Seriously, Fraser as a primary reference?

I understand it when the made-up-religion people use The Golden Bough as a "sacred text" -- seriously, they do -- it even makes sense.  After all, these people are deliberately choosing to invent a mind-numbing tradition to believe in, so why not elevate a book of uneven and badly-cited scholarship with a slightly ridiculous premise to the status of holy fetish?

Though of course, in doing so, they are missing the point of the book.  Fraser's contention was that the religions of the old days were violent and superstitious, and that echoes of these primitive, bloody, and frankly horrific beliefs and customs persisted in modern folk practices because it's hard to shake superstition.  He did not propose that we all go back to what he considered to be a lesser stage of humanity, only that we understand it and appreciate it.

Okay, this is weak enough.

But, okay, Wikipedia?  Please.  Where's the scholarship standards if  The Golden Bough is your only reference?  Sure, the work is chock full of  interesting stuff from all over Europe and a few tidbits from elsewhere, but honestly, the fellow was erudite and hardworking, but his scholarship standards were -- let's call it primitive.  Citations are often sloppy, assertions are incosistently supported, et cetera.  I can see quoting a bit from Fraser, but you can't  call it research if that's your whole source.

(I'm rereading a lot of Fraser, but I'm reading it in the same spirit as I read Lord Dunsany).

You can't make this stuff up

The Ride of the Kings  is a folk festival of Moravia whose strangeness cannot be exaggerated.  To begin with, a bunch of young men dress up in fancy costumes and go riding horses to a house in town where they formally request the father of the house for the use of his young son (of early adolescent age) to be their king.  He accepts, the plum brandy is brought out, and everybody drinks and sings and makes jokes.  Meanwhile the boy is dressed in ancient women's costume and a rose stuck in his mouth and he's hoisted up on a horse accompanied by two guys oalso on horseback and also in ancient women's costume carrying drawn sabers.  Then they go riding all around town and the "criers" shout out verses at the people they pass making witty jokes and demanding donations for the drinking party.  The rose, by the way, is supposed to be a symbol of taciturnity.  What?  

Apparently this was once a widespread tradition but it only survives in a few towns now, and is accompanied by every kind of demonstration of folk costume, dancing, and singing.  Many tall wreathy headdresses with ribbons all over the place, and lots of tall heeled boots and embroidered vests.  Seeing as how this is a Bohemian festival, we can also expect lots of beer, probably.

It happens sometime in summer.  Some places do it in May, some do it later.

There is no explanation.  Perhaps it is better this way.

Aha.

Parenthetical comment in the Wikipedia article about Dažbog:

(In fact, most of Indo-European smith-gods were lame; the reason for this was most likely arsenicosis, low levels of arsenic poisoning, resulting in lameness and skin cancers. Arsenic was added to bronze to harden it and most smiths of the Bronze Age would have suffered from chronic workplace poisoning)

Why yes, my cat has been vaccuumed, and waxed, and polished till he gleams. 

edit to add more gems from random Slavic history Wiki entries:

The Slavs of the Baltic had engaged in piratical activity before, while the Danes felt that trade and piracy went hand in hand, making for an interesting attempt at commercial relations.

.....

And apparently the King's Ride has some other echoes in a festival called Jarilo in which the summer (or the summer god) is celebrated with processions and men draped with green branches . . . and a woman dressed as a man (remember that the King's Ride features a subadolescent boy dressed as a woman, with a rose clamped in his teeth).  Oh, my dog, reading further (see, I'm kind of liveblogging my reading now), Jarilo is the son of Perun, the thunder god, stolen by Veles, the god of the underworld and cattle on the night of his birth (February something, the New Year) and raised in the green, wet, lush land of the dead across the sea  where he guarded Veles' cattle.  In the spring he returns to his home and walks in the fields and makes them fertile.

Okay, I think I understand the rose and the taciturnity now.  It's the silence of the dormant world in winter, and the rose is the promise of renewed life.  Okay.  And I think I understand why the boy is dressed in women's clothing too, but I can't express it yet.

Oh no, it just gets weirder.  So when Jarilo returns to the earth, the first to discover him is his twin sister, Morana, who is goddess of death and nature (summon Levi-Strauss, somebody).  They become lovers, the feud between their father Perun and Veles is resolved, and the whole world is abundant and harmonious . . . until Jarilo is unfaithful to his sister-wife and their other nine brothers kill him and she makes a house out of his body and turns into a bitter, cold, vengeful hag all winter until spring comes and Jarilo returns from the dead again.

The article calls him a "He was a fairly typical life-death-rebirth deity," and that typical in there just tells you a whole hell of a lot about myth, doesn't it?

The article author goes on to worry about how Jarilo is simultaneously described as having sore feet from walking such a long way and as coming on a horse.  Musing a bit about horse symbols in wedding songs and so forth, they conclude:" One can only guess how the ancient Slavs imagined this mythical hero to look like, perhaps as some sort of centaur.."

Give me a break.  Probably some people did picture him as a centaur,  but honestly, a god can have horse-nature and not have hoofs.  Or six appendages.

Did I turn off the italics yet?

A funny thing happened at the last edit of the last post.  Italics turned on and I couldn't turn them off.  Something not visible in the formatting went awry, I guess.

Anyway, my last bit about Slavic gods for the night:

Although in this particular myth he plays the negative role as bringer of chaos, Veles was not seen as an evil god by ancient Slavs. In fact, in many of the Russian folk tales, Veles, appearing under the Christian guise of St. Nicholas, saves the poor farmer and his cattle from the furious and destructive St. Elias the Thunderer, who, of course, represents the old Perun. 

Just . . . chew on that for a bit.