Forlong - Rivers of Life

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Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
full of holme and ivie,” 1 and which had doubtless stood all through the Saturnalia, and
been duly adored and danced round, by the then most intelligent people in this greatest
centre of European civilisation. Verily our brethren in India are not far behind us!
As the year advanced up to “Twelfth Day,” the fetes assumed the form of masquerades,
when men dressed themselves in cow-hides, and as old women, &c. Those
dressed as cows were then well belaboured with sticks, as were women at the Lupercalia,
and as Apollo used to be by those who urged him to energize them more with his rays.
This was no doubt a service to induce the gods to fertilize the flocks. Such carols as
have come down to us show how easily the people took up the new faith, because it was
in unison with the old ideas. Brand gives us this Scotch hymn, which I make a little
more clear than he does, so that the English reader may comprehend it:—
“ This day to you is born a Child.
Of Mary meek and Virgin mild.
. . . . .
My soul and life stand up and see,
Behold he lies in the crib of a tree.
What child is that so good and fair?
It is Christ—God’s Son and heir.”
Now, as we have no real historical foundation for the actual manger of Beth-lehem,
and much history in connection with the Bread-God idea, and that of his Beths, Tebas,
or Arks, in fact see clearly that the Tree was considered the Bait-ulos, Toth, or Pillar
God; and that the term Cradle of a Tree would mean merely “the child of a tree;”
this carol gives us not only a true idea of the former belief, but the reason why the
people so readily accepted “the Heir.” They would be naturally willing to accept a
new god, if he sprang from “the Tree of Life,” “the Divine Oak,” which they and theirs
had worshipped for centuries. The Tree was Jove and Siva, and from Siva sprang
Kārtaka, the Horus of India, and Horus was the “heir” of Osiris. So that neither this
term, nor the belief that a child sprang from a virgin, clashed in the least degree with
the past tales or ideas of our ancestors; and this Dean Milman acknowledges. Of course
Kymri, Kelts, &c., had heard of the oft-told wonderful births of gods or demi-gods such
as Osiris, Apollo, Eskulapius, Pythagoras Plato, Boodha, and many another Eastern prophet;
for religious myths quickly penetrate all lands and would certainly reach the ears
of our inquiring forefathers who, whether Kooths, Skyths, Kelts, or Skoti, were great
travellers. Long before the era of the babe of Bethlehem, then, they would be likely to
know all about the combat of the Virgin-born one with Typhon and the powers of darkness;
his temporary defeat, victory, resurrection and ascension, surrounded by his
twelve signs or followers. These were everywhere familiar tales, which, if as is thought
Egypt originated, at least all Westem Asia, and Europe had laboriously elaborated.
Not even the stories of the “over-shadowing of the Holy Ghost” (who, by-the-bye,
in Syria, and in Christ’s day, was a female, and ill adapted to play the part assigned
1 Stone’s Survey of London.