Every few years the people of Plataea held a festival which they called the Little Daedala. On the day of the festival they went out into an ancient oak forest, the trees of which were of gigantic girth. There they set some boiled meat on the ground, and watched the birds that gathered round it. When a raven was observed to carry off a piece of the meat and perch on an oak, the people followed it and cut down the tree. With the wood of the tree they made an image, dressed it as a bride, and placed it on a bullock-cart with a bridesmaid beside it. It seems then to have been drawn to the banks of the river Asopus and back to the town, attended by a piping and dancing crowd. After the festival the image was put away and kept till the celebration of the Great Daedala, which fell only once in sixty years, and was held by all the people of Boeotia. On this occasion all the images, fourteen in number, that had accumulated from the celebrations of the Little Daedala were dragged on wains in procession to the river Asopus, and then to the top of Mount Cithaeron. There an altar had been constructed of square blocks of wood fitted together, with brushwood heaped over it. Animals were sacrificed by being burned on the altar, and the altar itself, together with the images, was consumed by the flames. The blaze, we are told, rose to a prodigious height and was seen for many miles. To explain the origin of the festival a story ran that once upon a time Hera had quarrelled with Zeus and left him in high dudgeon. To lure her back Zeus gave out that he was about to marry the nymph Plataea, daughter of the river Asopus. He had a fine oak cut down, shaped and dressed as a bride, and conveyed on a bullock-cart. Transported with rage and jealousy, Hera flew to the cart, and tearing off the veil of the pretended bride, discovered the deceit that had been practised on her. Her rage now turned to laughter, and she became reconciled to her husband Zeus.[469]
[Sidenote: Resemblance of the Plataean ceremony to the spring and midsummer festivals of modern Europe.] The resemblance of this festival to some of the European spring and midsummer festivals is tolerably close. We have seen that in Russia at Whitsuntide the villagers go out into the wood, fell a birch-tree, dress it in woman’s clothes, and bring it back to the village with dance and song. On the third day it is thrown into the water.[470] Again, we have seen that in Bohemia on Midsummer Eve the village lads fell a tall fir or pine-tree in the wood and set it up on a height, where it is adorned with garlands, nosegays, and ribbons, and afterwards burnt.[471] The reason for burning the tree will appear afterwards; the custom itself is not uncommon in modern Europe. In some parts of the Pyrenees a tall and slender tree is cut down on May Day and kept till Midsummer Eve. It is then rolled to the top of a hill, set up, and burned.[472] In Angoulême on St. Peter’s Day, the twenty-ninth of June, a tall leafy poplar is set up in the market-place and burned.[473] Near Launceston in Cornwall there is a large tumulus known as Whiteborough, with a fosse round it. On this tumulus “there was formerly a great bonfire on Midsummer Eve; a large summer pole was fixed in the centre, round which the fuel was heaped up. It had a large bush on the top of it. Round this were parties of wrestlers contending for small prizes.” The rustics believed that giants were buried in such mounds, and nothing would tempt them to disturb their bones.[474] In Dublin on May-morning boys used to go out and cut a May-bush, bring it back to town, and then burn it.[475]