emotion centres round tribal initiation he will be a young man just
initiated, what the Greeks called a _kouros_, or _ephebos_, a youth of
quite different social status from a mere _pais_ or boy. Such a youth
survives in our King of the May and Jack-in-the-Green. Old men and women
are for death and winter, the young for life and spring, and most of
all the young man or bear or bull or tree just come to maturity.

And because life is one at the Spring Festival, the young man carries a
blossoming branch bound with wool of the young sheep. At Athens in
spring and autumn alike "they carry out the _Eiresione_, a branch of
olive wound about with wool ... and laden with all sorts of firstfruits,
_that scarcity may cease_, and they sing over it:

"Eiresione brings
Figs and fat cakes,
And a pot of honey and oil to mix,
And a wine-cup strong and deep,
That she may drink and sleep."

The Eiresione had another name that told its own tale. It was called
_Korythalia_,[34] "Branch of blooming youth." The young men, says a
Greek orator, are "the Spring of the people."

* * * * *

The excavations of Crete have given to us an ancient inscribed hymn, a
Dithyramb, we may safely call it, that is at once a spring-song and a
young man-song. The god here invoked is what the Greeks call a
_kouros_, a young man. It is sung and danced by young warriors: