The Cold Calling

The nasty cruelties of slaying Cock Robin with an arrow, or of walling up poor Jenny Wren alive in a hole in a tree, were once celebrations of the passage of the year and offerings to the gods of nature, but when the magic necessity was finished with, the hunting of a few birds and their needless deaths were just ignorant savagery. Perhaps they released emotions from the unconscious minds of bigger children who took part in them; but in our world of repression and parallel outbursts of physical violence, the old rituals must assume a new meaning or we may drift into brainless cruelties on a bigger scale than the killing of wild birds. A return to pagan sacrifices, even of people, is not impossible.

C. A. Burland, Echoes of Magic.