Sacred Groves and their Denizens.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Folkard, Richard
The Roman goddess Pomona, we are told by Ovid, came of the family of Dryads, or sylvan deities; and although “the Nymph frequented not the fluttering stream, nor meads, the subject of a virgin’s dream,” yet—
“In garden culture none could her excel,
Or form the pliant souls of plants so well,
Or to the fruit more gen’rous flavours lend,
Or teach the trees with nobler loads to bend.”
As a deity, Pomona presided over gardens and all sorts of fruit-trees, and was honoured with a temple in Rome, and a regular priest, called Flamen Pomonalis, who offered sacrifices to her divinity for the preservation of fruit. In this respect Pomona differed from the other Sylvans, who were only regarded as semi-gods and goddesses. The worship of these sylvan deities, however, by the Greeks and Romans caused them to regard with reverence and respect their nemorous habitations. Hence we find that, like the Egyptians, they were fond of surrounding their temples and fanes with groves and woods, which in time came to be regarded as sacred as the temples themselves. Pliny, speaking of groves, says: “These were of old the temples of the gods; and after that simple but ancient custom, men at this day consecrate the fairest and goodliest trees to some deity or other; nor do we more adore our glittering shrines of gold and ivory than the groves in which, with profound and awful silence, we worship them.” Ancient writers often refer to “vocal forests,”—in their sombre and gloomy recesses, the frighted wayfarer imagined, as the wind soughed and rustled through the dense foliage, that the tree spirits were humming some sportive lay, or—perchance more frequently—chanting weirdly some solemn dirge. The grove which surrounded Jupiter’s Temple at Dodona was supposed to be endowed with the gift of prophecy, and oracles were frequently there delivered by the sacred Oaks.
“Due honours once Dodona’s forest had,
When oracles were through the Oaks conveyed.
When woods instructed prophets to foretel,
And the decrees of fate in trees did dwell.”
In course of time each tree of these sacred groves was held to be tenanted, or presided over, either by a god or goddess, or by one of the sylvan semi-deities. Impious was deemed he who dared to profane the sanctity of one of these nemorous retreats, either by damaging or by felling the consecrated trees. Rapin, in his Latin poem on Gardens, says:
“But let no impious axe profane the woods,
Or violate the sacred shades; the Gods
Themselves inhabit there. Some have beheld
Where drops of blood from wounded Oaks distill’d;
Have seen the trembling boughs with horror shake!
So great a conscience did the ancients make
To cut down Oaks, that it was held a crime
In that obscure and superstitious time.
When Driopeius Heaven did provoke,
By daring to destroy th’ Æmonian Oak,
And with it its included Dryad too,
Avenging Ceres then her faith did show
To the wrong’d nymph.”
When threatened with the woodman’s axe, the tutelary genius of the doomed tree would intercede for its life, the very leaves would sigh and groan, the stalwart trunk tremble with horror. Ovid relates how Erisichthon, a Thessalian, who derided Ceres, and cut down the trees in her sacred groves, was, for his impiety, afflicted with perpetual hunger. Of one huge old Oak the poet says—
“In the cool dusk its unpierc’d verdure spread
The Dryads oft their hallow’d dances led.”
But the vindictive Erisichthon bade his hesitating servants fell the venerable tree, and, dissatisfied with their speed, seized an axe, and approached it, declaring that nothing should save the Oak:—
“He spoke, and as he pois’d a slanting stroke,
Sighs heav’d and tremblings shook the frighted Oak;
Its leaves look’d sickly, pale its Acorns grew,
And its long branches sweat a chilly dew,
But when his impious hand a wound bestow’d,
Blood from the mangled bark in currents flow’d.
* * * * * * * *
The wonder all amaz’d: yet one more bold,
The fact dissuading, strove his axe to hold;
But the Thessalian, obstinately bent,
Too proud to change, too harden’d to repent,
On his kind monitor his eyes, which burn’d