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Lot 230
Frazer, Sir James George (1854-1941) British anthropologist, folklorist, and classical scholar, best remembered as the author of The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion. In this wide-ranging study of mythology and religion, Frazer treated religion as a cultural phenomenon rather than from a theological perspective. The Golden Bough was a major influence on the field of anthropology, as well as on modern European literature. It was first published in two volumes in 1890; in three volumes in 1900; the third edition, published 1906–15, comprised twelve volumes.
Autograph letter signed ("J.G. Frazer"), 2pp, Trinity College, Cambridge, Nov. 8, 1891. Overall light toning and a smudge under the signature; later ink notation in blank upper right corner. Superb content related to a mistranlation made by Frazer in the first edition of The Golden Bough. Headed "A correction." Frazer writes in part: "An Oxford friend…has courteously pointed out to me that in my book The Golden Bough I have seriously misunderstood and mistranslated a passage in Pliny. As the passage so misunderstood and mistranslated is one on which I built a considerable structure of hypothesis, I hope that in justice to the readers of The Golden Bough you will allow me to correct my mistake in your pages and to indicate in a few words the consequences to the main argument of my book. The passage in question is part of the famous one in which Pliny describes the cutting of the mistletoe by the Druids…." Frazer quotes Pliny (in Latin) and explains that he (Frazer) had totally misunderstood "sexta luna," taking it to mean "the sixth month, i.e. June" instead of the correct meaning, "the sixth day of the moon…it is still a rule of folk-lore that mistletoe and other magic plants should be culled on Midsummer Eve (June 23d), I inferred that the Druids also gathered the mistletoe on Midsummer Eve. In point of fact Pliny, rightly understood, asserts no more than that the Druids cut the mistletoe by preference on the sixth day of the moon….There is thus no ancient evidence whatever to shew that the Druids cut the mistletoe at Midsummer, and as the supposition that they did so, combined with their human sacrifices, which there are some grounds for believing to have taken place at Midsummer, supplied the main link in the connexion which I sought to establish between the Balder myth and the rule of the Arician priesthood, it is clear that the discovery of my mistake leaves a serious breach in this part of my argument."
Estimated Value $600 - 800.
Estate of Helene Wurlitzer (1875-1963), purchased c. 1920, from Stewart Kidd booksellers, Cincinnati.
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