate 9). This type of motif, and presumably concepts associated with it, were evidently carried by one or more of the culture streams described by Heine-Geldern (Fig. 37). That it diffused over the huge area from Yugoslavia to Indonesia is confirmed by similarities, pointed out by Kunst, between the music, musical instruments and dances of these two regions. A related design showing a bird on a horse’s croup is known from Geometric and Etruscan art as well as from Gaulish coins. In later European art the bird perches on a centaur’s croup as on the cross of Kells. The design includes the bird-and-fish symbol (Fig. 34). Various combinations and permutations of these emblems occur. For example, a bird holding a fish is shown standing on an ibex-like animal painted on early pottery from Diyala near Bagdad (Fig. 36). Such designs as appear on St. Vigean’s cross in Scotland (Fig. 38) can be traced to Byzantine and other eastern influence.
FIG. 38. Designs on Cross of Drosten, St. Vigean’s Forfarshire, including the bird-on-fish and other eastern motifs. (After Allen, 1887).
FIG. 39. Swastika on bird from an Argive sherd. (After Roes, 1933; Heraeum II).
FIG. 40. Triskele designs with birds. Left: perched on an arm. Centre: goose heads terminating arms. Right: cock heads terminating arms. (After Roes, 1933; Brit. Mus. Lycia.).
Perhaps the stonemasons had seen eastern ivories. Although the bird-and-fish symbol probably represented the powers of sky and earth in combination or opposition its significance was so far distorted in Christian times that it was explained as “the pure soul feeding on Christ.” This interpretation became possible owing to the letters spelling “fish” in Greek being construed as the initial letters of “Jesus Christ, Son of God our Saviour.” Some of these symbols had astronomical or calendrical significance. A few of these motifs are found across Eurasia and even into the New World, and they are commonly accompanied by the widespread solar symbols of the swastika and the wheel. Composite symbols including birds and swastikas prove that in the cultures in which they occur the anserine bird was an emblem of the sun (Plate 10; Figs. 30, 39,).
It is not surprising that symbols and the ideas associated with them should have travelled to the Far East from the Near East. At every prehistoric epoch for which we have a sufficient number of Chinese artifacts there is evidence of cultural influence from the west. For example, throughout an enormous area of Europe and Asia a mythology and ritual involving cutting three, or a multiple of three, furrows was associated with the introduction of plough agriculture. Again, throughout Eurasia the ideas associated with the herb mugwort are very similar. The “Crane Dances” of Crete and China were evidently derived from a common source, and ritual connected with the bull in China and the west has such similarities in detail that independent invention is out of the question. Comparison of designs used in metal work has led Heine-Geldern to maintain that a culture stream arising in Anatolia about B.C. 3500-3200 reached China. He holds that two others, one from the region of the Danube and Caucasus about the ninth century B.C. and another from Asia soon after the birth of Christ travelled to the coasts of China and eventually reached South America. Even if such views are received with some hesitation it is undeniable that the evidence for trans-Pacific culture contacts is increasing. The bottle-gourd was introduced to America from Asia or Africa not later than B.C. 2500.
At the winter solstice the ancient inhabitants of Korea, the Kitans, sacrificed a wild white goose and mingled its blood with spirits which they afterwards drank. The Chinese in the district of She Chiang killed geese, roasted them and presented them to one another at the summer solstice, which they kept as a great festival. Thus in east and west geese were sacrificed at solar festivals. The variation in the solstice chosen may be an indication that the ceremonies date from a remote time.
As we have noted, the goose feast in Europe exemplifies the process by which a cult object may become a feature of homely ceremonies and descend from the realm of religion to folklore. In the Far East the goose has also declined in esteem. There remain only reminiscences of the sacrifice of the bird here and there but its widespread importance in marriage ceremonial is well attested. The custom of giving a wild goose as a wedding or betrothal present is very ancient, for it is mentioned in the earliest accounts of wedding ceremonial, the Li Ki and the I Li. In Han times the practice was observed and the words used in the wedding ceremony agreed largely with the Chou ritual. Still in some parts of China live geese are among the traditional gifts from the bridegroom’s family to the bride. In other areas the girl’s family sends a pair of geese to the man’s family when a betrothal takes place. The ceremonial in Korea is thus described by Ross: “In front of the procession is a servant on horseback, carrying a life-size likeness of a wild goose, covered by red cotton cloth, which he holds with both hands. When the procession reaches its destination the man bearing the wild goose dismounts, enters and places the goose on the top of a huge bowl of rice, and then retires.” Details of the procedure vary. The bridegroom sometimes goes on horseback and himself lays the goose on a table in the bride’s house. In China there prevailed a very ancient custom of pouring a libation to the geese in connexion with weddings, and a goose used to be among the presents given to a man setting forth to Peking to sit for the literary examinations.
At all the first rites of marriage in China the wild goose was offered at dawn, but at the nuptial rite it was presented at dusk. In one of the Odes—which contain very ancient material—we read:
The call of the wild goose is heard at break of day when dawn appears.
Man goes forth to seek his wife… betrothal should not be delayed.
The goose also served a ritual purpose to some extent in the West. It was presented to newly-weds in the Moscow region. The procedure in which it figured in a district of France is reminiscent of Chinese etiquette. A contributor to Blackwood’s Magazine (November 1887) wrote: “We find from George Sand that at the marriage of French peasants in Berry, a goose, though a dead one, was commonly borne in the bridegroom’s procession. ‘Near,’ writes the authoress, ‘this bearer of a flowering and ribboned thyrsus is an expert spit-bearer, for under the foliage is a trussed goose which forms the object of the ceremony; around it are the carriers of the presents and the good singers, that is to say those who are clever and knowing and who are going to engage in an (amicable) quarrel with the followers of the bride’.”
A cock is led at the head of some Hungarian wedding processions or carried in the bridegroom’s hand. Thus another solar bird has taken the place of the goose. There are clear traces of eastern and shamanistic practices in Hungarian customs.
The association of the goose in China with ceremonies at dusk and dawn indicates that the bird had solar significance. This is supported by documentary evidence. A Tang dynasty work explains that “the goose stands for the male principle.” Another source says: “The goose bestowed at a wedding attends to the yin and the yang. It waits for its time and then rises. In the winter it goes south and in summer north.” Thus it is said to follow the sun and the yang, the male principle as contrasted with the yin or female principle.
All the way across Asia are areas where the goose is ritually honoured. There are thus links between the goose cults of Europe and China. The hero in the Finno-Ugric account of the deluge travels in the form of a goose. In Siberia a shaman at his initiation or at other rites may sit on a model of a goose. He is also sometimes credited with flying on one—as in mediaeval Europe witches used geese as steeds. The Votiaks sacrifice these birds to the river or heaven god. Among the Ostyaks the goose-god is one of their three great divinities and the shaman makes a nest for him of skin, fur and cloth. Each spring, Toman, the Mother Goddess, shakes feathers out of her sleeves. They become geese as they settle earthward. The Voguls believe that the Supreme Creator had seven sons, and the youngest, who was set to guard mankind, flies overhead in the form of a goose. As long ago as 1730 Strahlenberg remarked that the goose was a totem animal, tabued as food among some tribes of the Yakuts.
In the two great Indian epics, the Mahâbhârata and the Râmâyana, we have the beliefs of the folk of North India along the lower Ganges within a few centuries of the Christian era. The period from B.C. 300 to 100 seems to be the most probable date for the Mahâbhârata, which is later than the Râmâyana. In this mythology the wild goose is the supreme bird, its white coloration making it an emblem of the pure soul and of God. Varuna assumes the form of a goose and Visnu and Kubera are drawn through the air by geese. We are expressly told that the goose represents the sun, and this is related to its high flight. The divine power in the universe is conceived as a cosmic gander which makes itself known in song. The god of fire, Agnis, is called hamsa or goose in one of the Vedic hymns and in Hindu mythology the god Brahma rides on a white hamsa. He is called the One Goose or Swan. When Buddhism arose the goose as a sun-bird was taken over into it with other solar ideas. The Indian god of love Kama Deva rides on a parrot which in some representations bears a resemblance to a goose. Like Eros, who rides a goose or drives a swan chariot, he carries a bow and arrow. In modern India, as in China, the duck (ruddy shelduck) is a symbol of conjugal fidelity.
The Japanese, too, have pictured the goose as the chariot of a divinity. A calendar print attributed to Harunobu dating from 1765 shows a Japanese girl representing by analogy Kosenko, the only woman among the Eight Immortals, riding a wild goose (Plate 12). In a letter to me Mr. Basil Gray of the Department of Antiquities of the British Museum expressed the opinion that “the point of the print is simply the power of a pretty girl over men.” Thus the goose, as in India and China, symbolises the male principle. This design and its symbolism may be compared with the painting on a drinking cup found in Rhodes but made in Athens, dating from about B.C. 470. Aphrodite is seen being borne through the air on a bird which most closely resembles a goose (Plate 11). Direct influence is out of the question. Here we have an illustration of the manner in which, where there are similar underlying concepts, strikingly similar motifs may emerge. The similarity is not due to coincidence nor to the existence of basic pictorial archetypes but is the outcome of the refinement of a widespread sex symbol of masculinity. When basic myths, rituals and symbols have diffused widely, as is known to have occurred, it is to be expected that, fundamental human impulses having much in common everywhere, the outcome should sometimes be the occurrence of rather similar patterns of symbol, ritual or myth in places far distant from one another.1
FIG. 41. Carving on stone of a ship of the time of Septimus Severus found near Ostia, the shrine on the galley is the goose of Isis. The sailors may be sacrificing to the goddess. (After Lethbridge, T.C., 1952. Boats and Boatmen).
FIG. 42. Adonis and Aphrodite riding in a chariot drawn by two swans. Design from a vase. Vulci. Brit. Mus. (After Reinach, 1899).
We enter the realm of speculation when we ask, where did the idea of the goose as a sun-bird arise? But we are not without some clues. Sir J. G. Frazer summed up the situation in regard to sun worship: “Among all the peoples of antiquity none adored the Sun so fervently or so long as the Egyptians.” Nevertheless, the priesthood could not conceal traces of the earlier matriarchal religion.1
Although the concept of the goose as a solar symbol seems to have owed much to Egyptian influence the early prominence of the bird in Sumeria in connexion with fertility and creation goddesses suggests the possibility that neither civilisation derived the goose as symbol and cult object from the other but that each may have received it from a culture prior to both. Hahn has cited evidence suggesting that the bird was a supernatural being among the earliest agricultural people. It is not improbable that goose beliefs were important in late Neolithic times before the rise of city civilisations and that when these arose, with their anthropomorphic deities, goose mythology became elaborated, taking a somewhat different course in the cultures with which it became associated according as the masculine or feminine principle predominated. In ancient art there is a tendency for anthropomorphism to be more prominent in the city civilisations than among the people of the mountains and steppes.
Lunar worship preceded solar, so the goose may have had some early lunar associations, but normally, and throughout most of its history as a symbol it represents the male, solar principle. The proof, of this, which have been already mentioned, weaken the arguments based largely on its association with Aphrodite, that the goose was a female symbol—though in its decadence its significance may have been confused. In Greece and Rome it became an erotic symbol, representing sex or sexual union. Sometimes, as on Greek tombstones, it stood for marital love, and in Rome it could signify fertility and perhaps conjugal fidelity—symbolism which the goose and mandarin duck acquired in China. The bird’s fat was considered an aphrodisiac (Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxviii.261). A 2nd or 3rd century Indian ivory, now in the Kabul museum, showing a lively goose with a nude woman, suggests that this motif may have reached India through Roman influence (Plate 13). In Greek and Etruscan art the goose, swan or duck appears with nude goddesses and through the influence of classical myths, such as that of Leda, the association continued in Renaissance art and up to modern times (Plate 14; Fig. 42).
Aphrodite has many oriental and avian affinities. The sparrow and partridge, as well as the goose, were her sacred birds and the two latter were sacrificed to her. The dove was also associated with her. Farnell wrote: “In the cult of Aphrodite the Greek religion was mainly conservative of Oriental ideas; the ritual, the attributes and most of the characteristics of the goddess are derived from the East.” Her ancestry can be traced back through the Mother Goddesses of the ancient civilisations to Neolithic and Palaeolithic figurines. How widespread was this cult, and how basic to the evolution of later magico-religious ideas is indicated by the finds of Aurignacian female images from southern France to Siberia and the records of clay figurines resembling Asian examples in Mexico. Over an enormous area there was substantial identity in early times between certain fundamental magico-religious ideas, and with them the goose was associated at a remote period.
Our enquiry into the origin of the English goose-feast and the custom of breaking the wish-bone has led us to some of the earliest magico-religious ideas known to have been cherished by man. As we proceed we shall find further evidence that modern folklore is derived from ancient fertility conceptions which were once widespread throughout Europe and Asia, and even further afield.