Silvanus also was a god of the boundary. He was represented by a tree grove, as Terminus was by a pillar, and offerings of fruit, grain, and milk, and of pigs, were made to him. When he would be guarded against as a source of evil in a home, the protectors of the inmates would perform certain ceremonies at the threshold of the house.
A tree, and sometimes a grove, was the sacred landmark of a village boundary in primitive lands. Such trees and groves are still to be found in Equatorial Africa. Describing some of these in Zinga and its vicinity, Stanley expresses surprise that they have so long remained untouched in “a country left to the haphazard care of patriarchal chiefs ignorant of written laws.”[486] But reverence for a threshold landmark seems to be in the very nature of a primitive people, as truly as any primitive sentiment; and sentiment is in itself a dominant law.
At the boundary line between two villages in Samoa, in olden time, there were two stones said to have been two living beings. When any quarrel arose, those engaged in it were told, “Go and settle it at the stones;” and they went to those boundary line stones and fought out their contest.[487]
Trees and stone pillars are still known as boundary landmarks between parishes and townships in Europe and America, as in Asia, Africa, and Polynesia in more primitive days; and their importance is recognized as peculiar, even if not always absolutely sacred. The annual custom of “beating the bounds” of a parish by the parish authorities survives in some parts of England to-day. A procession makes the circuit of the parish boundary, under the care of a “select vestryman,” or other parish official, halting at every landmark to identify it and carefully to observe its location.
In former times it was customary to take the boys of the parish on this round, and beat them at every landmark, in order to impress upon their memories its precise position. More recently the boys are permitted to carry willow wands peeled white, and with these to beat the landmarks. The later plan is certainly more satisfactory to the boys, and it is quite as likely to impress their memories. Formerly this ceremony was accompanied by religious services, in which the clergyman invoked curses on him who “transgresseth the bounds and doles of his neighbor,” and blessings on him who regarded the landmarks.[488]