the official term). This sacral cycle recurs in Adam of Bremen’s account of the
great sacrifice at Uppsala: it took place every nine years, and nine heads of
every male animal were offered.^44
When portents appeared at Rome the pontifices declared a novendiale, a
nine-day ritual period. In 207 this was not enough, and they had thrice
nine virgins go through the city singing an incantation (Livy 27. 37. 7). Varro
says that the first of the spells that I have quoted from him above (ego tui
memini) was to be recited ter nouiens.^45 In a poetic account of a private
magical ritual an old woman binds together thrice nine threads of three
colours (Ciris 371). In the Atiedian Brothers’ ritual for Hontus Iovius the
minister must at one point execute a tripudium nine times (nuvis, Tab. Iguv.
IIa. 25).
There was an Old Prussian festival called Sabarios or alternatively ant tryu
dewinu, ‘Feast of the Thrice Nine’, at which the master of the house took nine
handfuls of every kind of crop that had been harvested, divided each handful
into three, and threw them all in one heap. The Jesuit Relatio for 1600 con-
tains an account of a Lithuanian sacrifice to the gods of the granary, in which
a black sucking-pig was slaughtered, cooked, and eaten, and parts of the meal
were carried into the granary together with thrice nine morsels of bread. A
Lithuanian folk-tale tells how a young man who was plagued by an incubus
was advised to cut down a young oak to make a wedge to block the chink by
which the incubus got into his room, and to drive the wedge into place with
a hammer made out of thrice nine pieces of iron. One of the Latvian songs
goes ‘Pour U ̄ ̄sin ̧sˇ je tuai un coq | aux neuf houppes de plumes, | pour que
grandissent mes vaches, mes taureaux, | neuf fois plus nombreux.’ Another:
‘Menez votre troupeau, bergers, où vous le menez! | Menez-le dans le
défrichage de Dieu: | vous ferez entrer trois génisses, | vous en ferez sortir trois
fois neuf.’^46
Nine often appears as a mystic number in Germanic myth, and in one
Eddic passage an apparition of thrice nine Valkyries is described.^47 In Old
Irish literature ‘thrice nine’ appears very frequently as a formulaic number,
especially for groups of men or parties of retainers. Jocelin of Furness writes
(^44) Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum 4. 27 = Clemen (1928), 72. 4; Mannhardt
(1936), 218. Dietmar of Merseburg (1. 9, quoted by Grimm (1883–8), 48) has heard report of a
sacrifice in Zealand that took place every nine years and involved the immolation of ninety-nine
men and the same number of horses, dogs, and cocks.
(^45) RR 1. 2. 27. Cf. Marcell. De medicam. 8. 172, 10. 69, 15. 101, 23. 47, 28. 16.
(^46) Mannhardt (1936), 568; 433 = Clemen (1936), 110; Schleicher (1857), 94; LD 30060, 28854
= Jonval nos. 700, 702.
(^47) Gering–Sijmons (1927–31), i. 148; Helgakviða Hio ̨rvarðzsonar 28. 1.
330 8. Hymns and Spells