Motif
Wounded or bleeding tree
wounded_or_bleeding_tree
A motif of the World Axis and Sacred Center family, within the sub-family Divinized, Animate, and Wonder-Working Trees. Every row below is a tagged passage; each rests on a quote in its source text.
2 occurrences
1 traditions
comparative
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The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion (Vol. 1 of 2) PREFACE. / J. G. FRAZER. / CHAPTER I. THE KING OF THE WOOD. / MACAULAY.; lines 1607-1683 confidence: high
Trees are said to feel injuries: oaks shriek or groan when felled, Ojebways hear trees wailing under the axe, and Austrian and Jarkino cutters beg a tree’s pardon.
The passage describes trees groaning, wailing, feeling cuts, bleeding red fluid, and in one case sharing a wound with the woodman.
read in the book → -
The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion (Vol. 1 of 2) PREFACE. / J. G. FRAZER. / CHAPTER I. THE KING OF THE WOOD. / MACAULAY.; lines 1607-1683 confidence: high
The passage describes beliefs that trees feel injury, cry, groan, require pardon, bleed when cut, and in the Tyrolean larch example wound the woodman’s body in correspondence with the tree’s wound.
Several examples state that trees cry, groan, bleed, or cause sympathetic injury when cut.
read in the book →