and represents the whole system of created things, but more frequently as a tree of life, by whose fruit the votaries of the gods (and in some cases the gods themselves) are nourished with divine strength, and are prepared for the joys of immortality.  The most ancient types of this mystical tree of life are the date palm, the fig, and the pine or cedar.”

By way of illustration, it may be noted that the ancient Egyptians had their legend of the “Tree of Life”.  It is mentioned in their sacred books that Osiris ordered the names of souls to be written on this tree of life, the fruit of which made those who ate it become as gods.[15] Among the most ancient traditions of the Hindoos is that of the tree of life—­called Soma in Sanskrit—­the juice of which imparted immortality; this marvellous tree being guarded by spirits.  Coming down to later times, Virgil speaks of a sacred tree in a manner which Grimm[16] considers highly suggestive of the Yggdrasil: 

  “Jove’s own tree,
  High as his topmost boughs to heaven ascend,
  So low his roots to hell’s dominions tend.”

As already mentioned, numerous legendary stories have become interwoven with the myth of the Yggdrasil, the following sacred one combining the idea of tree-descent.  According to a trouvere of the thirteenth century,[17] “The tree of life was, a thousand years after the sin of the first man, transplanted from the Garden of Eden to the Garden of Abraham, and an angel came from heaven to tell the patriarch that upon this tree should hang the freedom of mankind.  But first from the same tree of life Jesus should be born, and in the following wise.  First was to be born a knight, Fanouel, who, through the scent merely of the flower of that living tree, should be engendered in the womb of a virgin; and this knight again, without knowing woman, should give birth to St. Anne, the mother of the Virgin Mary.  Both these wonders fell out as they were foretold.  A virgin bore Fanouel by smelling the tree; and Fanouel having once come unawares to that tree of life, and cut a fruit from it, wiped his knife against his thigh, in which he inflicted a slight wound, and thus let in some of the juice.  Presently his thigh began to swell, and eventually St. Anne was born therefrom.”

But turning to survivals of this form of animism among uncultured tribes, we may quote the Damaras, a South African race, with whom “a tree is supposed to be the universal progenitor, two of which divide the honour."[18] According to their creed, “In the beginning of things there was a tree, and out of this tree came Damaras, bushmen, oxen, and zebras.  The Damaras lit a fire which frightened away the bushmen and the oxen, but the zebras remained.”