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FOLKLORE AS AN
HISTORICAL SCIENCE
BY
GEORGE LAURENCE GOMME
WITH TWENTY-EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS
METHUEN & CO.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON
_First Published in 1908_
[Illustration: "PEDLAR'S SEAT," SWAFFHAM CHURCH]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. HISTORY AND FOLKLORE _pages_ 1-122
INTRODUCTORY _pages_ 1-13
HISTORY AND LOCAL AND PERSONAL TRADITIONS 13-46
HISTORY AND FOLK-TALES 46-84
TRADITIONAL LAW 84-100
MYTHOLOGY AND TRADITION 100-110
HISTORIANS AND TRADITION 110-120
II. MATERIALS AND METHODS 123-179
TRADITIONAL MATERIAL 123-129
MYTH, FOLK-TALE, AND LEGEND 129-153
CUSTOM, BELIEF, AND RITE 154-179
III. PSYCHOLOGICAL CONDITIONS 180-207
IV. ANTHROPOLOGICAL CONDITIONS 208-302
PRIMITIVE INFLUENCES 211-238
EARLIEST TYPES OF SOCIAL EXISTENCE 238-261
AUSTRALIAN TOTEM SOCIETY TESTED BY THE
EVIDENCE 262-274
TOTEM SURVIVALS IN BRITAIN 274-296
SYNOPSIS OF CULTURE-STRUCTURE OF SEMANGS
OF MALAY PENINSULA 297-302
V. SOCIOLOGICAL CONDITIONS 303-319
VI. EUROPEAN CONDITIONS 320-337
VII. ETHNOLOGICAL CONDITIONS 338-366
INDEX 367-371
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
1. PEDLAR'S SEAT, SWAFFHAM CHURCH, NORFOLK. _Frontispiece_
2. CARVED WOODEN FIGURE OF THE PEDLAR IN SWAFFHAM
CHURCH 8
3. CARVED WOODEN FIGURE OF THE PEDLAR'S DOG IN SWAFFHAM
CHURCH 8
Nos. 1-3 are taken from photographs, and show how the
story of the Pedlar of Swaffham has been interpreted in
carving. The costume of the Pedlar is noticeable.
4. THE PEDLAR OF LAMBETH AND HIS DOG, FIGURED IN THE
WINDOW (NOW DESTROYED) OF LAMBETH CHURCH (from
Allen's _History of Lambeth_) 20
5. THE PEDLAR OF LAMBETH AND HIS DOG AS DRAWN IN 1786
FOR DUCAREL'S _History of Lambeth_ 22
Nos. 4 and 5 illustrate the traces of the Pedlar legend
in Lambeth, and the costume of the Pedlar, though later
than that shown in the Swaffham carving, exhibits analogous
features which are of interest to the argument.
6. PLAN OF THE SITE OF THE "HEAVEN'S WALLS" AT LITLINGTON,
NEAR ROYSTON, CAMBRIDGESHIRE (reprinted from
_Archaeologia_) 43
7. SKETCH OF LITLINGTON FIELD (reprinted from
_Archaeologia_) 44
Nos. 6 and 7 show the site and general appearance
of this interesting relic of the Roman occupation of
Britain.
8. STONE MONUMENTS ERECTED AS MEMORIALS IN A KASYA
VILLAGE (reprinted from _Asiatic Researches_) 55
9. STONE SEATS AT A KASYA VILLAGE (reprinted from _Asiatic
Researches_) 55
10. VIEW IN THE KASYA HILLS, SHOWING STONE MEMORIALS
(reprinted from _Asiatic Researches_) 56
No. 8 shows the practice among the primitive hill-tribes
of India of erecting memorials in stone to tribal heroes,
and No. 9 is a curious illustration of the stones used as
seats by tribesmen at their tribal assemblies. No. 10 is a
general view of the site occupied by these stone monuments.
11. THE AULD CA-KNOWE: CALLING THE BURGESS ROLL AT
HAWICK (reprinted from Craig and Laing's
_Hawick Tradition_) 98
12. THE HAWICK MOAT AT SUNRISE (reprinted from Craig and
Laing) 99
The tribal gathering is well illustrated by No. 11, and
the moat hill is shown in No. 12.
13. ONE OF FIVE STONE CIRCLES IN THE FIELDS OPPOSITE THE
GLEBE OF NYMPHSFIELD (reprinted from Sir William
Wilde's _Lough Corrib_) 101
14. CARN-AN-CHLUITHE TO COMMEMORATE THE DEFEAT AND
DEATH OF THE YOUTHS OF THE DANANNS (reprinted
from Wilde) 102
15. THE CAIRN OF BALLYMAGIBBON, NEAR THE ROAD PASSING
FROM CONG TO CROSS (reprinted from Wilde) 102
Nos. 13-15 are selected from Sir William Wilde's admirable
account of the great conflict on the field of Moytura. They
serve to show that the fight was an historical event.
16. ALTAR DEDICATED TO THE FIELD DEITIES OF BRITAIN,
FOUND AT CASTLE HILL ON THE WALL OF ANTONINUS PIUS 105
It is important to remember that the Romans recognised
the gods of the conquered people, and this is one of the
most important archaeological proofs of the fact.
17. ROMAN SCULPTURED STONE FOUND AT ARNIEBOG, CUMBERNAULD,
DUMBARTONSHIRE, SHOWING A NAKED BRITON AS
A CAPTIVE 112
To the evidence derived from classical writers as to the
nakedness of some of the inhabitants of early Britain, it
is possible to add the evidence of the memorial stone. This
example is reproduced from Sir Arthur Mitchell's _Past in
the Present_, and there is at least one other example.
18. REPRESENTATION OF AN IRISH CHIEFTAIN SEATED AT
DINNER (from Derrick's _The Image of Ireland_,
by kind permission of Messrs. A. & E. Black) 183
This is reproduced from the very excellent reprint (1883)
of this remarkable book, published originally in 1581. The
whole book is historically valuable as showing the undeveloped
nature of Irish culture. The flesh was boiled in the hide, the
fire is lighted in the open camp, and the entire rudeness of
the scene depicts the people "whose usages I behelde after the
fashion there sette downe."
19. LONG MEG AND HER DAUGHTERS (from a photograph by
Messrs. Frith) 193
20. STONE CIRCLES ON STANTON MOOR (from
_Archaeologia_) 193
Nos. 19 and 20 are illustrations of two of the lesser-known
circles about which the people hold such curious beliefs.
21. CHINESE REPRESENTATION OF PYGMIES GOING ABOUT ARM-IN-ARM
FOR MUTUAL PROTECTION (from Moseley's _Notes by
a Naturalist on H.M.S. Challenger_, by permission
of Mr. John Murray) 242
22. SEMANG OF KUALA KENERING, ULU PERAK (from Skeat and
Blagden's _Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula_,
by permission of Messrs. Macmillan) 242
23. NEGRITO TYPE: SEMANG OF PERAK (from the same) 243
24. SEMANG OF KEDAH HAVING A MEAL (from the same) 244
25. TREE HUT, ULU BATU, ABOUT TWELVE MILES FROM KUALA
LUMPUR, SELANGOR (from the same) 298
The old-world traditions and the scientific observation
of pygmy people are illustrated in No. 21 and Nos. 22-25
respectively. Though much has been written about the
Pygmies, Messrs. Skeat and Blagden's account of the Semang
people is by far the most thorough and important.
26. RITE OF BAPTISM ON THE FONT AT DARENTH, KENT (from
Romilly Allen's _Early Christian Symbolism_) 324
The crude paganism on the sculptured stone is confirmatory
of the pagan elements preserved in custom, and this
illustration from Kent, one of the earliest centres of
Christianity in Britain, is singularly interesting from
this point of view.
27 and 28. TWO SCENES FROM THE ANGLO-SAXON LIFE OF ST.
GUTHLAC BY FELIX OF CROWLAND, DEPICTING THE ATTACK
OF THE DEMONS 351, 352
These two plates belong to a series of eight which
illustrate the life of the saint. They are less primitive
in form than the story which they illustrate. By contrast
with the remaining six, however, which are purely
ecclesiastical in character, they show how this early
episode kept its place among the events of the saint's life.
PREFACE
If I have essayed to do in this book what should have been done by one
of the masters of the science of folklore--Mr. Frazer, Mr. Lang, Mr.
Hartland, Mr. Clodd, Sir John Rhys, and others--I hope it will not be
put down to any feelings of self-sufficiency on my part. I have
greatly dared because no one of them has accomplished, and I have so
acted because I feel the necessity of some guidance in these matters,
and more particularly at the present stage of inquiry into the early
history of man.
I have thought I could give somewhat of that guidance because of my
comprehension of its need, for the comprehension of a need is
sometimes half-way towards supplying the need. My profound belief in
the value of folklore as perhaps the only means of discovering the
earliest stages of the psychological, religious, social, and political
history of modern man has also entered into my reason for the attempt.
Many years ago I suggested the necessity for guidance, and I sketched
out a few of the points involved (_Folklore Journal_, ii. 285, 347;
iii. 1-16) in what was afterwards called by a friendly critic a sort
of grammar of folklore. The science of folklore has advanced far since
1885 however, and not only new problems but new ranges of thought have
gathered round it. Still, the claims of folklore as a definite
section of historical material remain not only unrecognised but
unstated, and as long as this is so the lesser writers on folklore
will go on working in wrong directions and producing much mischief,
and the historian will judge of folklore by the criteria presented by
these writers--will judge wrongly and will neglect folklore
accordingly.
I hope this book may tend to correct this state of things to some
extent. It is not easy to write on such a subject in a limited space,
and it is difficult to avoid being somewhat severely technical at
points. These demerits will, I am sure, be forgiven when considered by
the light of the human interest involved.
All studies of this kind must begin from the standpoint of a definite
culture area, and I have chosen our own country for the purpose of
this inquiry. This will make the illustrations more interesting to the
English reader; but it must be borne in mind that the same process
could be repeated for other areas if my estimate of the position is
even tolerably accurate. For the purpose of this estimate it was
necessary, in the first place, to show how pure history was intimately
related to folklore at many stages, and yet how this relationship had
been ignored by both historian and folklorist. The research for this
purpose had necessarily to deal with much detail, and to introduce
fresh elements of research. There is thus produced a somewhat unequal
treatment; for when illustrations have to be worked out at length,
because they appear for the first time, the mind is apt to wander from
the main point at issue and to become lost in the subordinate issue
arising from the working out of the chosen illustration. This, I
fear, is inevitable in folklore research, and I can only hope I have
overcome some of the difficulties caused thereby in a fairly
satisfactory manner.
The next stage takes us to a consideration of materials and methods,
in order to show the means and definitions which are necessary if
folklore research is to be conducted on scientific lines. Not only is
it necessary to ascertain the proper position of each item of folklore
in the culture area in which it is found, but it is also necessary to
ascertain its scientific relationship to other items found in the same
area; and I have protested against the too easy attempt to proceed
upon the comparative method. Before we can compare we must be certain
that we are comparing like quantities.
These chapters are preliminary. After this stage we proceed to the
principal issues, and the first of these deals with the psychological
conditions. It was only necessary to treat of this subject shortly,
because the illustrations of it do not need analysis. They are
self-contained, and supply their own evidence as to the place they
occupy.
The anthropological conditions involve very different treatment. The
great fact necessary to bear in mind is that the people of a modern
culture area have an anthropological as well as a national or
political history, and that it is only the anthropological history
which can explain the meaning and existence of folklore. This subject
found me compelled to go rather more deeply than I had thought would
be necessary into first principles, but I hope I have not altogether
failed to prove that to properly understand the province of folklore
it is necessary to know something of anthropological research and its
results. In point of fact, without this consideration of folklore,
there is not much value to be obtained from it. It is not because it
consists of traditions, superstitions, customs, beliefs, observances,
and what not, that folklore is of value to science. It is because the
various constituents are survivals of something much more essential to
mankind than fragments of life which for all practical purposes of
progress might well disappear from the world. As survivals, folklore
belongs to anthropological data, and if, as I contend, we can go so
far back into survivals as totemism, we must understand generally what
position totemism occupies among human institutions, and to understand
this we must fall back to human origins.
The next divisions are more subordinate. Sociological conditions must
be studied apart from their anthropological aspect, because in the
higher races the social group is knit together far more strongly and
with far greater purpose than among the lower races. The social force
takes the foremost place among the influences towards the higher
development, and it is necessary not only to study this but to be sure
of the terms we use. Tribe, clan, family, and other terms have been
loosely used in anthropology, just as state, city, village, and now
village-community, are loosely used in history. The great fact to
understand is that the social group of the higher races was based on
blood kinship at the time when they set out to take their place in
modern civilisation, and that we cannot understand survivals in
folklore unless we test them by their position as part of a tribal
organisation. The point has never been taken before, and yet I do not
see how it can be dismissed.
The consideration of European conditions is chiefly concerned with the
all-important fact of an intrusive religion, that of Christianity,
from without, destroying the native religions with which it came into
contact, conditions which would of course apply only to the folklore
of European countries.
Finally, I have discussed ethnological conditions in order to show
that certain fundamental differences in folklore can be and ought to
be explained as the results of different race origins. We are now
getting rid of the notion that all Europe is peopled by the
descendants of the so-called Aryans. There is too much evidence to
show that the still older races lived on after they were conquered by
Celt, Teuton, Scandinavian, or Slav, and there is no reason why
folklore should not share with language, archaeology, and physical type
the inheritance from this earliest race.
In this manner I have surveyed the several conditions attachable to
the study of folklore and the various departments of science with
which it is inseparably associated. Folklore cannot be studied alone.
Alone it is of little worth. As part of the inheritance from bygone
ages it cannot separate itself from the conditions of bygone ages.
Those who would study it carefully, and with purpose, must consider it
in the light which is shed by it and upon it from all that is
contributory to the history of man.
During my exposition I have ventured upon many criticisms of masters
in the various departments of knowledge into which I have penetrated;
but in all cases with great respect. Criticism, such as I have
indulged in, is nothing more than a respectful difference of opinion
on the particular points under discussion, and which need every light
which can be thrown upon them, even by the humblest student.
I am particularly obliged to Mr. Lang, Mr. Hartland, Dr. Haddon, and
Dr. Rivers, for kindly reading my chapter on Anthropological
Conditions, and for much valuable and kind help therein; and
especially I owe Mr. Lang most grateful thanks, for he took an immense
deal of trouble and gave me the advantage of his searching criticism,
always in the direction of an endeavour to perfect my faulty evidence.
I shall not readily part with his letters and MS. on this subject, for
they show alike his generosity and his brilliance.
To my old friend Mr. Fairman Ordish I am once more indebted for help
in reading my sheets, and I am also glad to acknowledge the fact that
two of my sons, Allan Gomme and Wycombe Gomme, have read my proofs and
helped me much, not only by their criticism, but by their knowledge.
24 DORSET SQUARE, N.W.
FOLKLORE AS AN HISTORICAL SCIENCE
CHAPTER I
HISTORY AND FOLKLORE
It may be stated as a general rule that history and folklore are not
considered as complementary studies. Historians deny the validity of
folklore as evidence of history, and folklorists ignore the essence of
history which exists in folklore. Of late years it is true that Dr.
Frazer, Prof. Ridgeway, Mr. Warde Fowler, Miss Harrison, Mr. Lang, and
others have broken through this antagonism and shown that the two
studies stand together; but this is only in certain special
directions, and no movement is apparent that the brilliant results of
special inquiries are to bring about a general consideration of the
mutual help which the two studies afford, if in their respective
spheres the evidence is treated with caution and knowledge, and if the
evidence from each is brought to bear upon the necessities of each.
The necessities of history are obvious. There are considerable gaps in
historical knowledge, and the further back we desire to penetrate the
scantier must be the material at the historian's disposal. In any case
there can be only two considerable sources of historical knowledge,
namely, foreign and native. Looking at the subject from the points
presented by the early history of our own country, there are the Greek
and Latin writers to whom Britain was a source of interest as the most
distant part of the then known world, and the native historians, who,
witnessing the terribly changing events which followed the break-up of
the Roman dominion over Britain, recorded their views of the changes
and their causes, and in course of time recorded also some of the
events of Celtic history and of Anglo-Saxon history. Then for later
periods, no country of the Western world possesses such magnificent
materials for history as our own. In the vast quantity of public and
private documents which are gradually being made accessible to the
student there exists material for the illustration and elucidation of
almost every side and every period of national life, and no branch of
historical research is more fruitful of results than the comparison of
the records of the professed historian with the documents which have
not come from the historian's hands.
All this, however, does not give us the complete story. Necessarily
there are great and important gaps. Contemporary writers make
themselves the judges of what is important to record; documents
preserved in public or private archives relate only to such events as
need or command the written record or instrument, or to those which
have interested some of the actors and their families. Hence in both
departments of history, the historical narrative and the original
record, it will be found on careful examination that much is needed
to make the picture of life complete. It is the detail of everyday
thought and action that is missing--all that is so well known, the
obvious as it passes before every chronicler, the ceremony, the faith,
and the action which do not apparently affect the movements of
civilisation, but which make up the personal, religious and political
life of the people. It is always well to bear in mind that the
historical records preserved from the past must necessarily be
incomplete. An accident preserves one, and an accident destroys
another. An incident strikes one historian, and is of no interest to
another. And it may well be that the lost document, the unrecorded
incident, is of far more value to later ages than what has been
preserved. This condition of historical research is always present to
the scientific student, though it is not always brought to bear upon
the results of historical scholarship.[1] But the scope of the
historian is gradually but surely widening. It is no longer possible
to shut the door to geography, ethnography, economics, sociology,
archaeology, and the attendant studies if the historian desires to work
his subject out to the full.[2] It is even getting to be admitted that
an appeal must be made to folklore, though the extent and the method
are not understood. After all that can be obtained from other realms
of knowledge, it is seen that there is a large gap left still--a gap
in the heart of things, a gap waiting to be filled by all that can be
learned about the thought, ideas, beliefs, conceptions, and
aspirations of the people which have been translated for them, but not
by them, in the laws, institutions, and religion which find their way
so easily into history.
The necessities of folklore are far greater than and of a different
kind from those of history. Edmund Spenser wrote three centuries ago
"by these old customs the descent of nations can only be proved where
other monuments of writings are not remayning,"[3] and yet the descent
of nations is still being proved without the aid of folklore. It is
certain that the appeal will not be made to its fullest extent unless
the folklorist makes it clear that it will be answered in a fashion
which commands attention. It appears to me that the preliminary
conditions for such an appeal must be ascertained from the folklore
side. History has not only justified its existence, but during the
long period of years during which it has been a specific branch of
learning it has shown its capacity for proceeding on strictly
scientific and ever-widening lines. Folklore has neither had a long
period for its study nor a completely satisfactory record of
scientific work. It is, therefore, essential that folklore should
establish its right to a place among the historical sciences. At
present that right is not admitted. It is objected to by scholars who
will not admit that history can proceed from anything but a dated and
certified document, and by a few who do not admit that history has
anything to do with affairs that do not emanate from the prominent
political or military personages of each period. It is silently, if
not contemptuously ignored by almost every historical inquirer whose
attention has not been specially directed to the evidence contained in
traditional material. Thus between the difficulties arising from the
interpretation of texts which, originating in oral tradition, have by
reason of their early record become literature, and the difficulties
arising from the objections of historians to accept any evidence that
is not strictly historical in the form they assume to be historical,
traditional material has not been extensively used as history. It has
also been wrongly defined by historians. Thus, to give a pertinent
example, so good a scholar as Mr. W. H. Stevenson, in his admirable
edition of Asser's _Life of King Alfred_, lays to the crimes of
tradition an error which is due to other causes. Indeed, he states the
cause of the error correctly, but does not see that he is
contradicting himself in so doing. It is worth quoting this case. It
has to do with the identification of "Cynuit," a place where the Danes
obtained a victory over the English forces, and Kenwith Castle in
Devonshire has been claimed as the site of the struggle and "a place
known as Bloody Corner in Northam is traditionally regarded as the
scene of a duel between two of the chieftains in 877, and a monument
recording the battle has been erected."[4] Mr. Stevenson's comment
upon this is: "We have in this an instructive example of the
worthlessness of 'tradition' which is here, as so frequently happens
elsewhere, the outcome of the dreams of local antiquaries, whose
identifications become gradually impressed upon the memory of the
inhabitants;" and he then proceeds to show that this particular
tradition was produced by the suggestion of Mr. R. S. Vidal in 1804.
Of course, the answer of the folklorist to this charge against the
value of tradition is that the example is not a case of tradition[5]
at all. On the contrary, it is a case of false history, started by the
local antiquary, adopted by the scholars of the day, perpetuated by
the government in its ordnance survey of the district, and kept alive
in the minds of the people not by tradition but by a duly certified
monument erected for the express purpose of commemorating the invented
incident. There is then no tradition in any one of the stages through
which the episode has passed. It is all history and false history.
Historians cannot shake off their responsibilities by looking upon the
local antiquary as the responsible author of tradition. They cannot
but admit that the local antiquary belongs to the historical school,
even though he is not a fully equipped member of his craft, and
because he blunders they must not class him as a folklorist. They must
bring better evidence than this to show the worthlessness of
tradition. In the meantime it is the constant definition of tradition
as worthless, the relegation of worthless history "to the realms of
folklore,"[6] which does so much harm to the study of folklore as a
science.[7] Because the historian misnames an historical error as
tradition, or fails to discover, at the moment he requires it, the
fact which lies hidden in tradition, he must not dismiss the whole
realm of tradition as useless for historical purposes.
Let us freely admit that the historian is not altogether to blame for
his neglect and for his ignorance of tradition as historical material.
He has nothing very definite to work upon. Even the great work of
Grimm is open to the criticism that it does not _prove_ the antiquity
of popular custom and belief--it merely states the proposition, and
then relies for proof upon the accumulation of an enormous number of
examples and the almost entire impossibility of suggesting any other
origin than that of antiquity for such a mass of non-Christian
material. Then the great work of Grimm, ethnographical in its methods,
has never been followed up by similar work for other countries. The
philosophy of folklore has taken up almost all the time of our
scholars and students, and the contribution it makes to the history of
the civilised races has not been made out by folklorists themselves.
It does not appear to me to be difficult to make out such a claim if
only scientific methods are adopted, and the solution of definite
problems is attempted;[8] and if too the difficulties in the way of
proof are freely admitted, and where they become insuperable, the
attempt at proof is frankly abandoned. I believe that every single
item of folklore, every folk-tale, every tradition, every custom and
superstition, has its origin in some definite fact in the history of
man; but I am ready to concede that the definite fact is not always
traceable, that it sometimes goes so far back as to defy recognition,
that it sometimes relates to events which have no place in the
after-history of peoples who have taken a position on the earth's
surface, and which, in the prehistory stage, belong to humanity rather
than to peoples. Folklore, too, is governed by its own laws and rules
which are not the laws and rules of history. These concessions,
however, do not mean the introduction of the term "impossible" to our
studies. They mean rather a plea for the steady and systematic study
of our material, on the ground that it has much to yield to the
historian of man, and to the historians of races, of peoples, of
nations, and of countries.
[Illustration: CARVED WOODEN FIGURES IN SWAFFHAM CHURCH, NORFOLK]
We cannot, however, show that this is so without facing many
difficulties created for the most part by folklorists themselves. In
the first place it is necessary to overtake some of the earlier
conclusions of the great masters of our science. The first rush, after
the discovery of the mine, led to the vortex created by the school
of comparative mythologists, who limited their comparison to the myths
of Aryan-speaking people, who absolutely ignored the evidence of
custom, rite, and belief, and who could see nothing beyond
interpretations of the sun, dawn, and sky gods in the parallel stories
they were the first to discover and value. We need not ignore all this
work, nor need we be ungrateful to the pioneers who executed it. It
was necessary that their view should be stated, and it is satisfactory
that it was stated at a time early in the existence of our science,
because it is possible to clear it all away, or as much of it as is
necessary, without undue interference with the material of which it is
composed.
The school of comparative mythologists did not, however, entirely
control the early progress of the study of folklore. There was always
a school who believed in the foundation of myth being derived from the
facts of life. Thus Dr. Tylor, in a remarkable study of historical
traditions and myths of observation,[9] long ago noted that many of
the traditions current among mankind were historical in origin.
Writing nearly forty years ago, he had to submit to the influence,
then at its height, of Adalbert Kuhn and Max Mueller, and he conceded
that there were many traditions which were fictional myths. I think
this concession must now be much more narrowly scrutinised, and
preparation made for the conclusion that every genuine myth is a myth
of observation, the observation by men in a primitive state of
culture, of a fact which had struck home to their minds. The question
is, to what part of human history does the central fact appertain?
Here is undoubtedly a most difficult problem. What the student has to
do is to admit the difficulty, and to state, if necessary, that the
fact preserved by tradition is not in all cases possible to discover
with our present knowledge. This is a perfectly tenable position.
Human imagination cannot invent anything that is outside of fact. It
may, and of course too frequently does, misinterpret facts. In
attempting to explain and account for such facts with insufficient
knowledge, it gets far away from the truth, but this misinterpretation
of fact must not be confused with the fact itself. In a word, it must
be borne in mind by the student of tradition that every tradition
which has assumed the form of saga, myth, or story contains two
perfectly independent elements--the fact upon which it is founded, and
the interpretation of the fact which its founders have attempted.
There is further than this. The other branch of traditional material,
namely that relating to custom, belief, and rite, rests upon a solid
basis of historic fact; customs which are strange and irrational to
this age are not in consequence to be considered the mere worthless
following of practices which owe their origin to accident or freak;
beliefs which do not belong to the established religion are not in
consequence to be considered as mere superstition; rites which were
not established by authority are not in consequence to be classed as
mere specimens of popular ignorance. But the difficulties in the way
of getting all this accepted by the historian are many, and, again,
not a few of them are the creation of the folklorist himself. Not only
has he neglected to classify and arrange the scattered items of
custom, belief, and rite, and to ascertain the degree of association
which the scattered items have with each other, but he has set about
the far more difficult and complex task of comparative study without
having previously prepared his material.
The historian and the folklorist are thus brought face to face with
what is expected from both, in order that each may work alongside of
the other, using each other's materials and conclusions at the right
moment and in the right places. The folklorist has the most to do to
get his results ready, and to explain and secure his position. He has
been wandering about in a somewhat inconsequential fashion, bent upon
finding a _mythos_ where he should have sought for a _persona_ or a
_locus_, engaged in an extensive quest after parallels when he should
have been preparing his own material for the process of comparative
science, seeking for origins amidst human error when he should have
turned to human experience. He has to change all this waywardness for
systematic study, and this will lead him in the first place to
disengage from the results hitherto obtained those which may be
accepted and which may form the starting-point for future work. But
his greatest task will be the reconsideration of former results and
the rewriting of much that has been written on the wrong lines, and
when this is done we shall have the historian and folklorist meeting
together in the spirit which Edmund Spenser so finely and truly
described three centuries ago in his treatment of Irish history: "I do
herein rely upon those bards or Irish chronicles ... but unto them
besides I add mine own reading and out of them both together with
comparison of times likewise of manners and customs, affinity of words
and manner, properties of natures and uses, resemblances of rites and
ceremonies, monuments of churches and tombs and many other like
circumstances I do gather a likelihood of truth, not certainly
affirming anything, but by conferring of times language monuments and
such like I do hunt out a probability of things which I leave to your
judgment to believe or refuse."[10]
I shall of course not be able to undertake either of these tasks. I
shall attempt, however, to indicate their scope and importance; and as
a preliminary to the consideration of the definite departments into
which the subject falls, it is advisable, I think, to test the
relationship of tradition to history by means of one or two
illustrations. It may be that the illustrations I shall give are not
accepted by all students, that some better illustration is forthcoming
by further research. This is one of the drawbacks from which tradition
suffers, and must suffer, until our studies are much further advanced
than they are at present. But I am glad to accept this possibility of
error as part of the case for the study of tradition, because the
error of one student cannot be held to disqualify the whole subject.
It only amounts to saying that the particular fact which seems to me
to be discoverable in the examples dealt with has to be surrendered in
favour of another particular fact. My conclusions may be dismissed,
but that which is not dismissible is the discoverable fact, and it is
only when the true fact is discovered in each traditional item that
previous inferences may be neglected or ignored and inquiry cease.[11]
I
The evidence of historic events which enter into tradition relates
principally to the earliest periods, but much of it relates to periods
well within the domain of history and yet reveals facts which history
has either hopelessly neglected or misinterpreted. We shall find that
these facts, though frequently relating to minor events, often have
reference to matters of the highest national importance, and perhaps
nowhere more definitely is this the case than in the legends connected
with particular localities. Of one such tradition I will state what a
somewhat detailed examination tells in this direction. It will, I
think, serve as a good example of the kind of research that is
required in each case, and it will illustrate in a rather special
manner the value of these traditions to history.
The _locus_ of the legend centres round London Bridge. The earliest
written version of this legend is quoted from the MSS. of Sir Roger
Twysden, who obtained it from "Sir William Dugdale, of Blyth Hall, in
Warwickshire, in a letter dated 29th January, 1652-3." Sir William
says of it that "it was the tradition of the inhabitants as it was
told me there," and Sir Roger Twysden adds of it that: "I have since
learnt from others to be most true." This, therefore, is a very
respectable origin for the legend, and I will transcribe it from Sir
William Dugdale's letter which begins "the story of the Pedlar of
Swaffham-market is in substance this":--
"That dreaming one night if he went to London he
should certainly meet with a man on London Bridge
which would tell him good news he was so perplext in
his mind that till he set upon his journey he could
have no rest; to London therefore he hasts and walk'd
upon the Bridge for some hours where being espyed by a
shopkeeper and asked what he wanted he answered you
may well ask me that question for truly (quoth he) I
am come hither upon a very vain errand and so told the
story of his dream which occasioned the journey.
Whereupon the shopkeeper reply'd alas good friend
should I have heeded dreams I might have proved myself
as very a fool as thou hast, for 'tis not long since
that I dreamt that at a place called Swaffham Market
in Norfolk dwells one John Chapman a pedlar who hath a
tree in his backside under which is buried a pot of
money. Now therefore if I should have made a journey
thither to day for such hidden treasure judge you
whether I should not have been counted a fool. To whom
the pedlar cunningly said yes verily I will therefore
return home and follow my business not heeding such
dreams hence forward. But when he came home being
satisfied that his dream was fulfilled he took
occasion to dig in that place and accordingly found a
large pot of money which he prudently conceal'd
putting the pot amongst the rest of his brass. After a
time it happen'd that one who came to his house and
beholding the pot observed an inscription upon it
which being in Latin he interpreted it that under that
there was an other twice as good. Of this inscription
the Pedlar was before ignorant or at least minded it
not but when he heard the meaning of it he said 'tis
very true in the shop where I bought this pot stood
another under it which was twice as big; but
considering that it might tend to his further profit
to dig deeper in the same place where he found that he
fell again to work and discover'd such a pot as was
intimated by the inscription full of old coins:
notwithstanding all which he so conceal'd his wealth
that the neighbours took no notice of it."[12]
Blomefield thought it "somewhat surprising to find such considerable
persons as Sir William Dugdale and Sir Roger Twysden to patronise or
credit such a monkish legend and tradition savouring so much of the
cloister, and that the townsmen and neighbourhood should also believe
it," but I think we shall have reason to congratulate ourselves that
so good a folk-tale was preserved for us of this age.
The next and, it appears, an independent version, is given in the
_Diary of Abraham de la Pryme_, under the date November 10th, 1699:--
"Constant tradition says that there lived in former
times, in Soffham (Swaffham), _alias_ Sopham, in
Norfolk, a certain pedlar, who dreamed that if he went
to London bridge, and stood there, he should hear very
joyfull newse, which he at first sleighted, but
afterwards, his dream being dubled and trebled upon
him, he resolv'd to try the issue of it, and
accordingly went to London, and stood on the bridge
there two or three days, looking about him, but heard
nothing that might yield him any comfort. At last it
happen'd that a shopkeeper there, hard by, haveing
noted his fruitless standing, seeing that he neither
sold any wares nor asked any almes, went to him and
most earnestly begged to know what he wanted there, or
what his business was; to which the pedlar honestly
answer'd, that he had dream'd that if he came to
London and stood there upon the bridg, he should hear
good newse; at which the shopkeeper laught heartily,
asking him if he was such a fool as to take a journey
on such a silly errand, adding, 'I'll tell thee,
country fellow, last night I dream'd that I was at
Sopham, in Norfolk, a place utterly unknown to me,
where methought behind a pedlar's house in a certain
orchard, and under a great oak tree, if I digged I
should find a vast treasure! Now think you,' says he,
'that I am such a fool to take such a long jorney upon
me upon the instigation of a silly dream? No, no, I'm
wiser. Therefore, good fellow, learn witt of me, and
get you home, and mind your business.' The pedlar,
observeing his words, what he had sayd he had dream'd
and knowing they concenterd in him, glad of such
joyfull newse went speedily home, and digged and found
a prodigious great treasure, with which he grew
exceeding rich, and Soffham church being for the most
part fal'n down he set on workmen and reedifyd it most
sumptuously, at his own charges; and to this day there
is his statue therein, cut in stone, with his pack at
his back, and his dogg at his heels; and his memory is
also preserved by the same form or picture in most of
the old glass windows, taverns, and ale-houses of that
town unto this day."[13]
Now this version from Abraham de la Pryme was certainly obtained from
local sources, and it shows the general popularity of the legend,
together with the faithfulness of the traditional version.[14] But
other evidence of the traditional force of the story is to be found.
Observing that De la Pryme's _Diary_ was not printed until 1870,
though certainly the MS. had been lent to antiquaries, it is curious
that the following almost identical account is told in the _St.
James's Chronicle_ of November 28th, 1786:--[15]
"A Pedlar who lived many Years ago at Swaffham, in
Norfolk, dreamt, that if he came up to London, and
stood upon the Bridge, he should hear very joyful
News; which he at first slighted, but afterwards his
Dream being doubled and trebled unto him, he resolved
to try the Issue of it; and accordingly to London he
came, and stood on the Bridge for two or three Days,
but heard nothing which might give him Comfort that
the Profits of his Journey would be equal to his
Pains. At last it so happened, that a Shopkeeper
there, having noted his fruitless standing, seeing
that he neither sold any Wares, or asked any Alms,
went to him, and enquired his Business; to which the
Pedlar made Answer, that being a Countryman, he had
dreamt a Dream, that if he came up to London, he
should hear good News: 'And art thou (said the
Shopkeeper) such a Fool, to take a Journey on such a
foolish Errand? Why I tell thee this--last Night I
dreamt, that I was at Swaffham, in Norfolk, a Place
utterly unknown to me, where, methought, behind a
Pedlar's House, in a certain Orchard, under a great
Oak Tree, if I digged there, I should find a mighty
Mass of Treasure. Now think you, that I am so unwise,
as to take so long a Journey upon me, only by the
Instigation of a foolish Dream! No, no, far be such
Folly from me; therefore, honest Countryman, I advise
thee to make haste Home again, and do not spend thy
precious Time in the Expectation of the Event of an
idle Dream.' The Pedlar, who noted well his Words,
glad of such joyful News, went speedily Home, and
digged under the Oak, where he found a very large Heap
of Money; with Part of which, the Church being then
lately fallen down, he very sumptuously rebuilt it;
having his Statue cut therein, in Stone, with his Pack
on his Back and his Dog at his Heels, which is to be
seen at this Day. And his Memory is also preserved by
the same Form, or Picture, on most of the Glass
Windows of the Taverns and Ale-houses in that Town."
The differences in these versions are sufficient to show independent
origin. The identities are sufficient to illustrate, in a rather
remarkable manner, how closely the words of the tradition were always
followed. It appears from the last words of the contributor to the
_St. James's Chronicle_, who signed himself "Z," that he heard it by
word of mouth about the time of his writing it down,[16] so that there
is more than a hundred years between him and the Dugdale version,
which was also recorded from "constant tradition."
In Glyde's _Norfolk Garland_ (p. 69), is an account of this legend,
but with a variant of one incident. The box containing the treasure
had a Latin inscription on the lid, which John Chapman could not
decipher. He put the lid in his window, and very soon he heard some
youths turn the Latin sentence into English:--
"Under me doth lie
Another much richer than I."
And he went to work digging deeper than before, and found a much
richer treasure than the former. Another version of this rhyme is
found in _Transactions of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society_ (iii.
318) as follows:--
"Where this stood
Is another as good."
And both these versions are given by Blomefield.
Now if there were no other places besides Swaffham in Norfolk to which
this legend is applied the interest in it would, of course, not be
very great. But there are many other places, and we will first note
those in Britain. The best is from Upsall, in Yorkshire, as follows:--
"Many years ago there resided, in the village of
Upsall, a man who dreamed three nights successively
that if he went to London Bridge he would hear of
something greatly to his advantage. He went,
travelling the whole distance from Upsall to London on
foot; arrived there, he took his station on the
bridge, where he waited until his patience was nearly
exhausted, and the idea that he had acted a very
foolish part began to rise in his mind. At length he
was accosted by a Quaker, who kindly inquired what he
was waiting there so long for? After some hesitation,
he told his dreams. The Quaker laughed at his
simplicity, and told him that _he_ had had last night
a very curious dream himself, which was, that if he
went and dug under a certain bush in Upsall Castle, in
Yorkshire, he would find a pot of gold; but he did not
know where Upsall was, and inquired of the countryman
if he knew, who, seeing some advantage in secrecy,
pleaded ignorance of the locality, and then, thinking
his business in London was completed, returned
immediately home, dug beneath the bush, and there he
found a pot filled with gold, and on the cover an
inscription in a language which he did not understand.
The pot and cover were, however, preserved at the
village inn, where one day a bearded stranger like a
Jew, made his appearance, saw the pot, and read the
inscription on the cover, the plain English of which
was--
"'Look lower, where this stood
Is another twice as good.'
The man of Upsall hearing this resumed his spade,
returned to the bush, dug deeper, and found another
pot filled with gold, far more valuable than the
first. Encouraged by this discovery, he dug deeper
still, and found another yet more valuable.
"This is the constant tradition of the neighbourhood,
and the identical bush yet exists (or did in 1860)
beneath which the treasure was found; a burtree, or
elder, _Sambucus nigra_, near the north-west corner of
the ruins of the old castle."[17]
It would be tedious to go through other English versions,[18] but I
must point out that it is connected with a London district. This is
shown not by the actual presence of the legend, which has died out in
London, but by its representation in the parish church of Lambeth. The
legend so strongly current at Swaffham, in Norfolk, is represented in
the church in the shape of a carving in wood of a figure to represent
the pedlar, and below him the figure of what is locally called a
dog.[19] A comparison of this carving with the representation of the
pedlar's window formerly existing in Lambeth Church, but which was
sacrilegiously removed in 1884 by the late vicar of the parish, shows
much the same general characteristics, and search among the parish
books shows it to relate to a pedlar known by the name of Dog Smith,
who left property still known by the name of the "Pedlar's Acre" to
the parish.[20] All this suggests that we have here the last relics of
the pedlar legend located in London.
[Illustration: THE PEDLAR OF LAMBETH AND HIS DOG
FIGURED IN THE WINDOW (NOW DESTROYED) OF LAMBETH CHURCH]
The next stage in the history of this legend shows it to belong to the
world's collection of folk-tales. There is, however, a preliminary
fact of great significance to note, namely that two non-British
versions refer to London Bridge. Thus a Breton tale refers to London
Bridge, and the interest of this story is sufficiently great to quote
it here from its recorder straight from the Breton folk:--
"Long ago, when the timbers of the most ancient of the
vessels of Brest were not yet acorns, there were two
men in a farmhouse in the Cotes du Nord disputing, and
they were disputing about London Bridge. One said it
was the most beautiful sight in the world, while the
other very truly said, 'No! the grace of the good God
was more beautiful still.' And as the dispute went on,
'Let us,' said one of them, 'settle it once and for
all, and in this way: let us now this moment go out
along the high-road and let us ask the first three men
we meet as to which is the most beautiful--London
Bridge or the grace of the good God? And which ever
way they decide, he who holds the beaten opinion shall
lose to the other all his possessions, farm and cattle
and horses, everything.' So each being confident he
was right, they went out: and the first man they met
declared that though the grace of the good God was
beautiful, London Bridge was more beautiful still; and
the second the same, and the third. And the man whose
opinion was beaten, a rich farmer, gave up all he had
and was a beggar.
"'Now,' said he to himself when the other, taking his
horse by the bridle, had left him--'now let me go and
see this London Bridge which is so wonderfully
beautiful;' and, being very manful and stout, he set
out at once to walk, and walking on and on was there
by nightfall. But, good Christian that he was, he
could see in it nothing to shake his belief that the
grace of the good God was more beautiful still.
"Soon the bridge was silent, and the last to cross it
had gone home; and he, notwithstanding his losses,
tired out and sleepy, lay down and fell into a doze
there; and, while he was dozing, there came by two
men, and one of them, standing quite close by him,
said to the other, 'The night is fine, the wind
gentle, the stars clear! On such a night whoever were
to collect the dew would be able to heal the blind.'
'It is true,' answered the other; 'but none know of
it.' And they passed on, quietly as they had come.
Thereupon up rose the beggared farmer, and with basin
and cup set about collecting the dew; and in a very
short time performed with it the most wonderful cures;
finally curing the daughter of a neighbouring Emperor
who had been blind from her birth, and whom her
grateful father gave to him at once in marriage, since
directly she set eyes on him she loved him."[21]
[Illustration: THE PEDLAR OF LAMBETH
FROM DUCAREL'S "HISTORY OF LAMBETH," 1786]
The second non-British variant, which also attaches to London Bridge,
is to be found in the _Heimskringla_,[22] and I will quote William
Morris's translation:--
"West in Valland was a man infirm so that he was a
cripple and went on knees and knuckles. On a day he
was abroad on the way and was asleep there. That
dreamed he that a man came to him glorious of aspect
and asked whither he was bound and the man named some
town or other. So the glorious man spoke to him:
Fare then to Olaf's church the one that is in London
and thou wilt be whole. Thereafter he awoke, and fared
to seek Olaf's church and at last he came to London
bridge and there asked the folk of the city if they
knew to tell him where was Olaf's church. But they
answered and said that there were many more churches
there than they might wot to what man they were
hallowed. But a little thereafter came a man to him
who asked whither he was bound and the cripple told
him. And sithence said that man: We twain shall fare
both to the church of Olaf for I know the way thither.
Therewith they fared over the bridge and went along
the street which led to Olaf's church. But when they
came to the lich gate then strode that one over the
threshold of the gate but the cripple rolled in over
it and straightway rose up a whole man. But when he
looked around him his fellow farer was vanished."
I shall have to refer again to these Breton and Norse versions,
because of their retention of London Bridge as the locale of the
story, in common with all the versions which have been found in
Britain. In the meantime it is to be noted that the remaining
non-British variants are told of other bridges and other places.
Holland, Denmark, Italy, Cairo, have their representative
variants;[23] and it thus presents to the student of tradition an
excellent example for inquiry as to the value to history of legends
world-wide in their distribution attaching themselves to historical
localities.
There are some obvious features about this group of traditions, which
at once lead to interesting questions. There is first the fact that
all the British variants of the treasure stories centre round London
Bridge; secondly, there is the extension beyond Britain to the Breton
variant and the Norse variant, both non-British legends, of which the
_locus_ is London Bridge. From these two facts it is clear that London
Bridge had some special influence at a period of its history which
dates before the separation of the Breton folk from their Celtic
brethren in Britain, for the Bretons would not after their separation
acquire a London Bridge tradition; and again at a period of its
history when Norse legend and saga were fashioning. In the one case
the myth-makers must have been Celts of the fourth century, and the
only bridge known to these Celts must have been that belonging to
Roman Lundinium; in the other case the myth-makers were Norsemen, and
the bridge known to them was the later bridge so frequently referred
to in the chronicle accounts of the Danish and Norse invasions of
England.
It is not difficult, by a joint appeal to history and folklore, to
trace out from this very definite starting-point the events which
brought about this particular specialisation of the world-spread
treasure myths.
Obviously the first point to note is that London Bridge loomed out
greatly in the minds and understanding of people at two distinct
periods of its history.[24] That the first period relates to its
building is suggested by the date supplied by the evidence of the
Breton version. The people who wondered at its building, or the
results of its building, were certainly not the builders themselves,
and we thus see a distinction in culture between the bridge builders
and the wonder builders. This condition is exactly provided for by the
building of the earliest London Bridge. It was a work of the Romans of
Lundinium,[25] and the people who stood in wonder at this great
enterprise were not the Roman engineers and builders, accustomed to
such undertakings all over the then known world, and they must
therefore have been the surrounding non-Roman people, who were the
Celtic tribesmen. Now the culture-antagonism between the Romans of
Lundinium and the Celts of Britain is, I believe, a factor of great
importance,[26] though almost universally neglected by our historians,
because they do not study the facts of early history on
anthropological lines. Not only is it discoverable, as I think, from
the facts of history, but the facts of tradition confirm the facts of
history at all points. Thus I think it is important, if we can, to
obtain independent testimony of the attitude of the surrounding people
to the builders of London Bridge. We can do this by reference to the
peasant beliefs concerning bridges, as, for instance, in Ireland,
where on passing over a bridge they invariably pulled off their hats
and prayed for the soul of the builder of the bridge,[27] and to the
fact that the Romans themselves looked upon bridge-building as a
sacred function, and would no doubt use this part of their work to the
fullest extent, in order to impress the barbarism opposed to them.[28]
The extent of this impression may probably be contained in the old and
widely spread nursery rhyme of "London Bridge is Broken Down," an
examination of which has led Mrs. Gomme to conclude that it contains
reference to an ancient belief that the building of the bridge was
accompanied by human sacrifice.[29] This conclusion is confirmed by
the preservation in Wales of a bridge-sacrifice tradition. It relates
to the "Devil's Bridge" near Beddgelert. "Many of the ignorant people
of the neighbourhood believe that this structure was formed by
supernatural agency. The devil proposed to the neighbouring
inhabitants that he would build them a bridge across the pass, on
condition that he should have the first who went over it for his
trouble. The bargain was made, and the bridge appeared in its place,
but the people cheated the devil by dragging a dog to the spot and
whipping him over the bridge."[30] This is a distinct trace of a
substituted animal sacrifice for an original human sacrifice. But this
is a practice which sends us back to the most primitive times, and in
particular we are referred to an exact parallel in India, where, on
the governing English determining to build a bridge of engineering
proportions and strength over the Hoogley River at Calcutta, the
native Hindu tribesmen immediately believed that the first requirement
would be a human sacrifice for the foundation.[31] The traditions
attaching to London Bridge are therefore identical with the current
beliefs concerning the Hoogley Bridge, and the culture-relationship of
the bridge-builders to the surrounding people in both cases is that of
an advanced civilisation to tribesmen. Now if these conditions of
modern India are repetitions of the conditions of ancient Britain in
the days of Lundinium, and of this there can be but little doubt,
there is no difficulty in understanding to what part of history these
traditions have led us. We are again in the days when London Bridge
was a marvel--a marvel which sent travelling through the Celtic homes
of Britain a new application of the treasure myth which they had
inherited from remote ancestors. The marvel lived on through the ages
when London was in the unique position of being an undestroyed city in
Saxon times, times which witnessed the destruction of all other
cities of Roman foundation,[32] and the sending forth of the Celtic
refugees to Brittany.[33] The accumulation during a long-continuing
period of conceptions of treasure being found by way of the bridge
leading to London, would become the direct force for keeping the
tradition alive; and while the facts of history show us the important
position of London during the period which witnessed the departure of
the Celtic Bretons to their continental home,[34] the facts of
tradition show us the Celtic tribesmen deeming it a way to wealth
through the magic potency of dreamland. The Celtic tribesmen stood
outside Roman Lundinium. Its life was not their life, and their
conversion of its position into a mythic treasure house or a mythic
road to treasure, and their association of it with the bloody rites of
the foundation sacrifice, are in strict accord with the historical
relationship of the tribal life of Celtic Britain to the city life of
Roman Lundinium.
I may be permitted perhaps to emphasise this significant accordance of
history and tradition when working together. I have already alluded to
the fact that I have worked out the history of London independently,
and upon lines quite different from the present study. I have
therefore a wider grasp of the two currents of history and folklore in
this particular case than could in the ordinary way fall either to the
historian or to the folklorist. That I can find in both just the
complementary facts which help to realise the whole situation, to fill
in the gaps of history which nowhere directly tells of the
relationship of Roman Lundinium to the British Celts, to extend the
outlook of folklore which nowhere recognises that there was a great
Roman city of Lundinium which would dominate the minds of those not
trained to city life, is a fortunate circumstance which neither
historian nor folklorist is likely to repeat frequently, and I am
entitled, I think, to claim the utmost from it. I can at least claim
that it answers all the facts in a way that has not yet been
accomplished. Thus Sir John Rhys has discussed the treasure legend and
he can only account for it as part of the mythical trappings of Arthur
into which "London Bridge is introduced," because London Bridge
"formerly loomed very large in the popular imagination as one of the
chief wonders of London." Sir John Rhys refers for confirmation of
this to the "notion cherished as to London and London Bridge by the
country people of Wales even within my own memory," and then goes on
to say that "the fashion of selecting London Bridge as the opening
scene of a treasure legend had been set perhaps by a widely spread
English story," that of the Pedlar of Swaffham.[35] All this is very
unsatisfactory. Modern notions of this sort would not set the fashion
two centuries ago, nor extend it to Brittany. Nor is the suggestion in
accord with other evidence as to the extension of tradition. What has
happened is that the Arthur cycle has appropriated two London Bridge
traditions and has worked them up into the Arthur form, the traditions
themselves belonging to the far older period to which I have here
referred them--a period when the burial of treasure was a necessary
corollary to the events which were happening.[36] Buried treasure
legends are found all over the country. They belong to the period of
conquest and fighting. They are the evidence which tradition yields of
the unrest of the times which caused them to arise. They are the
fragments of history which tradition has preserved, while history has
coldly passed them by.[37]
With this in the background as the _corpus_ of a legend-covered
London Bridge, we come to the second period.
London Bridge to the Norsemen of the tenth and eleventh centuries was
a place of fierce fighting and struggle, a place of victory and death.
The saga takes pains to describe this wondrous bridge[38] before it
describes the great fight there and its capture by King Olaf, a fight
which produced a war-rhyme which, in Laing's version, begins with the
same words as the English nursery rhyme, "London Bridge is broken
down!"[39] and which Morris renders as a tribute to King Olaf, "thou
brakest down London Bridge." There is little wonder, then, that the
men of King Olaf took back with them to saga-land a great memory of
this bridge and this fight, transferred to it their own variant of the
world-wide treasure legend, and made a legend not of money treasure,
but of regained health to a crippled warrior. The corresponding
non-British version of Brittany helps us to understand that the cure
of disease was originally associated with the gains of treasure, and
in the Norse version the treasure incident is altogether dropped, but
in its place is the recovery of health, a treasure more in accord with
the sterner needs and recollections of a great fight. The Norse story
is helpful to us as showing how London Bridge could enter into the
legends of a people, and remain with them even after that people was
no longer living in Britain, and it becomes therefore a valuable
addition to the evidence for the more ancient transference from
Britain to Brittany of the original legend.
Altogether the piecing together of the items of historical value in
this legend is most complete. We have not only recovered for history
hitherto lost conceptions of the place held by Roman Lundinium among
the Celtic tribesmen, but we have recovered also evidence of the true
culture-position of the Celtic tribesmen towards their Roman
conquerors. The examination of this legend may have been long and
tedious, but the result is, I think, commensurate. It illustrates the
power of tradition to set historical data in their proper environment,
to restore the proportion which they bear to unrecorded history, and
if the student will but follow the evidence carefully, I think he will
find these results.
We will take a step forward, and turn from local to personal
attachments of tradition. There is a whole class of traditions
attached to personages about whose historical existence there can be
but little doubt, and just because of the accretion of tradition round
them their historical existence has oftentimes been denied. The most
famous example in our history is of course King Arthur, and so great
an authority as Sir John Rhys is obliged to resort to a special
argument to account for the problems he is faced with. He argues, and
argues strongly, for an historic Arthur--an Arthur who was the British
successor of the Roman emperor after Britain had ceased to be a part
of the Roman Empire.[40] But because of the myths which have grown
round him, he suggests that there must also have been "a Brythonic
divinity named Arthur," and we are thus introduced to a dual study of
history and myth which does not appear to me to take us very far, and
which, in fact, just separates history from myth, instead of showing
where they join hands. This dual conception of myth is indeed a rather
favourite resort of those scholars who cannot appreciate the evidence
that proves a character in a mythic tradition to be an actual
historical personage. It is the basis of the famous Sigfried-Arminius
controversy. It does duty in many less important cases,[41] and most
frequently in connection with northern mythology, where the line
between mythic and historical events gathering round a hero is
generally so finely drawn as to be almost imperceptible. But it is so
obviously a piece of special pleading on self-created lines that other
explanation is needed. And another explanation is to be obtained if
only students will rely upon the evidence of tradition itself instead
of appealing to every fancy derived from sources which have nothing to
do with tradition.
The history of King Arthur has been the subject of inquiry too
frequently for it to be possible in these pages to discuss the dual
theory as it has been applied to him, but I will attempt to show that
it is quite unnecessary thus to explain the history of King Arthur by
turning to the history of another of our great heroic figures, one of
the greatest to my mind, who, like Arthur, has secured not only a fair
share of special tradition belonging to himself personally, but a
larger share than others of that corpus of tradition which has
descended from our earliest unknown ancestors, and become attached to
the historical hero of later times--I mean, Hereward, the last of the
Saxon defenders of his land against William the Norman.[42] The
analysis of the Hereward legend affords a good example of the process
by which tradition is preserved by historical fact, and in its turn
helps to unravel the real history which lies at the source. Instead,
therefore, of attempting to travel over the voluminous literature
which is the outcome of the King Arthur story, I will use for the same
purpose the shorter story of Hereward the Englishman.
We start with the fact that Hereward is unknown to history until his
great stand in the Island of Ely against the might of William, the
conqueror of England. And yet to the banners of this "unknown"
chieftain there flocked the discontented heroism of England, men
ranking from the noble to the peasant, and including such great
figures as Morcar, Edwine, and Waltheof. I always think, too, that the
little band of Berkshire men, who started across the country to join
Hereward in the fens, and were intercepted and cut to pieces by a
Norman troop,[43] give us more than a passing glimpse at the
estimation in which Hereward was held by his countrymen. Such a man
commanding so much, in face of so much, could not have been the
unknown person which history makes him.
How then can we ascertain why he was held in such estimation? History
being quite silent, tradition steps into the gap. It is the tradition
recorded in post-Herewardian times, be it noted. In this great body of
tradition, contained in a Latin MS. of the twelfth century, he
journeys to Scotland, where he slew a bear and saved the people whom
it had oppressed; from thence to Cornwall, where he fought and slew a
great champion, the lover of the princess; from thence to Ireland,
where he assisted the King in war, and back again to Cornwall to
rescue again the princess from a distasteful wooer, and, finally, to
Flanders. Even in the camp of the Norman, which he visits in
traditional fashion, he has an adventure with witches which takes us
to the worship of wells. Much of his adventure is but the application
of well-known traditional events,[44] and it is important to note that
the geography of the supposed travels belongs to the very home of
tradition, the unknown territories of the Celts, Ireland, Cornwall,
and Scotland.
Now all this tradition is certainly not true of Hereward. But what it
does is to certify to his greatness in the eyes of his countrymen, to
show that his countrymen were anxious to explain why he was so great
in A.D. 1070, and why before that date he was unknown to them. This is
an important point to have gained. It shows the vacuum which was
occupied by tradition because contemporary, or nearly contemporary,
thought required it to be filled up. The popular mind abhors a vacuum
as much as the material world of nature does. It will fill it with its
own conceptions, if it cannot fill it with recognised facts. Hereward
must have been a famous man when he took his stand in the fens of Ely.
That his biographers explain his fame by the application of ancient
traditions is only saying that his countrymen reckoned his fame as of
the very highest; ordinary current events of the day would not suit
their ideas of the fitness of things. Hereward was as Alfred had been,
as Arthur had been, and so he must have his share of the national
tradition, even as these heroes had. To say less of him was to have
put him below the others. And history in this case could not help, for
it was in the hands of Hereward's enemies, and they were careful to
say nothing or very little of English heroes at this period. The great
battle of Hastings had been lost, but of all the English men who had
fought and died there we only know of three names beyond those of the
king and his house. Leofric the abbot of Peterborough, Godric the
sheriff of Berkshire, and Asgar the sheriff of London, have become
known by accident, as it were. All others are unnamed and unhonoured.
Therefore, when the great deeds of Hereward came to be chronicled, it
was not enough to say he was at Hastings; the deeds of old must be
chronicled of him as they had been chronicled of others.
This accretion of popular tradition to account for the fame of
Hereward when he took command at Ely, though it proclaims in the
strongest terms that Hereward was famous in the eyes of his
countrymen, displaces history therefore. Putting the case in this
way, we may proceed to examine what recorded history exactly has to
say of Hereward, and then by noting what it has left unsaid, we may
perhaps be able to fill the gap by a reasonable deduction from the
facts. In Domesday there are clearly two Herewards, one having lands
in Lincolnshire in the time of King Edward and _not_ at the date of
the survey, the other having lands in Warwickshire in the time of King
Edward and _also_ at the date of the survey. Here we have two widely
different counties and two widely different conditions, and it is
right with all the evidence to conclude that they relate to different
personages. The Lincolnshire Hereward is the hero of the fens. He held
of the abbot of Peterborough, and Ulfcytil, who was appointed in 1062,
was the abbot in question. This brings us to only four years before
the battle of Hastings, and another entry in Domesday, thanks to the
scholarship of Mr. Round, proves that Hereward was deprived of his
Lincolnshire lands not before but after the great fights at Hastings
and in the fens. Therefore the story shapes itself somewhat in this
fashion. Hereward was in England in 1062. He was then a man of the
abbot of Peterborough; that is to say, a tenant bound to perform
military service to his lord. His lord, the abbot, was at Hastings
with his tenants, and fought there. That Hereward of all the abbot's
tenants should have followed his lord to Hastings is more than likely;
the strange thing would be that he should not have done so. That going
thither nameless among the many, he should gain experience under
Harold, though no fame has come to him through the historians from a
field where Saxon fame was buried; that his own genius should make
him use his experience when need arose; that among the English all
survivors from that field who were still unwilling to bow the knee to
William would be reckoned as heroes by their depressed countrymen;
that on this account alone he would be given rank above Morcar, who
had kept away from Hastings--are the conclusions to be drawn
legitimately from the silence as well as the actual records of
history, compared with the story told by tradition. History and
tradition are in accord, not in conflict; the gaps of history are
filled by tradition--that tradition which was suitable and worthy of
so great a hero, namely the ancient tradition told of all heroes.
Reopening these gaps and putting in its right place the tradition
which had hitherto prevented them from being seen, we are able to
appeal to history to yield up the true story of one of the greatest of
English heroes, a story which shows him to have been at Hastings by
the side of Harold, to have won fame there, to have continued the
fight for English liberty as leader of the English patriots, and to
have earned a place in the unsung English epic.
But his place in English tradition helps us to understand the value
and position of tradition in such cases. The traditions clustering
round the name of Hereward do not compel us to interpret them as
Hereward facts. The historian, however, need not on this account fear
for Hereward. He should rather value the traditions as evidence of the
greatness of the English hero among the conquered English. They
applied to him the legends of their oldest heroes. All that was
delightful to them in tradition was attached to their present hero.
He was worthy of a place among their greatest. And thus the fact of
added tradition brings out the estimate of the worth of the hero to
those among whom he lived and for whom he fought.
The traditions themselves belong to far other times, and the facts
contained in them must be interpreted from the oldest ideas of our
race. It is only by thus disengaging the traditions which have grown
round the historical person that the correct interpretation of the
position can be attempted, and when that is done we are left, not with
a mass of uncertain and misleading testimony about a national hero,
but with certain definite historical facts belonging to Hereward, and
certain traditions attached to Hereward, certifying to his great place
in the popular estimation, telling of facts which do not, it is true,
belong to Hereward, but which, in a special sense, belong to the
people who were reverencing Hereward.
If I have made it clear from these examples that the explanation of
historic fact and mythic tradition in combination does not lead either
to the discrediting of history or to the creation of new mythic
realms, I need not dwell much longer on this class of illustrations of
the relationship between history and tradition. Over and over again,
in the local records, are examples to be found where history is in
close contact with tradition, and I am far more inclined to question
the evidence which proves the falseness of any authenticated tradition
than I am to trust all the statements which do duty for history. It is
not only the traditions looming largely in popular interest, but some
of the smallest local traditions which throw light on great
historical events. They may tell us not merely of the great historical
event, but of the peculiar relationship of parts of the kingdom to
that event, which no purely historical evidence could by any
possibility explain. One of the most striking examples is, perhaps,
the Sussex tradition of "Duke" William as a conqueror.[45] The title
Duke is here faithfully recorded of the great conqueror, who
everywhere else in England, both in historical documents and in the
popular language, is referred to as king. The explanation is, if the
identification of this tradition with the great Norman king is
correct, that Sussex being more or less separated from the rest of the
country by its great weald, carried its own tradition of the bloody
field at Hastings sufficiently long and uninterrupted for it to be
stamped upon the minds of the people in its original form, and thus to
remain. No better evidence could be found for the relationship of
Sussex to this great event. All the chapters in Mr. Freeman's great
history do not impress the imagination so strongly as this one fact,
that William the Conqueror has always been Duke William to the Sussex
folk. He was Duke William to the fen folk, too. They fought for their
belief and were compelled to accept his kingship. The Sussex folk
fought, too, and they handed down their conception of the great fight
to their children.
A good example of a slightly different kind occurs in connection with
Kett's rebellion in Norfolk. It was associated with a prophecy that
said, "there shulde lande at Walborne hope the proudest prince of
Christendome, and so shall come to Moshold heethe, and there shuld
mete with other ij kinges, and shall fyght and shalbe put down: and
the whyte lyon shuld optayne" the mastery. And yet this prophecy goes
much further back, for the Danes are said to have landed at Weybourne
Hope in their invasions, and the old rhyme is still remembered in the
county:--
"He that would England win
Must at Weybourn Hope begin."[46]
This is an example of the forcible revival of an ancient tradition to
suit a later fact, and is evidence of the enormous impression which
the event to which it refers had upon the locality. Kett's rebellion
was one thing to the nation at large and quite another thing to this
district of Norfolk, and the great events of the tenth century
preserved in legend were equated with the minor events of the
sixteenth century, thus enabling us to understand better the depth of
the local feeling which produced these events.
[Illustration: PLAN OF THE SITE OF THE "HEAVEN WALLS" AT LITLINGTON,
ROYSTON, CAMBRIDGESHIRE]
Both local and personal traditions are of interest in the unravelling
of the meaning of historical events, and the forces at the back of
them, and I will add a note of one or two examples of those humbler
traditions which confirm or enhance the value of the historical
record. They are of the greatest importance if correctly understood.
They include such examples, for instance, as Mr. Kemble notes when he
says, "I have more than once walked, ridden, or rowed, as land and
stream required, round the bounds of Anglo-Saxon estates, and have
learned with astonishment that the names recorded in my charter were
those still used by the woodcutter or the shepherd of the
neighbourhood."[47] This is remarkable testimony to the persistence of
tradition. It is the commencing point of a whole series of examples
which go to show that embedded in the memories of the people, and
supported by no other force but tradition, there are innumerable
traces of historic fact.[48]
A stage forward, in the same class of tradition, are those examples of
special names which indicate an important or impressive event, the
real nature of which is only revealed by modern discovery. Thus
perhaps the "White Horse Stone" at Aylesford, in Kent, the legend of
which is that one who rode a beast of this description was killed on
or about this spot,[49] may take us back to the great battle at
Crayford, where Horsa was killed. Another kind of local tradition is
perhaps more instructive. Immediately contiguous to the north side of
the Roman road at Litlington, near Royston, were some strips of
unenclosed, but cultivated, land, which in ancient deeds from time
immemorial had been called "Heaven's Walls." Traditional awe attached
to this spot, and the village children were afraid to traverse it
after dark, when it was said to be frequented by supernatural beings.
Here is subject for inquiry. Both words in the name are significant.
Why the allusion to Heaven; why is a field called walls? The problem
was solved in 1821, for in that year some labourers were digging for
gravel on this spot, and they struck upon an old wall composed of
flint and Roman brick. This accidental discovery was followed up by
Dr. Webb, and the wall was found to enclose a rectangular space
measuring about thirty-eight yards by twenty-seven, and containing
numerous deposits of sepulchral urns containing ashes of the dead. It
was clear from the results of the excavations that here was one of
those large plots of ground environed by walls to which the name of
_ustrinum_ was given by the Romans,[50] a fact which was preserved in
the name long after the site had lost every trace of its origin.
[Illustration: LITLINGTON FIELD]
I will refer to one more local example. In Dorsetshire and Wiltshire
fairs are held upon sites which are often marked by the remains of
ancient works, or distinguished by some dim tradition of vanished
importance.[51] One has only to refer to the history of the market as
"a contribution to the early history of human intercourse" as Mr.
Grierson puts it,[52] and to the extremely important and archaic
constitution of the market, a glimpse of which has been afforded by
Sir Henry Maine, alone among scholars who have investigated earliest
English institutions, to know how valuable such a note as this must be
if it can be confirmed by extended research. Local investigation of
these places and their traditions would, no doubt, lead to many points
in the tribal settlement of the district, an important fact of history
nowhere found in history.
No one, I think, taking into consideration this view of the
relationship of local and personal traditions to history will deny
that history is likely to gain much by the proper interpretation of
such traditions. Every yard of British territory has its historic
interest, and there are innumerable peaks above the general level
which should be worth much to national history. Every epoch of British
history has its great personage, who in popular opinion stands out
from among his fellows. When once it is understood that traditions
attaching to places and persons yield facts of a kind worth searching
for, there will arise the desire to obtain all that is now obtainable
from this source, and to add thereto the deductions to be drawn from
their geographical distribution.
II
If the accretion of myth around the lives of great historic
personages, and the persistence of tradition in historic localities,
may be accepted as one phase of the necessary relationship of
tradition to history, we may proceed to inquire how far the unattached
traditions, the folk-tales pure and simple, contain or are based upon
historic details. These details will not tell us of any one historic
personage, or relate to any one historic locality, but will relate to
the peoples before personages and localities figured in their history,
and will explain facts in culture-history rather than in political
history. We shall be approaching the period before written history had
begun, and for which, so far as written history is concerned, we are
dependent upon foreign or outside authority. I think, perhaps, Dr.
Karl Pearson has put the case for this view in the best form. "As we
read fairy stories to our children," he says,
"we may study history for ourselves. No longer
oppressed with the unreal and the _baroque_, we may
see primitive human customs and the life of primitive
man and woman cropping out at almost every sentence of
the nursery tale. Written history tells us little of
these things, they must be learnt, so to speak, from
the mouths of babes. But there they are in the
_Maerchen_, as invaluable fossils for those who will
stoop to pick them up and study them. Back in the far
past we can build up the life of our ancestry--the
little kingdom, the queen or her daughter as king
maker, the simple life of the royal household, and the
humble candidate for the kingship, the priestess with
her control of the weather and her power over youth
and maid. In the dimmest distance we can see traces of
the earlier kindred group marriage, and in the near
foreground the beginnings of that fight with
patriarchal institutions which led the priestess to be
branded by the new Christian civilization as the
evil-working witch of the Middle Ages."[53]
I should not have ventured to quote this long passage if my own
studies, before Dr. Pearson's book was published in 1897, had not led
me to much the same conclusions.[54] But Dr. Pearson assists me in a
special way. His methods are scientific. He is not a folklorist
because he loves folklore, but because he sees in it the materials
for elucidating the early life of man. He is not, so to speak,
prejudiced in its favour. He brings to his aid the practical mind of
the statistician and the psychologist, and his conclusions may not,
therefore, be put on one side as easily as those of myself and other
students of folklore.
It is due to the folklorist, however, to say that this aspect of the
folk-tale had already been discovered by one of the greatest of the
earlier collectors of traditional lore, the late Mr. J. F. Campbell.
Thus, writing, in 1860, of his grand collection of "Highland Tales,"
Mr. Campbell very truly says: "The tales represent the actual everyday
life of those who tell them, with great fidelity. They have done the
same, in all likelihood, time out of mind, and that which is not true
of the present is, in all probability, true of the past; and therefore
something may be learned of forgotten ways of life."[55] Readers of
Mr. Campbell's books well know how he has traced out from these
traditions from the nursery, identical customs with Highland everyday
life, and relics also of a long-forgotten past state of things; how he
points to the records of the stone age and the iron age in these
representatives of the scientific memoirs of the past; how very
significantly he answers his own supposition, that if these tales "are
dim recollections of savage times and savage people, then other magic
gear, the property of giants, fairies, and bogles, should resemble
things which are precious now amongst savage or half-civilized tribes,
or which really have been prized amongst the old inhabitants of these
islands or of other parts of the world."[56]
This is an extremely important conclusion on the relationship of
history and tradition, and it will be well to illustrate it by turning
to some obvious details of primitive life, which are to be seen with
more or less clearness enshrined in the folk-tales which have been
preserved in our own country.
In Kennedy's _Fireside Stories of Ireland_, it is related in one of
the tales that there was no window to the mud-wall cabin, and the door
was turned to the north;[57] and then, again, we have this picture
given to us in another story: on a common that had in the middle of it
a rock or great pile of stones overgrown with furze bushes, there was
a dwelling-house, and a cow-house, and a goat's-house, and a pigsty
all scooped out of the rock; and the cows were going into the byre,
and the goats into their house, but the pigs were grunting and bawling
before the door.[58] This takes us to the surroundings of the
cave-dwelling people.
Then in other places we come across relics of ancient agricultural
life preserved in these stories. In the Irish story of "Hairy Rouchy"
the heroine is fastened by her wicked sisters in a pound,[59] an
incident not mentioned in the parallel Highland tale related by
Campbell.[60] Many Irish stories contain details of primitive life
that the Scottish variants do not contain. The field that was partly
cultivated with corn and partly pasture for the cow,[61] the grassy
ridge upon which the princess sat, and the furrows wherein her two
brothers were lying,[62] are instances.
A great question arises here. If the Scotch story does not mention
the primitive incident mentioned in the Irish story, does it mean that
the Irish story has retained for a longer time the details of its
primitive original? Or does it mean that it has absorbed more of
surrounding Irish life into it than the Scotch story has of
surrounding Scottish life?
These details must have a place in the elucidation of Irish
folk-tales, because they have a very distinct place indeed in
primitive institutions; and it hence becomes a question to folklorists
as to how they have entered into, or escaped from, the narrative of
traditional story. It appears to me that the appearance or
non-appearance of these phases of early life are typical of what has
been going on with the plot and structure of folk-tales as long as
they have remained the traditional treasures of the people. A story
identical in all the main outlines of plot will be varied in matters
of detail, according to the people who are using it in their daily
routine of story-telling. But this variation is always from the
primitive to the cultured, from the simple to the complex. The
mud-cabin or cave-dwelling in Irish story would have developed into
the palace in stories of a richer country like England; the old woman,
young girl, master and servant, would become perhaps the queen,
princess, king and vassal; just as in Spanish and Portuguese stories
the giant of other European tales is represented by "the Moor." If
this process of change is a factor in the life of the folk-tale, it
follows that those folk-tales which contain the greatest number of
primitive details are the most ancient, and come to us more directly
from the prehistoric times which they represent.
We may gather warrant for such a conclusion if we pass from small
details to a distinct institution. The institution which stands out
most clearly in early history is the tribe, and I will therefore turn
to an element of ancient tribal life, and an element which has to do
with the practical organisation of that life, namely, the tribal
assembly. We find that the folk-tale records under its fairy or
non-historic guise many important recollections of the assembly of the
tribe. One very natural feature of this assembly in early times was
its custom of meeting in the open air--a custom which in later times
still obtained, for reasons which were the outcome of the prejudices
existing in favour of keeping up old customs. These reasons are
recorded in the formula of Anglo-Saxon times, that meetings should not
be held in any building, lest magic might have power over the members
of the assembly.[63]
Before turning to the tales of our own country, I will first see
whether savage and barbaric tales have recorded anything on the
subject, for their picture of the tribal assembly, when revealed in
the folk-tale, belongs to the period which might have witnessed the
making of the story, and which certainly witnessed the tribal
organisation of the people as a living institution. Dr. Callaway, in
his _Nursery Tales and Traditions of the Zulus_, relates a story of
"the Girl-King." "Where there are many young women," says the story,
"they assemble on the river where they live, and appoint a chief over
the young women, that no young woman may assume to act for herself.
Well, then they assemble and ask each other, 'Which among the damsels
is fit to be chief and reign well?' They make many inquiries; one
after another is nominated and rejected, until at length they agree
together to appoint one, saying, 'Yes, so and so shall reign.'"[64]
However far this may be actually separated from the political assembly
of the Zulus, there is no doubt we have here a folk-tale adaptation of
events which were happening around the relators of the tale. This is
all I am anxious to state, indeed. What in the folk-tale was related
of the girl-king, was a reflex only of what happened when the
political chieftain himself was concerned.
This, perhaps, is still better illustrated if we turn to India. In the
story of "How the Three Clever Men outwitted the Demons," told by Miss
Frere in her _Old Deccan Days_, it is related how "a demon was
compelled to bring treasure to the pundit's house, and on being asked
why he had been so long away, answered, 'All my fellow-demons detained
me, and would hardly let me go, they were so angry at my bringing you
so much treasury; and though I told them how great and powerful you
are, they would not believe me, but will, as soon as I return, judge
me in solemn council for serving you.' 'Where is your council held?'
asked the pundit. 'Oh! very far, far away,' answered the demon, 'in
the depths of the jungle, where our rajah daily holds his court.' The
three men, the pundit, the wrestler, and the pearl-shooter, are taken
by the demon to witness the trial.... They reached the great jungle
where the durbar (council) was to be held, and there he (the demon)
placed them on the top of a high tree just over the demon rajah's
throne. In a few minutes they heard a rustling noise, and thousands
and thousands of demons filled the place, covering the ground as far
as the eye could reach, and thronging chiefly round the rajah's
throne."[65]
A classical story told by AElian gives us another interesting example
of this feature of early political life. It is said of the Lady
Rhodopis, who was alike fair and frail, that of all the beautiful
women in Egypt, she was by far the most beautiful; and the story goes
that one time when she was bathing, Fortune, which always was a lover
of whatever may be the most unlikely and unexpected, bestowed upon her
rank and dignity that were alone suitable for her transcendent charms;
and this was the way what I am now going to tell came to pass.
Rhodopis, before taking a bath, had given her robes in charge to her
attendants; but at the same time there was an eagle flying over the
bath, and it darted down and flew away with one of her slippers. The
eagle flew away, and away, and away, until it got to the city of
Memphis, where the Prince Psammetichus was sitting in the open air,
and administering justice to those subject to his sway; and as the
eagle flew over him it let the slipper fall from its beak, and it fell
down into the lap of Psammetichus. The prince looked at the slipper,
and the more he looked at it, the more he marvelled at the beauty of
the material and the dainty minuteness of its size; and then he
cogitated upon the wondrous way in which such a thing was conveyed to
him through the air by a bird; and then it was he sent forth a
proclamation to all parts of Egypt to try to discover the woman to
whom the slipper belonged, and solemnly promised that whoever she
might be he would make her his bride.[66]
A very beautiful legend, which has been preserved by the Rev. W. S.
Lach-Szyrma,[67] carries into its fairy narrative more of the
realities of tribal life. Mr. Lach-Szyrma obtained it from a peasant's
chap-book, but it professes to be an ancient Slovac folk-tale:--
"An orphan girl is left with a cruel stepmother, who has a daughter
who is bad-tempered and disagreeable, and extremely jealous of her.
She becomes the Cinderella of the house, is ill-treated and beaten,
but submits patiently. At last the harsh stepmother is urged by her
daughter to get rid of her. It is winter, in the month of January; the
snow has fallen, and the ground is frozen. The cruel stepmother in
this dreadful weather bids the poor girl to go out in the forest, and
not to come back till she brings some violets with her. After many
entreaties for mercy the orphan is driven out, and goes out in the
snow on the hopeless errand. As she enters the forest she sees a
little way on in the deep glade, under the leafless trees, a large
fire burning. As she draws near she perceives around the fire are
twelve stones, and on the stones sit twelve men. The chief of them,
sitting on the largest stone, is an old man with a long snowy beard,
and a great staff in his hand. As she comes up to the fire the old man
asks her what she wants. She respectfully replies by telling them,
with many tears, her sad story. The old man comforts her. 'I am
January; I cannot give you any violets, but brother March can.' So he
turns to a fine young man near him and says, 'Brother March, sit in my
place.' Presently the air around grows softer. The snows around the
fire melt. The green grass appears, the flower-buds are to be seen. At
the orphan girl's feet a bed of violets appear. She stoops and plucks
a beautiful bouquet, which she brings home to her astounded
stepmother."
[Illustration: STONE MONUMENTS AS MEMORIALS (KASYA)]
[Illustration: STONE SEATS AT A KASYA VILLAGE
(2 FEET TO 6 FEET IN DIAMETER)]
How clearly this is a representation of the tribal assembly worked
into the folk-tale, where January and the months are the tribal
chiefs, may be illustrated by a comparison with the actual events of
Indian tribal life. Within the stockaded village of Supar-Punji, in
Bengal, are two or three hundred monuments, large and small, all
formed of circular, solid stone slabs, supported by upright stones,
set on end, which enclose the space below. On these the villagers sit
on occasions of state, each on his own stool, large or small,
according to his rank in the commonwealth.[68]
Now evidence such as this, showing how the folk-tale among primitive
people gets framed according to the social conditions within which it
originates, will help us to realise the peculiar value of similar
features which may be found in the folk-tales of our own country.
English tales are nearly destitute of such illustrations of primitive
tribal life as this. Some of the giant stories of Cornwall, such as
that relating to the loose, uncut stones in the district of Lanyon
Quoit, on whose tors "they do say the giants sit,"[69] may refer to
the tribal assembly place, but it is shorn of all its necessary
details, and we do not get many examples even in this shortened form.
Curiously enough, too, we find but little mention in the Scotch tales
of the open-air gatherings of the tribe. The following quotation may
refer to the custom perhaps, but it is not conclusive: "On the day
when O'Donull came out to hold right and justice...." (there were
twelve men with him).[70] Another story is more exact. Mr. Campbell
took it down from a fisherman in Barra (ii. 137). The hero-child
Conall tends the sheep of a widow with whom he lodged. "To feed these
sheep he broke down the dykes which guarded the neighbours' fields.
The neighbours made complaint to the king, and asked for justice. The
king gave foolish judgment, whereat his neck was turned awry, and the
judgment-seat kicked. Conall gave a correct decision and released the
king. He did this a second time, and the people said he must have
king's blood in him." This allusion to the kicking of the
judgment-seat is a very instructive illustration of tribal
chieftainship and comes within that branch of the subject with which
we are now dealing.
But when we pass from Britain to Ireland, there is at once a great
storehouse of examples to be given. In Dr. Joyce's _Old Celtic
Romances_ there are some remarkable passages, which give us a good
picture of the assemblies of primitive times. These passages, it
should be noted, occur quite incidentally during the course of the
story--they belong to the same era as the fairy-legend, the giant, and
the witch, and taken as types of what was going on everywhere in
prehistoric times, they tell us much that is very valuable.
[Illustration: VIEW IN THE KASYA HILLS SHOWING STONE MEMORIALS]
A great fair-meeting was held by the King of Ireland, Nuada of the
Silver Hand, on the Hill of Usna. Not long had the people been
assembled, when they beheld a stately band of warriors, all mounted on
white steeds, coming towards them from the east, and at their head
rode a young champion, tall and comely. "This young warrior was Luga
of the Long Arms.... This troop came forward to where the King of Erin
sat surrounded by the Dedannans, and both parties exchanged friendly
greetings. A short time after this they saw another company
approaching, quite unlike the first, for they were grim and
surly-looking; namely, the tax-gatherers of the Fomorians, to the
number of nine nines, who were coming to demand their yearly tribute
from the men of Erin. When they reached the place where the king sat,
the entire assembly--the king himself among the rest--rose up before
them." Here, without following the story further, the assembling in
arms, the payment of the tributes at the council-hill, the sitting of
the king and his assembly, are all significant elements of the
primitive assembly. In a later part of the same story we have "the
Great Plain of the Assembly" mentioned (p. 48). Another graphic
picture is given a little later on, when the warrior Luga, above
mentioned, demands justice upon the slayers of his father, at the
great council on Tara hill. Luga asked the king that the chain of
silence should be shaken; and when it was shaken, when all were
listening in silence, he stood up and made his plea, which ended in
the eric-fine being imposed upon the three children of Turenn, the
accomplishment of which forms the basis of the fairy-tale which
follows (p. 54). Then, in another place in the same tale, when the
brothers are on their adventurous journey, fulfilling their eric-fine,
they come to the house of the King of Sigar; and it "happened that the
king was holding a fair-meeting on the broad, level green before the
palace."
In another story the hero Maildun asks the island queen how she passes
her life, and the reply is, "The good king who formerly ruled over
this island was my husband. He died after a long reign, and as he left
no son, I now reign, the sole ruler of the island. And every day I go
to the Great Plain, to administer justice and to decide causes among
my people."
The beginning of another story is--"Once upon a time, a noble, warlike
king ruled over Lochlann, whose name was Colga of the Hard Weapons. On
a certain occasion, this king held a meeting of his chief people, on
the broad, green plain before his palace of Berva. And when they were
all gathered together, he spoke to them in a loud, clear voice, from
where he sat high on his throne; and he asked them whether they found
any fault with the manner in which he ruled them, and whether they
knew of anything deserving of blame in him as their sovereign lord and
king. They replied, as if with the voice of one man, that they found
no fault of any kind."
The last example is also a valuable one. A dispute has occurred
respecting the enchanted horse, the Gilla Dacker, and "a meeting was
called on the green to hear the award." Speeches are made and the
awards are given.[71]
I think it will be admitted that the folk-tales of Britain refer back
in such cases to the organisation of the tribe in early times, and the
only possible conclusion to be drawn from this fact is that they too
belong to early times and that they have brought with them to modern
days these valuable fragments of history which are hardly to be
discovered in any other historical document.
We have thus shown that the folk-tale contains many fragmentary
details of ancient social conditions, and further that it contains
more than mere details in the larger place it assigns to important
features of tribal institutions. It now remains to see whether apart
from incident the very structure and heart of the folk-tale is founded
upon conceptions of life. I will take as an example the well-known
story of Catskin. This story contains one remarkable feature running
through many of the variants, and a second which is found in
practically all of them. Both these features are perfectly impossible
to modern creative fancy, and I venture to think we shall find their
true origin in the actual facts of primitive life, not in the wondrous
flight of primitive fancy.
The opening incidents of "Catskin" are thus related:--
"A certain king, having lost his wife, and mourned for her even more
than other men do, suddenly determines, by way of relieving his
sorrows, to marry his own daughter. The princess obtains a suspension
of this odious purpose by requiring from him three beautiful dresses,
which take a long time to prepare. These dresses are a robe of the
colour of the sky, a robe of the colour of the moon, a third robe of
the colour of the sun, the latter being embroidered with the rubies
and diamonds of his crown. The three dresses being made and presented
to her, the princess is checkmated, and accordingly asks for something
even more valuable in its way. The king has an ass that produces gold
coins in profusion every day of his life. This ass the princess asked
might be sacrificed, in order that she might have his skin. This
desire even was granted. The princess, thus defeated altogether, puts
on the ass's skin, rubs her face over with soot, and runs away. She
takes a situation with a farmer's wife to tend the sheep and turkeys
of the farm."
The remainder of the story much resembles Cinderella's famous
adventures, and I need not repeat it here. The pith of the story turns
upon the fact that a father purposes to marry his own daughter, or, in
some versions, his daughter-in-law; and the daughter, naturally, as we
say, objecting to this arrangement, runs away, and hence her many
adventures. This famous story, told by English nurses to English
children, long before literature stepped across the sacred precincts
of the nursery, is also told in Ireland and Scotland. It is also
current in France, Italy, Germany, Russia, Lithuania, and many other
nations; and throughout all these versions, differing, of course, in
some matters of detail, the selfsame incident is observable--the
father wishing to marry his own daughter, and the daughter running
away.[72] This incident, therefore, must be older than the several
nations who have preserved it from their common home, where the tale
was originally told with a special value that is now lost. It must
then belong to primitive man, and not to civilised man, and must be
judged by the standard of morals belonging to primitive man. It is not
sufficient, or, indeed, in any way to the point, to say that the idea
of marrying one's own daughter is horrible and detestable to modern
ideas; we must place ourselves in a position to judge of such a state
of affairs from an altogether different standpoint. And what do we
find in primitive society? We find that women were the property, not
the helpmates, of their husbands. And the question hence arises, in
what relation did the children stand in respect to their parents? The
answer comes from almost all parts of the primitive world that, in
certain stages of society, the children were related to their mother
only. It is worth while pausing one moment to give evidence upon the
fact. Thus McLennan says of the Australians, "it is not in quarrels
uncommon to find children of the same father arrayed against one
another, or indeed, against their father himself; for by their
peculiar law _the father can never be a relative of his
children_."[73] This is not the language, though it is the evidence,
of the latest research, and another phase of it is represented by the
custom, as among the Ahts of Vancouver Island, that in case of
separation while the children are young, the children go always with
the mother to their own tribe.[74]
Here we see that the relationship between father and daughter was in
no way considered in ancient society of the type to which Australians
and Ahts belonged, and it is now one of the accepted facts of
anthropology that at certain stages of savage life fatherhood was not
recognised. That this non-relationship of the father very often
resulted in the further stage of the father marrying his daughter, is
exemplified by many examples. The story of Lot and his daughters, for
instance, will at once occur to the reader, and upon this Mr. Fenton
has some observations, to which I may refer the student who wishes to
pursue this curious subject further,[75] while Mr. Frazer, in his
recent study of Adonis, has discussed the practice with his usual
extent of knowledge.[76] Again, it should be remembered that in our
own chronicle histories Vortigern is said to have married his own
daughter, though the legend and the supposed consequences of the
marriage have been twisted from their original primitive surroundings
by the monkish chroniclers, through whom we obtain the story.[77]
Turning next to the daughter-in-law, supposing that the difference
between "daughter" and "daughter-in-law" (query stepdaughter) in the
story variants is a vital difference, and not an accidental
difference, there is curious and important evidence from India. The
following custom prevails among certain classes of Sudras,
particularly the Vella-lahs in Koimbator: "A father marries a grown-up
girl eighteen or twenty years old to his son, a boy of seven or eight,
after which he publicly lives with his daughter-in-law, until the
youth attains his majority, when his wife is made over to him,
generally with half a dozen children. These children are taught to
address him as their father. In several cases this woman becomes the
common wife of the father and son. She pays every respect due to her
wedded husband, and takes great care of him from the time of her
marriage. The son, in his turn, hastens to celebrate the marriage of
his acquired son, with the usual pomps, ceremonies, and tumasha, and
keeps the bride for himself as his father had done."[78] But even
further than this, ancient Hindu law allowed the father, who had no
prospect of having legitimate sons, to "appoint" or nominate a
daughter who should bear a son to himself, and not to her own
husband.[79] Sir Henry Maine gives the formula for this remarkable
appointment, and then goes on to say that some customs akin to the
Hindu usage of appointing a daughter appear to have been very widely
diffused over the ancient world, and traces of them are found far down
in history.[80]
What we have before us, therefore, to guide us in the view we take of
the story incident of a father marrying his own daughter, may be
summarised as follows:--
1. The father is not related to his daughter, and hence examples occur
of fathers marrying daughters.
2. The custom of marrying a daughter-in-law.
3. The custom of nominating a daughter to bear a son.
From any one of these facts of primitive life we arrive at the central
incident in the story of Catskin: the father could marry his daughter
without specially shocking the society of the primitive world, simply
because, according to primitive ideas, father and daughter, as we call
her, were not related.
We now arrive at the second incident--the running away of Catskin.
This again is a very early form of marriage custom. Women of primitive
times often objected to the forced marriages, and they expressed their
objection very often by running away. In the instance of Catskin the
running away was successful, as we all know; but in most instances the
unwilling bride was captured and forced to surrender. Mr. Farrer, in
his _Primitive Manners and Customs_, quite clears the ground for the
refutation of an argument that might be applied if we did not know the
customs of primitive society. It might be asked, why did Catskin run
away if the custom was a usual one? For the same reason, we answer,
that the women of savage society often do run away--objection to the
marriage.[81]
Thus we have to note that the two principal features of our ordinary
Catskin story are explainable by a reference to primitive manners and
customs; and it seems to me much easier and much more reasonable to
thus explain the origin of the Catskin story, than first of all to
create a "lovely myth," as the mythologists would undoubtedly have a
right to call it, of the Sun pursuing the Dawn, and then to say that
the Catskin story is simply a relation of this myth.
The opening incident of the Catskin story, as thus interpreted, is not
an isolated case of the survival of primitive marriage customs in
popular stories. If it were so, there would be considerable difficulty
in the way of supporting this interpretation. But it is only saying of
Catskin what can be said of other stories. "There are traces," says
Mr. Campbell, speaking of his Highland stories, "of foreign or
forgotten laws and customs. A man buys a wife as he would a cow, and
acquires a right to shoot her, which is acknowledged as good law."[82]
Yes, this is good savage law and custom there is no doubt, and Lord
Avebury and Mr. McLennan have illustrated it by examples. But in the
Highland story of the "Battle of the Birds" the wife is sought to be
purchased for a hundred pounds (Campbell, i. 36), and in the Irish
story of the "Lazy Beauty and her Aunts" we find something like
bride-capture and purchase as well.[83] So, again, if we turn to India
the same kind of evidence is forthcoming of another part of the
primitive ceremony. "Do not think," retorted the Malee in a story
collected by Miss Frere, "that I'll make a fool of myself because I'm
only a Malee, and believe what you've got to say because you're a
great Rajah. If you mean what you say, if you care for my daughter and
wish to be married to her, come and be married; but I'll have none of
your new-fangled forms and court ceremonies hard to be understood; let
the girl be married by her father's hearth, and under her father's
roof."[84] And in another story of the "Chundun Rajah" we have "the
scattering rice and flowers upon their heads;"[85] the significance of
both of which customs are fully known.
These illustrations of the contact, the necessary contact, of
tradition and history show that contact to be equally true of the
folk-tale as it is of the local or personal legend. They all point to
the substratum of fact underlying tradition, to the absorption by
tradition of many features of the life by which it is surrounded, or
to the absorption by some great historic person or event of the living
tradition of his time or place. This contact is a fact equally
important to history and to folklore. It cannot be neglected by
either. It stands for something in the analysis which every student
must give of the material with which he is working, and that something
has a value, sometimes great and sometimes small, which must influence
the estimate of the material which both history and folklore supply in
the unravelling of man's past.
I will now finally give a more complicated example of the folk-tale as
illustrative of the connection between history and tradition. Mr.
J. F. Campbell printed a tale in the second volume of the
_Transactions of the Ethnological Society_ (p. 336), which had been
sent to him in Gaelic by John Davan, in December, 1862--that is, after
the publication of the fourth volume of his _Highland Tales_. The tale
is only in outline, but in quite sufficient fulness for my present
purpose, as follows:--
There was a man at some time or other who was well off, and had many
children. When the family grew up the man gave a well-stocked farm to
each of his children. When the man was old his wife died, and he
divided all that he had amongst his children, and lived with them,
turn about, in their houses. The sons and daughters got tired of him
and ungrateful, and tried to get rid of him when he came to stay with
them. At last an old friend found him sitting tearful by the wayside,
and learning the cause of his distress, took him home; there he gave
him a bowl of gold and a lesson which the old man learned and acted.
When all the ungrateful sons and daughters had gone to a preaching,
the old man went to a green knoll where his grandchildren were at
play, and pretending to hide, he turned up a flat hearthstone in an
old stance,[86] and went out of sight. He spread out his gold on a big
stone in the sunlight, and he muttered, "Ye are mouldy, ye are hoary,
ye will be better for the sun." The grandchildren came sneaking over
the knoll, and when they had seen and heard all that they were
intended to see and hear, they came running up with, "Grandfather,
what have you got there?" "That which concerns you not; touch it
not," said the grandfather; and he swept his gold into a bag and took
it home to his old friend. The grandchildren told what they had seen,
and henceforth the children strove who should be kindest to the old
grandfather. Still acting on the counsel of his sagacious old chum, he
got a stout little black chest made, and carried it always with him.
When any one questioned him as to its contents, his answer was, "That
will be known when the chest is opened." When he died he was buried
with great honour and ceremony, and then the chest was opened by the
expectant heirs. In it were found broken potsherds and bits of slate,
and a long-handled, white wooden mallet with this legend on its
head:--
"So am favioche fiorum,
Thabhavit gnoc annsa cheann,
Do n'fhear nach gleidh maoin da' fein,
Ach bheir a chuid go leir d'a chlann."
"Here is the fair mall
To give a knock on the skull
To the man who keeps no gear for himself,
But gives all to his bairns."
Wright, in his collection of Latin stories, published by the Percy
Society in 1842 (pp. 28-29), gives a variant of this tale under the
title of "De divite qui dedit omnia filio suo," and, so far as can be
judged by the abstract, the parallel between the two narratives,
separated by at least five centuries of time, is remarkably close. The
latter part is apparently different, for the Latin version tells how
the man pretended that the chest contained a sum of money, part of
which was to be applied for the good of his soul, and the rest to
dispose of as he pleased. But at the point of death his children
opened the chest. "Antequam totaliter expiraret, ad cistam currentes
nihil invenerunt nisi malleum, in quo Anglice scriptum est:--
"'Wyht suylc a betel be he smyten,
That al the werld hyt mote wyten,
That gyfht his sone al his thing,
And goht hym self a beggyn.'"
Here, then, is a case whereby to test the problem of the position of
folk-tales as historical material. Did the people adopt this tale from
literature into tradition and keep it alive for five centuries; or did
some early and unconscious folklorist adapt it into literature? The
literary version has the flavour of its priestly influence, which does
not appear in the traditional version; and I make the preliminary
observation that if literature could have so stamped itself upon the
memory of the folk as to have preserved all the essentials of such a
story as this, it must have been due to some academic influence (of
which, however, there is no evidence), and this influence would have
preserved a nearer likeness to literary forms than the peasant's tale
presents to us. But the objection to this theory is best shown by an
analysis of the tale, and by some research into the possible sources
of its origin.
The story presents us with the following essential incidents:--
1. The gift of a well-stocked farm by a father to each of his
children.
2. The surrender of all property during the owner's lifetime.
3. The living of the old father with each of his children.
4. The attempted killing of the old man.
5. The mallet bearing the inscription.
6. The rhyming formula of the inscription.
Mr. Campbell notes the first and third of these incidents in his
original abstract of the story,[87] but of the remaining second,
fourth, fifth, and sixth no note has hitherto been taken.
Of the first incident, the gift of a well-stocked farm by a father to
each of his children, Mr. Campbell says: "This subdivision of land by
tenants is the dress and declaration put on by a class who now tell
this tale." But it also represents an ancient system of swarming off
from the parent household when society was in a tribal stage. The
incident of the tale is exactly reproduced in local custom. In the
island of Skye the possessor of a few acres of land cut them up only a
few years ago into shreds and patches to afford a separate dwelling
for each son and daughter who married.[88] In Kinross, in 1797, the
same practice prevailed. "Among the feuars the parents are in many
instances disposed to relinquish and give up to their children their
landed possessions or the principal part of them, retaining only for
themselves some paltry pendicle or patch of ground."[89] In Ireland
and in Cornwall much the same evidence is forthcoming, and elsewhere I
have taken some pains to show that these local customs are the
isolated survivals in late times of early tribal practices.[90]
We next turn to the second essential incident of the tale--the
surrender of the estate during the owner's lifetime. This is a
well-marked feature of early custom, and Du Chaillu has preserved
something like the survival of the ritual observances connected with
it in his account of the Scandinavian practice. On a visit to Husum he
witnessed the ceremonial which attended the immemorial custom of the
farm coming into possession of the eldest son, the father still being
alive. The following is Mr. Du Chaillu's description, and the details
are important: "The dinner being ready, all the members of the family
came in and seated themselves around the board, the father taking, as
is customary, the head of the table. All at once, Roar, who was not
seated, came to his father and said, 'Father, you are getting old; let
me take your place.' 'Oh, no, my son,' was the answer, 'I am not too
old to work; it is not yet time: wait awhile.' Then, with an
entreating look, Roar said, 'Oh, father, all your children and myself
are often sorry to see you look so tired when the day's labour is
over: the work of the farm is too much for you; it is time for you to
rest and do nothing. Rest in your old age. Oh, let me take your place
at the head of the table.' All the faces were now extremely sober, and
tears were seen in many eyes. 'Not yet, my son.' 'Oh, yes, father.'
Then said the whole family, 'Now it is time for you to rest.' He rose,
and Roar took his place, and was then the master. His father,
henceforth, would have nothing to do, was to live in a comfortable
house, and to receive yearly a stipulated amount of grain or flour,
potatoes, milk, cheese, butter, meat, etc."[91] Without stopping to
analyse this singular ceremony in detail, it is important to note that
old age is the assigned cause of resignation by the father of his
estate; that the ceremony is evidently based upon traditional forms,
the meaning of which is not distinctly comprehended by the present
performers; that the father is supported by his successor. As a proof
that we have here a survival of very ancient practice, it may be
noticed that in Spiti, a part of the Punjab, an exact parallel occurs.
There the father retires from the headship of the family when his
eldest son is of full age, and has taken unto himself a wife; on each
estate there is a kind of dower-house with a plot of land attached, to
which the father in these cases retires.[92] In Bavaria and in
Wuertemberg the same custom obtains,[93] and the sagas of the North
also confirm it as an ancient custom.[94]
Of the third incident in the tale, the living of the father with his
children, Mr. Campbell says this points to the old Highland cluster of
houses and to the farm worked by several families in common,[95] and I
think we have here the explanation why the father in Scotland did not
have his "dower-house," as he did in Scandinavia and in Spiti.
We next come to the fourth incident, the attempted killing of the old
father. Now, from some of the earliest accounts of travels in Britain,
we know that the death of the aged by violence was a signal element of
the native customs. "They die only when they have lived long enough;
for when the aged men have made good cheere and anoynted their bodies
with sweet ointments they leape off a certain rocke into the sea."
That we have in this episode of the story, remains of customs which
once existed in the North, Mr. Elton affords proof, both from
saga-history and from the practice of later times, when "the Swedes
and Pomeranians killed their old people in the way which was indicated
by the passage quoted above."[96] It is the custom of many savage
tribes, and the observances made use of are sometimes suggestive of
the facts of the tale we are now analysing. Thus, among the Todas of
the Nilgiri Hills, they place the old people in large earthen jars
with some food, and leave them to perish;[97] while among the
Hottentots, Kolben says, "when persons become unable to perform the
least office for themselves they are then placed in a solitary hut at
a considerable distance, with a small stock of provisions within their
reach, where they are left to die of hunger, or be devoured by the
wild beasts."[98]
The important bearing of these incidents of barbarous and savage life
upon our subject will be seen when we pass on to our fifth incident,
namely, the significant use of the mallet. Some curious explanations
have been given of this. Mr. Thorns once thought it might be
identified with Malleus, the name of the Devil.[99] Nork has attempted
with more reason to identify it with the hammer of Thor.[100] But the
real identification is closer than this. Thus, it is connected with
the Valhalla practices, already noted, by the fact that if an old
Norseman becomes too frail to travel to the cliff, in order to throw
himself over, his kinsman would save him the disgrace of dying "like a
cow in the straw," and would beat him to death with the family
club.[101] Mr. Elton, who quotes this passage, adds in a note that one
of the family clubs is still preserved at a farm in East
Gothland.[102] Aubrey has preserved an old English "countrie story" of
"the holy mawle, which (they fancy) hung behind the church dore,
which, when the father was seaventie, the sonne might fetch to knock
his father in the head, as effoete, & of no more use."[103] That
Aubrey preserved a true tradition is proved by what we learn of
similar practices elsewhere. Thus, in fifteenth-century MSS. of prose
romances found in English and also in Welsh, Sir Perceval, in his
adventures in quest of the Holy Grail, being at one time ill at ease,
congratulates himself that he is not like those men of Wales, where
sons pull their fathers out of bed and kill them to save the disgrace
of their dying in bed.[104] Keysler cites several instances of this
savage custom in Prussia, and a Count Schulenberg rescued an old man
who was being beaten to death by his sons at a place called
Jammerholz, or "Woful Wood;" while a Countess of Nansfield, in the
fourteenth century, is said to have saved the life of an old man on
the Lueneberg Heath under similar circumstances.
Our investigation of barbarous and savage customs, which connect
themselves with the essential incidents of this Highland tale, has at
this point taken us outside the framework of the story. The old father
in the tale was not killed by the mallet, but he is said to have used
it as a warning to others to stop the practice of giving up their
property during lifetime. We have already seen that this practice was
an actual custom in early times, appearing in local survivals both in
England and Scotland. Therefore the story must have arisen at a time
when this practice was undergoing a change. We must note, too, that
the whole story leads up to the finding of a mallet with the rhyming
inscription written thereon, connecting it with the instrument of
death to the aged, but only on certain conditions. If, then, we can
find that the rhyming inscription on the mallet has an existence quite
apart from the story, and if we can find that mallets bearing such an
inscription do actually exist, we may fairly conclude that the story,
which, in Scotland, is the vehicle of transmission of the rhyme, is of
later origin than the rhyme itself.
First of all, it is to be noted under this head that Wright, in a note
to the Latin story we have already quoted, gives from John of
Bromyard's _Summa Predicantium_ another English version of the verse--
"Wit this betel the smieth
And alle the worle thit wite
That thevt the ungunde alle thing,
And goht him selve a beggyng,"
which shows, I think, the popularity of the verse in the vernacular.
Clearly, then, the Latin version is a translation of this, and not
_vice versa_. It must have been a rhyming formula in the vernacular,
which had a life of its own quite outside its adoption into
literature.
This inferential proof of the actual life of the English rhyming
formula is confirmed by actual facts in the case of the corresponding
German formula. Nork, in the volume I have already quoted, collects
evidence from Grimm, Haupt, and others, which proves that sometimes in
front of a house, as at Osnabrueck, and sometimes at the city gate, as
in several of the cities of Silesia and Saxony, there hangs a mallet
with this inscription:--
"Wer den kindern gibt das Brod
Und selber dabei leidet Noth
Den schlagt mit dieser keule todt"--
which Mr. Thoms has Englished thus:--
"Who to his children gives his bread
And thereby himself suffers need,
With this mallet strike him dead."[105]
These rhymes are the same as those in the Scottish tale and its Latin
analogue, and that they are preserved on the selfsame instrument which
is mentioned in the story as bearing the inscription is proof enough,
I think, that the mallets and their rhyming formulae are far older than
the story. They are not mythical, the story is; their history is
contained in the facts we have above detailed; the life of the
folk-tale commences when the use or formula of the mallet ceases to be
part of the social institutions.
To the rhyming formulae, then, I would trace the rise of the mythic
tale told by the Highland peasant in 1862 to Mr. J. F. Campbell. The
old customs which we have detailed as the true origin of the mallet,
and its hideous use in killing the aged and infirm, had died out, but
the symbol of them remained. To explain the symbol a myth was created,
which kept sufficiently near to the original idea as to retain
evidence of its close connection with the descent of property; and
thus was launched the dateless, impersonal, unlocalised story which
Mr. Campbell has given as a specimen of vagrant traditions, which
"must have been invented after agriculture and fixed habitations,
after laws of property and inheritance; but it may be as old as the
lake-dwellings of Switzerland, or Egyptian civilisation, or Adam,
whose sons tilled the earth."[106] I would venture to rewrite the last
clause of this dictum of the great master of folk-tales, and I would
suggest that the story, whatever its age as a story, tells us of facts
in the life of its earliest narrators which do not belong to Teutonic
or Celtic history. The Teuton and the Celt, with their traditional
reverence for parental authority, at once patriarchal and priestly,
would retain, with singular clearness, the memory of traditions, or it
may be observations, of an altogether different set of ideas which
belonged to the race with which they first came into contact. But
whether the story is a mythic interpretation by Celts of pre-Celtic
practices, or a pre-Celtic tradition, varied as soon as it became the
property of the Celt to suit Celtic ideas, it clearly takes us back to
practices very remote, to use Mr. Elton's forcible words, from the
reverence for the parents' authority which might have perhaps been
expected from descendants of "the Aryan household."[107] These
practices lead us back to a period of savagery, of which we have to
speak in terms of race distinction if we would get at its root.[108]
The importance of such a conclusion cannot be overrated, for it leads
directly to the issue which must be raised whenever an investigation
of tradition leaves us with materials, which are promptly rejected as
fragments of Celtic history because they are too savage, but which
need not therefore be rejected as history, because they may be
referred further back than Celtic history.
If we proceed by more drastic methods, by the methods of statistics,
we shall arrive at much the same conclusion.[109] Taking the first
twelve stories in Grimm's great collection, we find that seven of them
yield elements which we are entitled to call savage, because they are
so far removed from the European culture amidst which the folk-tales
have lived, and because these elements belong not to the accidentals
of the stories but to the essentials. Thus, if we divide the folk-tale
into its components, we shall find that it consists of three
features:--
1. The story radicals, or essential plot;
2. The story accidentals, or illustrative points;
3. Modern gloss upon the events in the story--
and if we go on to allocate the various incidents of the stories to
these three heads, we get the following common results with regard to
seven out of the twelve first stories of Grimm's great collection:--
I.--FROG PRINCE