In this concluding part of _The Golden Bough_ I have discussed the
problem which gives its title to the whole work. If I am right, the
Golden Bough over which the King of the Wood, Diana's priest at Aricia,
kept watch and ward was no other than a branch of mistletoe growing on
an oak within the sacred grove; and as the plucking of the bough was a
necessary prelude to the slaughter of the priest, I have been led to
institute a parallel between the King of the Wood at Nemi and the Norse
god Balder, who was worshipped in a sacred grove beside the beautiful
Sogne fiord of Norway and was said to have perished by a stroke of
mistletoe, which alone of all things on earth or in heaven could wound
him. On the theory here suggested both Balder and the King of the Wood
personified in a sense the sacred oak of our Aryan forefathers, and both
had deposited their lives or souls for safety in the parasite which
sometimes, though rarely, is found growing on an oak and by the very
rarity of its appearance excites the wonder and stimulates the devotion
of ignorant men. Though I am now less than ever disposed to lay weight
on the analogy between the Italian priest and the Norse god, I have
allowed it to stand because it furnishes me with a pretext for
discussing not only the general question of the external soul in popular
superstition, but also the fire-festivals of Europe, since fire played a
part both in the myth of Balder and in the ritual of the Arician grove.
Thus Balder the Beautiful in my hands is little more than a
stalking-horse to carry two heavy pack-loads of facts. And what is true
of Balder applies equally to the priest of Nemi himself, the nominal
hero of the long tragedy of human folly and suffering which has unrolled
itself before the readers of these volumes, and on which the curtain is
now about to fall. He, too, for all the quaint garb he wears and the
gravity with which he stalks across the stage, is merely a puppet, and