The Eastern conception of the stars as fruits of the world-tree, and as jewels hung thereon--A motive common in Oriental art--The golden apples of the Hesperides--Other instances of the world-tree in European legend--The monster oak of the Kalevala--Corresponding tradition amongst the Esthonians.
The food of the gods, a conception associated with that of the world-tree--The Persian haoma, a mystical tree, producing an immortalising juice--Its terrestrial counterpart; the haoma sacrament--The Vedic soma; not only a plant but a powerful deity--Identification of the plant--De Gubernatis on the soma ritual--The effect of the soma drink--Corresponding conceptions amongst the Greeks--Origin of the idea 109
Varieties of the tradition: (1) as the seat of the gods; (2) as the home of the first parents; (3) as the abode of the blessed--All associated with the conception of a mystical tree, in itself an idealisation of the spirit-inhabited tree worshipped on earth--The paradise of the gods in Indian tradition; its five miraculous trees--The paradise of Genesis and of the Persian sacred books--The tree of paradise compared with sacred cedar of Chaldaea--paradise as the abode of the blessed, a post-exilic tradition amongst the Jews--The paradise of the Talmud; and of the Koran--The confusion in the ancient traditions of paradise partly due to a limited conception of space and to a belief in the propinquity of heaven--Greek conceptions of paradise--Milton's description influenced by ancient traditions of an elevated paradise.
The earthly paradise--Persistence of the tradition; Sir John Maundeville's version--Icelandic tradition--The lost Atlantis of Plato a variant of the paradise legend--St. Brandan and the Isle of Avalon--Christopher Columbus--Japanese tradition of an island of eternal youth, with its marvellous tree--Developments of the idea of the tree of paradise--Its representation in art 128
Their ancient religious significance--The old English May-day--Fetching in the May--Puritan condemnation of the May-poles--Their removal "as a heathenish vanity"--Existing survivals of May customs--May-day rhymes.
Origin of the celebrations: 1. The bringing in of the May-bough--Wide distribution of the custom an evidence of its antiquity--Its original intention--"The May" related to the harvest-bush of France and Western Germany, and to the Greek _eiresione_--Their common purpose, to bring to the house a share of the blessings assumed to be at the disposal of the tree-inhabiting spirit.