season. He quotes the observation of Breschet that monkeys
copulate during pregnancy.
In primitive human races we very frequently trace precisely the same
influence of the seasonal impulse as may be witnessed in the higher
animals, although among human races it does not always result that the
children are born at the time of the greatest plenty, and on account of
the development of human skill such a result is not necessary. Thus Dr.
Cook found among the Eskimo that during the long winter nights the
secretions are diminished, muscular power is weak, and the passions are
depressed. Soon after the sun appears a kind of rut affects the young
population. They tremble with the intensity of sexual passion, and for
several weeks much of the time is taken up with courtship and love. Hence,
the majority of the children are born nine months later, when the four
months of perpetual night are beginning. A marked seasonal periodicity of
this kind is not confined to the Arctic regions. We may also find it in
the tropics. In Cambodia, Mondière has found that twice a year, in April
and September, men seem to experience a "veritable rut,"
and will
sometimes even kill women who resist them.[129]
These two periods, spring and autumn--the season for greeting the
appearance of life and the season for reveling in its final
fruition--seem to be everywhere throughout the world the most usual
seasons for erotic festivals. In classical Greece and Rome, in India,
among the Indians of North and South America, spring is the most usual
season, while in Africa the yam harvest of autumn is the season chiefly
selected. There are, of course, numerous exceptions to this rule, and it
is common to find both seasons observed. Taking, indeed, a broad view of
festivals throughout the world, we may say that there are four seasons
when they are held: the winter solstice, when the days begin to lengthen
and primitive man rejoices in the lengthening and seeks to assist it;[130]
the vernal equinox, the period of germination and the return of life; the
summer solstice, when the sun reaches its height; and autumn, the period
of fruition, of thankfulness, and of repose. But it is rarely that we find
a people seriously celebrating more than two of these festival seasons.
In Australia, according to Müller as quoted by Ploss and Bartels, marriage
and conception take place during the warm season, when there is greatest
abundance of food, and to some extent is even confined to that period.
Oldfield and others state that the Australian erotic festivals take place
only in spring. Among some tribes, Müller adds, such as the Watschandis,
conception is inaugurated by a festival called _kaaro_, which takes place
in the warm season at the first new moon after the yams are ripe. The
leading feature of this festival is a moonlight dance, representing the
sexual act symbolically. With their spears, regarded as the symbols of the
male organ, the men attack bushes, which represent the female organs.
They thus work themselves up to a state of extreme sexual excitement.[131]
Among the Papuans of New Guinea, also, according to Miklucho-Macleay,
conceptions chiefly occur at the end of harvest, and Guise describes the
great annual festival of the year which takes place at the time of the yam
and banana harvest, when the girls undergo a ceremony of initiation and
marriages are effected.[132] In Central Africa, says Sir H.H. Johnston, in
his _Central Africa_, sexual orgies are seriously entered into at certain
seasons of the year, but he neglects to mention what these seasons are.
The people of New Britain, according to Weisser (as quoted by Ploss and
Bartels), carefully guard their young girls from the young men. At certain
times, however, a loud trumpet is blown in the evening, and the girls are
then allowed to go away into the bush to mix freely with the young men. In
ancient Peru (according to an account derived from a pastoral letter of
Archbishop Villagomez of Lima), in December, when the fruit of the
_paltay_ is ripe, a festival was held, preceded by a five days' fast.
During the festival, which lasted six days and six nights, men and women
met together in a state of complete nudity at a certain spot among the
gardens, and all raced toward a certain hill. Every man who caught up with
a woman in the race was bound at once to have intercourse with her.
Very instructive, from our present point of view, is the account given by
Dalton, of the festivals of the various Bengal races.
Thus the Hos (a
Kolarian tribe), of Bengal, are a purely agricultural people, and the
chief festival of the year with them is the _mágh parah_. It is held in
the month of January, "when the granaries are full of grain, and the
people, to use their own expression, full of devilry."
It is the festival
of the harvest-home, the termination of the year's toil, and is always
held at full moon. The festival is a _saturnalia_, when all rules of duty
and decorum are forgotten, and the utmost liberty is allowed to women and
girls, who become like bacchantes. The people believe that at this time
both men and women become overcharged with vitality, and that a safety
valve is absolutely necessary. The festival begins with a religious
sacrifice made by the village priest or elders, and with prayers for the
departed and for the vouchsafing of seasonable rain and good crops. The
religious ceremonies over, the people give themselves up to feasting and
to drinking the home-made beer, the preparation of which from fermented
rice is one of a girl's chief accomplishments. "The Ho population," wrote
Dalton, "are at other seasons quiet and reserved in manner, and in their
demeanor toward women gentle and decorous; even in their flirtations they
never transcend the bounds of decency. The girls, though full of spirits
and somewhat saucy, have innate notions of propriety that make them modest
in demeanor, though devoid of all prudery, and of the obscene abuse, so
frequently heard from the lips of common women in Bengal, they appear to
have no knowledge. They are delicately sensitive under harsh language of
any kind, and never use it to others; and since their adoption of clothing
they are careful to drape themselves decently, as well as gracefully; but
they throw all this aside during the _mágh_ feast. Their nature appears to
undergo a temporary change. Sons and daughters revile their parents in
gross language, and parents their children; men and women become almost
like animals in the indulgence of their amorous propensities. They enact
all that was ever portrayed by prurient artists in a bacchanalian festival
or pandean orgy; and as the light of the sun they adore, and the presence
of numerous spectators, seems to be no restraint on their indulgence, it
cannot be expected that chastity is preserved when the shades of night
fall on such a scene of licentiousness and debauchery."
While, however,
thus representing the festival as a mere debauch, Dalton adds that
relationships formed at this time generally end in marriage. There is also
a flower festival in April and May, of religious nature, but the dances
at this festival are quieter in character.[133]
In Burmah the great festival of the year is the full moon of October,
following the Buddhist Lent season (which is also the wet season), during
which there is no sexual intercourse. The other great festival is the New
Year in March.[134]
In classical times the great festivals were held at the same time as in
northern and modern Europe. The _brumalia_ took place in midwinter, when
the days were shortest, and the _rosalia_, according to early custom in
May or June, and at a later time about Easter. After the establishment of
Christianity the Church made constant efforts to suppress this latter
festival, and it was referred to by an eighth century council as "a wicked
and reprehensible holiday-making." These festivals appear to be intimately
associated with Dionysus worship, and the flower-festival of Dionysus, as
well as the Roman Liberales in honor of Bacchus, was celebrated in March
with worship of Priapus. The festivals of the Delian Apollo and of
Artemis, both took place during the first week in May and the Roman
Bacchanales in October.[135]
The mediæval Feast of Fools was to a large extent a seasonal orgy licensed
by the Church. It may be traced directly back through the barbatories of
the lower empire to the Roman _saturnalia_, and at Sens, the ancient
ecclesiastical metropolis of France, it was held at about the same time as
the _saturnalia_, on the Feast of the Circumcision, i.e., New Year's Day.
It was not, however, always held at this time; thus at Evreux it took
place on the 1st of May.[136]
The Easter bonfires of northern-central Europe, the Midsummer (St. John's
Eve) fires of southern-central Europe, still bear witness to the ancient
festivals.[137] There is certainly a connection between these bonfires and
erotic festivals; it is noteworthy that they occur chiefly at the period
of spring and early summer, which, on other grounds, is widely regarded as
the time for the increase of the sexual instinct, while the less frequent
period for the bonfires is that of the minor sexual climax. Mannhardt was
perhaps the first to show how intimately these spring and early summer
festivals--held with bonfires and dances and the music of violin--have
been associated with love-making and the choice of a mate.[138] In spring,
the first Monday in Lent (Quadrigesima) and Easter Eve were frequent days
for such bonfires. In May, among the Franks of the Main, the unmarried
women, naked and adorned with flowers, danced on the Blocksberg before the
men, as described by Herbels in the tenth century.[139]
In the central
highlands of Scotland the Beltane fires were kindled on the 1st of May.
Bonfires sometimes took place on Halloween (October 31st) and Christmas.
But the great season all over Europe for these bonfires, then often held
with erotic ceremonial, is the summer solstice, the 23d of June, the eve
of Midsummer, or St. John's Day.[140]
The Bohemians and other Slavonic races formerly had meetings with sexual
license. This was so up to the beginning of the sixteenth century on the
banks of rivers near Novgorod. The meetings took place, as a rule, the day
before the Festival of John the Baptist, which, in pagan times, was that
of a divinity known by the name of Jarilo (equivalent to Priapus). Half a
century later, a new ecclesiastical code sought to abolish every vestige
of the early festivals held on Christmas Day, on the Day of the Baptism,
of Our Lord, and on John the Baptist's Day. A general feature of all these
festivals (says Kowalewsky) was the prevalence of the promiscuous
intercourse of the sexes. Among the Ehstonians, at the end of the
eighteenth century, thousands of persons would gather around an old ruined
church (in the Fellinschen) on the Eve of St. John, light a bonfire, and
throw sacrificial gifts into it. Sterile women danced naked among the
ruins; much eating and drinking went on, while the young men and maidens
disappeared into the woods to do what they would.
Festivals of this
character still take place at the end of June in some districts. Young
unmarried couples jump barefoot over large fires, usually near rivers or
ponds. Licentiousness is rare.[141] But in many parts of Russia the
peasants still attach little value to virginity, and even prefer women who
have been mothers. The population of the Grisons in the sixteenth century
held regular meetings not less licentious than those of the Cossacks.
These were abolished by law. Kowalewsky regards all such customs as a
survival of early forms of promiscuity.[142]
Frazer (_Golden Bough_, 2d ed., 1900, vol. iii, pp.
236-350)
fully describes and discusses the dances, bonfires and festivals
of spring and summer, of Halloween (October 31), and Christmas.
He also explains the sexual character of these festivals. "There
are clear indications," he observes (p. 305), "that even human
fecundity is supposed to be promoted by the genial heat of the
fires. It is an Irish belief that a girl who jumps thrice over
the midsummer bonfire will soon marry and become the mother of
many children; and in various parts of France they think that if
a girl dances round nine fires she will be sure to marry within a
year. On the other hand, in Lechrain, people say that if a young
man and woman, leaping over the midsummer fire together, escape
unsmirched, the young woman will not become a mother within
twelve months--the flames have not touched and fertilized her.
The rule observed in some parts of France and Belgium, that the
bonfires on the first Sunday in Lent should be kindled by the
person who was last married, seems to belong to the same class of
ideas, whether it be that such a person is supposed to receive
from, or impart to, the fire a generative and fertilizing
influence. The common practice of lovers leaping over the fires
hand-in-hand may very well have originated in a notion that
thereby their marriage would be more likely to be blessed with
offspring. And the scenes of profligacy which appear to have
marked the midsummer celebration among the Ehstonians, as they
once marked the celebration of May Day among ourselves, may have
sprung, not from the mere license of holiday-makers, but from a
crude notion that such orgies were justified, if not required, by
some mysterious bond which linked the life of man, to the courses
of the heavens at the turning-point of the year."
As regards these primitive festivals, although the evidence is scattered
and sometimes obscure, certain main conclusions clearly emerge. In early
Europe there were, according to Grimm, only two seasons, sometimes
regarded as spring and winter, sometimes as spring and autumn, and for
mythical purposes these seasons were alone available.[143] The appearance
of each of these two seasons was inaugurated by festivals which were
religious and often erotic in character. The Slavonic year began in March,
at which time there was formerly, it is believed, a great festival, not
only in Slavonic but also in Teutonic countries. In Northern Germany there
were Easter bonfires always associated with mountains or hills. The Celtic
bonfires were held at the beginning of May, while the Teutonic May-day, or
_Walpurgisnacht_, is a very ancient sacred festival, associated with
erotic ceremonial, and regarded by Grimm as having a common origin with
the Roman _floralia_ and the Greek _dionysia_. Thus, in Europe, Grimm
concludes: "there are four different ways of welcoming summer. In Sweden
and Gothland a battle of winter and summer, a triumphal entry of the
latter. In Schonen, Denmark, Lower Saxony, and England, simply May-riding,
or fetching of the May-wagon. On the Rhine merely a battle of winter and
summer, without immersion, without the pomp of an entry.
In Franconia,
Thuringia, Meissen, Silesia, and Bohemia only the carrying out of wintry
death; no battle, no formal introduction of summer. Of these festivals the
first and second fall in May, the third and fourth in March. In the first
two, the whole population take part with unabated enthusiasm; in the last
two only the lower poorer class.... Everything goes to prove that the
approach of summer was to our forefathers a holy tide, welcomed by
sacrifice, feast, and dance, and largely governing and brightening the
people's life."[144] The early spring festival of March, the festival of
Ostara, the goddess of spring, has become identified with the Christian
festival of Resurrection (just as the summer solstice festival has been
placed beneath the patronage of St. John the Baptist); but there has been
only an amalgamation of closely-allied rites, for the Christian festival
also may be traced back to a similar origin. Among the early Arabians the
great _ragab_ feast, identified by Ewald and Robertson Smith with the
Jewish _paschal_ feast, fell in the spring or early summer, when the
camels and other domestic animals brought forth their young and the
shepherds offered their sacrifices.[145] Babylonia, the supreme early
centre of religious and cosmological culture, presents a more decisive
example of the sex festival. The festival of Tammuz is precisely analogous
to the European festival of St. John's Day. Tammuz was the solar god of
spring vegetation, and closely associated with Ishtar, also an
agricultural deity of fertility. The Tammuz festival was, in the earliest
times, held toward the summer solstice, at the time of the first wheat and
barley harvest. In Babylonia, as in primitive Europe, there were only two
seasons; the festival of Tammuz, coming at the end of winter and the
beginning of summer, was a fast followed by a feast, a time of mourning
for winter, of rejoicing for summer. It is part of the primitive function
of sacred ritual to be symbolical of natural processes, a mysterious
representation of natural processes with the object of bringing them
about.[146] The Tammuz festival was an appeal to the powers of Nature to
exhibit their generative functions; its erotic character is indicated not
only by the well-known fact that the priestesses of Ishtar (the Kadishtu,
or "holy ones") were prostitutes, but by the statements in Babylonian
legends concerning the state of the earth during Ishtar's winter absence,
when the bull, the ass, and man ceased to reproduce. It is evident that
the return of spring, coincident with the Tammuz festival, was regarded as
the period for the return of the reproductive instinct even in man.[147]
So that along this line also we are led back to a great procreative
festival.
Thus the great spring festivals were held between March and June,
frequently culminating in a great orgy on Midsummer's Eve. The next great
season of festivals in Europe was in autumn. The beginning of August was a
great festival in Celtic lands, and the echoes of it, Rhys remarks, have
not yet died out in Wales.[148] The beginning of November, both in Celtic
and Teutonic countries, was a period of bonfires.[149]
In Germanic
countries especially there was a great festival at the time. The Germanic
year began at Martinmas (November 11th), and the great festival of the
year was then held. It is the oldest Germanic festival on record, and
retained its importance even in the Middle Ages. There was feasting all
night, and the cattle that were to be killed were devoted to the gods; the
goose was associated with this festival.[150] These autumn festivals
culminated in the great festival of the winter solstice which we have
perpetuated in the celebrations of Christmas and New Year. Thus, while
the two great primitive culminating festivals of spring and autumn
correspond exactly (as we shall see) with the seasons of maximum
fecundation, even in the Europe of to-day, the earlier spring (March)
and--though less closely--autumn (November) festivals correspond with the
periods of maximum spontaneous sexual disturbance, as far as I have been
able to obtain precise evidence of such disturbance.
That the maximum of
physiological sexual excitement should tend to appear earlier than the
maximum of fecundation is a result that might be expected.
The considerations so far brought forward clearly indicate that among
primitive races there are frequently one or two seasons in the
year--especially spring and autumn--during which sexual intercourse is
chiefly or even exclusively carried on, and they further indicate that
these primitive customs persist to some extent even in Europe to-day. It
would still remain, to determine whether any such influence affects the
whole mass of the civilized population and determines the times at which
intercourse, or fecundation, most frequently takes place.
This question can be most conveniently answered by studying the seasonal
variation in the birthrate, calculating back to the time of conception.
Wargentin, in Sweden, first called attention to the periodicity of the
birthrate in 1767.[151] The matter seems to have attracted little further
attention until Quetelet, who instinctively scented unreclaimed fields of
statistical investigation, showed that in Belgium and Holland there is a
maximum of births in February, and, consequently, of conceptions in May,
and a minimum of births about July, with consequent minimum of conceptions
in October. Quetelet considered that the spring maximum of conceptions
corresponded to an increase of vitality after the winter cold. He pointed
out that this sexual climax was better marked in the country than in
towns, and accounted for this by the consideration that in the country
the winter cold is more keenly felt. Later, Wappäus investigated the
matter in various parts of northern and southern Europe as well as in
Chile, and found that there was a maximum of conceptions in May and June
attributable to season, and in Catholic countries strengthened by customs
connected with ecclesiastical seasons. This maximum was, he found,
followed by a minimum in September, October, and November, due to
gradually increasing exhaustion, and the influence of epidemic diseases,
as well as the strain of harvest-work. The minimum is reached in the south
earlier than in the north. About November conceptions again become more
frequent, and reach the second maximum at about Christmas and New Year.
This second maximum is very slightly marked in southern countries, but
strongly marked in northern countries (in Sweden the absolute maximum of
conceptions is reached in December), and is due, in the opinion of
Wappäus, solely to social causes. Villermé reached somewhat similar
results. Founding his study on 17,000,000 births, he showed that in France
it was in April, May, and June, or from the spring equinox to the summer
solstice, and nearer to the solstice than the equinox, that the maximum of
fecundations takes place; while the minimum of births is normally in July,
but is retarded by a wet and cold summer in such a manner that in August
there are scarcely more births than in July, and, on the other hand, a
very hot summer, accelerating the minimum of births, causes it to fall in
June instead of in July.[152] He also showed that in Buenos Ayres, where
the seasons are reversed, the conception-rate follows the reversed
seasons, and is also raised by epochs of repose, of plentiful food, and of
increased social life. Sormani studied the periodicity of conception in
Italy, and found that the spring maximum in the southern provinces occurs
in May, and gradually falls later as one proceeds northward, until, in the
extreme north of the peninsula, it occurs in July. In southern Italy there
is only one maximum and one minimum; in the north there are two. The
minimum which follows the spring or summer maximum increases as we
approach the south, while the minimum associated with the winter cold
increases as we approach the north.[153] Beukemann, who studied the matter
in various parts of Germany, found that seasonal influence was specially
marked in the case of illegitimate births. The maximum of conceptions of
illegitimate children takes place in the spring and summer of Europe
generally; in Russia it takes place in the autumn and winter, when the
harvest-working months for the population are over, and the period of
rest, and also of minimum deathrate (September, October, and November),
comes round. In Russia the general conception-rate has been studied by
various investigators. Here the maximum number of conceptions is in
winter, the minimum varying among different elements of the population.
Looked at more