CHAPTER II

MATERIALS AND METHODS

The materials of folklore consist of traditional tales (so called) and

traditional customs and superstitions (so called), the feature of both

groups being that at the time of first being recorded and reduced to

writing they existed only by the force of tradition. There is no fixed

time for the record. It is sometimes quite early, as, for instance,

the examples which come to us from historians; it is generally quite

late, namely, the great mass of examples which, during the past

century or so, have been collected directly from the lips or

observances of the people, sometimes by the curious traveller or

antiquary, lately by the professed folklorist.

The consideration of the relationship of history and folklore has

cleared the ground for definitions and method. Before the material of

which folklore consists can be considered by the light of method, we

must get rid of definitions which are often applied to folklore in its

attributed sense. Folk-tales are not fiction or art, were not invented

for amusement, are not myth in the sense of being imaginative

only.[182] Customs and superstitions are not the result of ignorance

and stupidity. These attributes are true only if folk-tales, customs,

and superstitions are compared with the literary productions and with

the science and the culture of advanced civilisation; and this

comparison is exactly that which should never be undertaken, though

unfortunately it is that which is most generally adopted. The

folk-tale may be lent on occasion to the artist--to Mr. Lang, to Mr.

Jacobs, and their many copyists; and these artists may rejoice at the

wonderful results of the unconscious art that resides in these

products of tradition, but the folk-tale must not be wholly

surrendered. It does not belong to them. It does not belong to art at

all, but to science. That it is artistic in form is an addition to its

characteristics, but has nothing whatever to do with its fundamental

features. Similarly with legend. It may be lent to Malory, to

Tennyson, to Longfellow, to the literary bards of the romance period,

for the purpose of weaving together their story of the wonderful; but

it must not be surrendered to the romancist, and, above all things,

the romances must never be allowed to enter the domain of folklore.

Romances may be stripped of their legends so that the source of

legendary material may be fully utilised, but the romances themselves

belong to literature, and must remain within their own portals. And so

with customs. They may be pleasing and reveal some of the beauties of

the older joyousness of life which has passed away, it is to be

regretted, from modern civilisation; they may be revived in May-day

celebrations, in pageants, in providing our schools with games which

tell of the romance of living. But they do not belong to the lover of

the beautiful or to the revivalists. Equally with the folk-tale they

belong to science. And so also with superstitions. The Psychical

Research Society, the spiritualists, the professional successors of

the mediaeval witch and wizard, may turn their attention to traditional

superstitions; but the folklorist refuses to hand them over, and

claims them for science.

This use of traditional material for modern purposes is not the only

danger to proper definitions. There is also its appearance in the

earlier stages of literature. The traditional narrative, the myth, the

folk-tale or the legend, is not dependent upon the text in which it

appears for the first time. That text, as we have it, was not written

down by contemporary or nearly contemporary authority. Before it had

become a written document it had lived long as oral tradition.[183] In

some cases the written document is itself centuries old, the record

of some early chronicler or some early writer who did not make the

record for tradition's sake. In other cases the written document is

quite modern, the record of a professed lover of tradition. This

unequal method of recording tradition is the main source of the

difficulty in the way of those who cannot accept tradition as a record

of fact. In all cases the test of its value and the interpretation of

its testimony are matters which need special study and examination

before the exact value of each tradition is capable of being

determined. The date when and the circumstances in which a tradition

is first reduced to literary form are important factors in the

evidence as to the credibility of the particular form in which the

tradition is preserved; but they are not all the factors, nor do they

of themselves afford better evidence when they are comparatively

ancient than forms of much later date and of circumstances far

different. It cannot be too often impressed upon the student of

tradition that the tradition itself affords the chief if not the only

sure evidence of its age, its origin, and its meaning; for the

preservation of tradition is due to such varied influences that the

mere fact of preservation, or the particular method or date of

preservation, cannot be relied upon to give the necessary authority

for the authenticity of the tradition. Tradition can never assume the

position of written history, because it does not owe its origin, but

only its preservation, to writing.

Documentary material is examined as to its palaeographical features, as

to the testimony afforded by its author or assumed author, as to its

credibility in dealing with contemporary events or persons, as to its

date, and in other ways according to the nature of the document.

Traditional material has nothing to do with all this. It has no

palaeography; it has no author, and if a personal author is assigned to

any given fragment or element it is generally safe to ignore the

tradition as the product of a later age; it does not deal with persons

nor, as a rule, with specific events; it has no date. It has therefore

to undergo a process of its own before it can be accepted as

historical evidence, and this process, if somewhat tedious, is all the

more necessary because of the tender material of which tradition is

composed. This will be made clearer if we understand exactly what the

different classes of tradition are and how they stand to each other.

Considering the materials of folklore in their true sense and not

their attributed sense then, we may proceed to say something as to

methods. Definitions and rules are needed. No student can attack so

immense a subject without the aid of such necessary machinery, and it

is because the attempt has been so often made ill-equipped in this

respect, that the science of folklore has suffered so much and has

remained so long unrecognised. Already, in dealing with the

relationship of history and folklore, one or two necessary

distinctions in terms have been anticipated. We have discovered that

the impersonal folk-tale is distinguished in a fundamental manner from

the personal or local legend, and that the growth of mythology is a

later process than the growth of myth. These distinctions need,

however, to be systematised and brought into relationship with other

necessary distinctions. The myth and the folk-tale are near

relations, but they are not identical, and it is clear that we need to

know something more about myth. Because mythic tradition has been

found to include many traditions, which of late years have been

claimed to belong to a definitely historical race of people, it must

not be identified with history. This claim is based upon two facts,

the presence of myth in the shape of the folk-tale and the

preservation of much mythic tradition beyond the stage of thought to

which it properly belongs by becoming attached to an historical event,

or series of events, or to an historical personage, and in this way

carrying on its life into historic periods and among historic peoples.

The first position has resulted in a wholesale appropriation of the

folk-tale to the cause of the mythologists; the second position has

hitherto resulted either in a disastrous appropriation of the entire

tradition to mythology, or in a still more disastrous rejection both

of the tradition and the historical event round which it clusters.

Historians doubting the myth doubt too the history; mythologists

doubting the history reject the myth from all consideration, and in

this way much is lost to history which properly belongs to it, and

something is lost to myth.

If, therefore, I have hitherto laid undue stress upon the foundation

of tradition in the actual facts of life, and upon the close

association of tradition with historic fact, it is because this side

of the question has been so generally neglected. Everything has been

turned on to the mythic side. Folk-tales have been claimed as the

exclusive property of the mythologists, and those who have urged their

foundation on the facts of real life have scarcely been listened to.

There is, however, no ground for the converse process to be

advocated. If tradition is not entirely mythology it is certainly not

all founded on sociology, and the mythic tradition in the possession

of a people advanced in culture has to be considered and accounted

for. It is myth in contact with history, and the contact compels

consideration of the result.

I

The first necessity is for definitions. Careful attention to what has

already been said will reveal the fact that tradition contains three

separate classes, and I would suggest definition of these classes by a

precise application of terms already in use: The _myth_ belongs to the

most primitive stages of human thought, and is the recognisable

explanation of some natural phenomenon, some forgotten or unknown

object of human origin, or some event of lasting influence; the

_folk-tale_ is a survival preserved amidst culture-surroundings of a

more advanced stage, and deals with events and ideas of primitive

times in terms of the experience or of episodes in the lives of

unnamed human beings; the _legend_ belongs to an historical personage,

locality, or event. These are new definitions, and are suggested in

order to give some sort of exactness to the terms in use. All these

terms--myth, folk-tale, and legend--are now used indiscriminately with

no particular definiteness. The possession of three such distinct

terms forms an asset which should be put to its full use, and this

cannot be done until we agree upon a definite meaning for each.

The first place must be given to mythic tradition. This is not

special to our own, or to any one branch of the human race. It belongs

to all--to the Hindu, the Greek, the Slav, the Teuton, the Celt, the

Semite, and the savage. It goes back to a period of human history

which has only tradition for its authority, in respect of which no

contemporary records exist, and which relates to a time when the

ancestors of now scattered peoples lived together, and when they were

struggling from the position of obedient slaves to all the fears which

unknown nature inflicted on them, to that of observers of the forces

of nature.

Traditions which are properly classed as myth are those which are too

ancient to be identified with historical personages, and too little

realistic to be a relation of historical episodes. They are rather the

explanations given by primitive philosophers of events which were

beyond their ken, and yet needed and claimed explanation. In this

class of tradition we are in touch with the struggles of the earliest

ancestors of man to learn about the unknown. Our own research in the

realms of the unknown we dignify by the name and glories of science.

The research of our remote ancestors was of like kind, though the

domain of the unknown was so different from our own. It was primitive

science.

The best type of this class of myth is, I think, the creation

myth.[184] Everywhere, almost, man has for a moment stood apart and

asked himself the question, Whence am I?--stood apart from the

struggle for existence when that struggle was in its most severe

stages. The answer he has given himself was the answer of the Darwin

of his period. From the narrow observation of the natural man and his

surroundings, governed by the enormous impressions of his own life,

the answer has obviously not been scientific in our sense of the term.

But it was scientific. It was the science of primitive man, and if we

have to reject it as science not so good as our science, nay, as not

science at all judged by our standard, we must not deny to primitive

man the claim of having preceded modern man in his observation and

interpretation of the world of nature.

The range of the creation myth is almost world-wide. It includes

examples from all quarters, and examples of great beauty as well as of

singular, almost grotesque hideousness; the New Zealand myth is surely

the best type of the former, and perhaps the Fijian of the latter. As

Mr. Lang says: "all the cosmogonic myths waver between the theory of

construction, or rather of reconstruction and the theory of evolution

very rudely conceived."[185]

It is not necessary to quote a large number of examples, because I am

not concerned with their variety nor with their essentials. I am only

anxious to point out their existence as evidence of the scientific

character of primitive myth.[186] It is not to the point to say that

the science was all wrong. What is to the point is to say that the

attempt was made to get at the origin of man and his destiny. Mr. Lang

thinks that "the origin of the world and of man is naturally a problem

which has excited the curiosity of the least developed minds," but in

the use of the term "naturally," I think the stupendous nature of the

effort made by the least developed minds is entirely neglected, and we

miss the opportunity of measuring what this effort might mean.

When savages ask themselves, as they certainly _do_ ask themselves,

whence the sky, whence the winds, the sun, moon, stars, sea, rivers,

mountains and other natural objects, they reply in terms of good logic

applied to deficient knowledge. All the knowledge they possess is that

based upon their own material senses. And therefore, when they apply

that knowledge to subjects outside their own personality, they deal

with them in terms of their own personality. How did the sky get up

there, above their heads--the sky evidently so lovingly fond of the

earth, so intimately connected with the earth?

The New Zealand answer to these questions is a great one, by whatever

standard it is measured. Heaven and earth, they say, were husband and

wife, so locked in close embrace that darkness everywhere prevailed.

Their children were ever thinking amongst themselves what might be the

difference between darkness and light. At last, worn out by the

continued darkness, they consulted amongst themselves whether they

should slay their parents, Rangi and Papa, _i.e._ heaven and earth, or

whether they should rend them apart. The fiercest of their children

exclaimed, "Let us slay them!" but the forest, another of the sons,

said, "Nay, not so. It is better to rend them apart, and to let

heaven stand far above us and the earth to lie under our feet. Let the

sky become as a stranger to us, but the earth remain close to us as

our nursing-mother." The brothers consented to this proposal with the

exception of Tawhiri-ma-tea, the father of winds and storms; thus five

of the brothers consented and one would not agree. Then each of the

brothers tries to rend his parents, heaven and earth, asunder. First

the father of cultivated food tries and fails; then the father of fish

and reptiles; then the father of uncultivated food; then the father of

fierce human beings. Then at last slowly uprises Tane-mahuta, the

father of forests, birds, and insects, and he struggles with his

parents; in vain he strives to rend them apart with his hands and

arms. Lo, he pauses; his head is now firmly planted on his mother, the

earth; his feet he raises up and rests against his father, the skies;

he strains his back and limbs with mighty effort, and at last are rent

apart Rangi and Papa, who shriek aloud with cries and groans. But

Tane-mahuta pauses not, he regards not their shrieks and cries; far,

far beneath him he presses down the earth; far, far above him he

thrusts up the sky. Then were discovered a multitude of human beings

whom heaven and earth had begotten, and who had hitherto lain

concealed. But Tawhiri-ma-tea, the wind and storm, the brother who had

not consented, is angry at this rending apart of his parents, and he

rises and follows his father, the sky, and fights fiercely with the

earth and his brothers.[187]

The explanation of this myth is simple. Unaided by the facts of

science, the New Zealand savages could only think of the facts of

their own experience. Only two personalities could produce the various

products of the world; therefore the earth was the mother and the sky

the father. But they are now separated and apart. Only a personality

could have separated, and the forest, root-sown in the earth,

branch-up in the sky, is evidently the means of this separation. And

so, satisfactorily to their own minds, these rude savages settled the

question of the origin of heaven and earth.

The close similarity of this to the story of Kronos has frequently

been pointed out; but a Greek story is always worth repeating. Near

the beginning of things Earth gave birth to Heaven. Later, Heaven

became the husband of Earth, and they had many children. Some of these

became the gods of the various elements, among whom were Okeanos, and

Hyperion, the sun. The youngest child was Kronos of crooked counsel,

who ever hated his mighty sire. Now the children of Heaven and Earth

were concealed in the hollows of Earth, and both the Earth and her

children resented this. At last they conspired against their father,

Heaven, and, taking their mother into the counsels, she produced Iron

and bade her children avenge her wrongs. Fear fell upon all of them

except Kronos, and he determined to separate his parents, and with his

iron weapon he effected his object. All the brothers rejoiced except

one, Okeanos, and he remained faithful to his father.[188]

It would be well for the sake of the story itself to give a creation

myth from India, but I shall have other use for it than its particular

charm.

"'In the beginning, when Twashtri came to the creation

of woman, he found that he had exhausted his materials

in the making of man, and that no solid elements were

left. In this dilemma, after profound meditation, he

did as follows. He took the rotundity of the moon, and

the curves of creepers, and the clinging of tendrils,

and the trembling of grass, and the slenderness of the

reed, and the bloom of flowers, and the lightness of

leaves, and the tapering of the elephant's trunk, and

the glances of deer, and the clustering of rows of

bees, and the joyous gaiety of sunbeams, and the

weeping of clouds, and the fickleness of the winds,

and the timidity of the hare, and the vanity of the

peacock, and the softness of the parrot's bosom, and

the hardness of adamant, and the sweetness of honey,

and the cruelty of the tiger, and the warm glow of

fire, and the coldness of snow, and the chattering of

jays, and the cooing of the _kokila_, and the

hypocrisy of the crane, and the fidelity of the

_chakrawaka_, and compounding all these together, he

made woman and gave her to man. But after one week,

man came to him and said: Lord, this creature that you

have given me makes my life miserable. She chatters

incessantly and teases me beyond endurance, never

leaving me alone; and she requires incessant

attention, and takes all my time up, and cries about

nothing, and is always idle; and so I have come to

give her back again, as I cannot live with her. So

Twashtri said: Very well; and he took her back. Then

after another week, man came again to him and said:

Lord, I find that my life is very lonely, since I

gave you back that creature. I remember how she used

to dance and sing to me, and look at me out of the

corner of her eye, and play with me, and cling to me;

and her laughter was music, and she was beautiful to

look at, and soft to touch; so give her back to me

again. So Twashtri said: Very well; and gave her back

again. Then after only three days, man came back to

him again and said: Lord, I know not how it is; but

after all I have come to the conclusion that she is

more of a trouble than a pleasure to me; so please

take her back again. But Twashtri said: Out on you! Be

off! I will have no more of this. You must manage how

you can. Then man said: But I cannot live with her.

And Twashtri replied: Neither could you live without

her. And he turned his back on man, and went on with

his work. Then man said: What is to be done? for I

cannot live either with her or without her.'"[189]

Now this myth has, so far as its central fact is concerned, its

counterpart in Celtic folklore. In the Welsh Mabinogi of Math, son of

Mathonwy, it is related how Arianrod laid a destiny upon her son, whom

she would not recognise, that he should never have a wife of the race

that now inhabits the earth, and how Gwydion declared that he should

have a wife notwithstanding. "They went thereupon unto Math, the son

of Mathonwy, and complained unto him most bitterly of Arianrod. Well,

said Math, we will seek, I and thou, by charms and magic, to form a

wife for him out of flowers. So they took the blossoms of the oak, and

the blossoms of the broom, and the blossoms of the meadow-sweet, and

produced from them a maiden, the fairest and most graceful that man

ever saw." No one can doubt that this interesting fragment of Welsh

tradition takes us back to a creation legend of the same order as the

Indian legend, and that the two widely separated parallels belong to

the period when men were carving out for themselves theories as to the

origin of women in relation to men.

It is impossible to deny a place among these myths of creation to the

Hebrew tradition of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The first

chapter of Genesis is the answer which the early Hebrews gave to the

scientific question as to the origin of man. How much it cost them to

arrive at this conclusion one cannot guess, one only knows that it has

become a glory to the ages of Hebrew history, as well as to the

civilisation of Christianity. Unfortunately it has become much more.

The science of the primitive Hebrew has been adopted as the God-given

revelation to all mankind. It is the function of folklore to correct

this error, to restore the Hebrew tradition to its proper place among

the myths of the world which have answered the cry of early man for

the knowledge of his origin. There is no degradation here. Science is

no longer in doubt as to the origin of man within the evolutionary

process of the natural world, and it rightly rejects the first chapter

of Genesis as of value to modern research. But science should accept

it as a chapter in the history of anthropology, a chapter which has

only proved not to be true, because of the limited range of early man

in the facts about man, but a chapter, nevertheless, which has the

inherent value of a faithful record of man's search after truth. This

is a great position. This is the revelation which is made to us from

the first chapter of Genesis, and when the theologian is bold and able

enough to step outside the formularies of his ancient faith, and reach

the magnificent world of thought which lies in front of him by the

revelations of scientific discovery, he will consider the

anthropological interpretation of the Hebrew Bible as one of the

necessary elements of his equipment. There is on present lines a

whole world of thought between science and religion, although they

both have the same object. They both seek the great unknown. Science,

however, gives up all efforts in the past which have proved futile and

erroneous, cheerfully surrenders all errors of research and

interpretation, starts investigation afresh, begins new discoveries,

and rewrites the story they have to tell. Religion, on the other hand,

comes to a full stop when once she has made or accepted a discovery,

when once she has pronounced that the great unknown has become known

to her votaries and supporters. She is skilful to use the results of

science up to the point where they serve her purpose, and to use the

terms of science in order to build up her shattering position. But she

does not advance. She does not accept the first chapter of Genesis as

a wonderful revelation of the early stages of human investigation into

the realms of the unknown, but still keeps to her old formula of a

revelation of the deity as to the origin of man, and she does not see

that by this attitude she is lessening every day her capacity for

teaching truth.

I think the attitude of science to the Hebrew tradition is only a

little less unfortunate than that of religion. Professor Huxley

employed all the resources of his great knowledge to disprove the

scientific accuracy of the tradition, and when one rereads his

chapters on this subject[190] one wonders at the absence of the sense

of proportion. Perhaps it was necessary, considering the place which

the Hebrew tradition occupies in civilised thought, to show its utter

inconsistency with the facts of nature, but it was equally necessary

to show that it has its place in the history of human thought. The

folklorist replaces it among the myths of creation, and then proceeds

to analyse and value it. The Hebrew is shown by the myth he adopted to

have frankly acknowledged that the origin of man and of the world was

undiscoverable by him. Whatever older myths he once possessed, he

discarded them in favour of a mythic God-creator, and this is only

another way of stating that the mystery of man's origin could not, to

the Hebrew mind, be met by such a myth as the New Zealander believed

in, or as the Kumis believed in, but could only be met by the larger

conception of a special creation. The Hebrew could not find his answer

in nature, so he appealed to super-nature. His God was the unknown

God, and the realm of the unknown God was the unknowable. Though in

terms this may not be the interpretation of the Hebrew creation myth,

its ultimate resolve is this; and because modern science has

penetrated beyond this confession of the unknown origin of man to the

evolution of man, it should not therefore treat contemptuously the

effort of early Hebrew science. Because it is not possible to admit

this effort as part of modern science, it must not be rejected from

the entire region of science. It must be respected as one of the many

efforts which have made possible the last effort of all which

proclaims that man has kinship with all the animal world.

These points illustrate the unsatisfactory attitude of science and

religion to myth. There is still to notice the unsatisfactory

attitude of the folklorist. Wrong interpretation of special classes of

myth is, of course, to be anticipated in the commencement of a great

study such as folklore; but there are also wrong interpretations of

the fundamental basis of myth. Thus even Mr. Frazer, with all his vast

research into savage thought and action, doubts the possession of good

logical faculty by mankind. If mankind, he says, had always been

logical and wise, history would not be a long chronicle of folly and

crime.[191] But surely we cannot doubt man's logical powers. They have

been too strong for his facts. He has applied mercilessly all the

powers of his logical faculties upon isolated observations of

phenomena, and it is this limited application which has produced the

folly and crime. I venture to think that civilised man shares with the

savage of to-day, and with the primitive ancestors of all mankind, the

charge of applying perfectly good logic to an insufficiency of facts,

and producing therefrom fresh chapters of folly and crime.

If myth is correctly defined as primitive science, as I have ventured

to suggest, it is important to know how it assumes a place among the

traditions of a people. Primitive science was also primitive belief.

If it accounted for the origin of mankind, of the sun, moon, and

stars, of the earth and the trees, it accounted for them as creations

of a higher power than man, or, at all events, of a great and

specially endowed man, and higher powers than man were of the unknown

realm. The unknown was the awful. Primitive science and primitive

belief were therefore on one and the same plane.[192] They were

subjects to be treated with reverence and with awe. The story into

which the myth was so frequently woven is not a story to those who

believe in the truth of the myth. It assumes the personal shape,

because the personal is the only machinery by which primitive man is

capable of expressing himself. It was held only by tradition, because

tradition was the only means of transmitting it, and it was of a

sacred character, because sacred things and beliefs were the only

forces which influenced primitive thought. When it was repeated to new

generations of learners, it was not a case of story-telling--it was a

matter of the profoundest importance. Everywhere among the lowest

savagery we find the secrets of the group kept from all but the

initiated, and these secrets are the traditions which have become

sacred, traditions expressed sometimes in ceremonial, sometimes in

rites, sometimes in narratives. Thus the mythological and religious

knowledge of the Bushmen is imparted in dances, and when a man is

ignorant of some myth, he will say, "I do not dance that dance,"

meaning that he does not belong to the group which preserves that

particular sacred chapter.[193] The Ashantees have an interesting

creation myth which is stated to be the foundation of all their

religious opinions.[194] Mr. Howitt, in his important chapter on

"Beliefs and Burial Practices,"[195] seems to me to exactly interpret

the savage mind. The first thing he notes is the belief--a belief that

"the earth is flat, surmounted by the solid vault of the sky," that

"there is water all round the flat earth," that the sun is a woman,

and that the moon was once a man who lived on earth, and so on. Then,

secondly, he notes the manner in which these beliefs are translated to

and held by the people, the myth in point of fact--unfortunately, Mr.

Howitt calls it a legend--wherein it is perfectly obvious that the

Australian is interpreting the facts of nature in the only language

known to him to be applicable, namely, that of his own personality.

Messrs. Spencer and Gillen produce much the same kind of

evidence,[196] and describe a ceremony among the northern tribes

connected with the myth of the sun, which ends in a newly initiated

youth being brought up, "shown the decorations, and had everything

explained to him."[197] Among the central tribes the same authorities

describe minutely the initiation ceremonies, during which the initiate

boy "is instructed for the first time in any of the sacred matters

referring to totems, and it is by means of the performances which are

concerned with certain animals, or rather, apparently with the

animals, but in reality with Alcheringa individuals who were the

direct transformations of such animals, that the traditions dealing

with this subject, which is of the greatest importance in the eyes of

the natives, are firmly impressed upon the mind of the novice, to whom

everything which he sees and hears is new and surrounded with an air

of mystery."[198] Sir George Grey, speaking of the traditions of the

Maori which he collected, says his reader will be in "the position of

one who listens to a heathen and savage high priest, explaining to him

in his own words and in his own energetic manner, the traditions in

which he earnestly believes, and unfolding the religious opinions upon

which the faith and hopes of his race rest."[199] This "school of

mythology and history," as it is significantly termed in John White's

_Ancient History of the Maori_, was "Whare-Kura, the sacred school in

which the sons of high priests were taught our mythology and history,"

and it "stood facing the east in the precincts of the sacred place of

Mua." The school was opened by the priests in the autumn, and

continued from sunset to midnight every night for four or five months

in succession. The chief priest sat next to the door. It was his duty

to commence the proceedings by repeating a portion of history; the

other priests followed in succession, according to rank. On the south

side sat the old and most accomplished priests, "whose duty it was to

insist on a critical and verbatim rehearsal of all the ancient

lore."[200] The American-Indian account, by the Iroquois, of how myths

were told to an ancient chief and an assembly of the people on a

circular open space in a deep forest, wherein was a large wheel-shaped

stone, from beneath which came a voice which told the tale of the

former world, and how the first people became what they are at

present,[201] is in exact accord with this evidence. The priestly

novice among the Indians of British Guiana is taught the traditions of

the tribe, while the medicine man of the Bororo in Brazil has to learn

certain ritual songs and the languages of birds, beasts, and

trees.[202]

I do not want to press the point too far, because evidence is not easy

to get on account of the incomplete fashion in which it has been

collected and presented to the student. The records of native life are

divided off into chapters arranged, not on the basis of native ideas,

but on the basis of civilised ideas, and from this cause we get myth

and belief in different chapters as if they had no connection with

each other; we get myths treated as if they were but the

fancy-begotten amusements of the individual, instead of the serious

ideas of the collective people about the elements of nature to which

they have directed their attention. Mr. J. A. Farrer comes practically

to this correct conclusion,[203] while Mr. Jevons seems to me to have

arrived at the same result in spite of some false intermediate steps,

due to his failure to discriminate between myth and mythology.[204]

Failures of this kind are of almost infinite loss to scientific

research. They stop the results which might flow from the stages

correctly reached, and hide the full significance which arises from

the fact that man's aspirations are always so much in excess of his

accomplished acts. Poetry, philosophy, prayer, worship, are all short

of the ideal; and the question may surely arise whether the actual

accomplishments of man in civilisation, as compared with those of man

in savagery, afford any sort of indication of the distance between

man's accomplishment and his aspiration at any age. If man has never

travelled at one moment of time, or at one definite period of life,

all this distance in thought, it may still be possible to use this

distance between savage and cultured accomplishment as a standard of

measurement between accomplishment and ideal, wherever the material

for such a purpose is available. If folklorists will keep such a

possibility in mind, whenever they are called upon to investigate

myth, it will at all events save them from proceeding upon lines which

cannot lead to progress in the investigation of human history.

The primitive myth does not include all that properly comes within the

definition of myth. There must be included the myth formed to explain

a rite or ceremony, which originating in most ancient times has been

kept up at the instance of a particular religion or cult, but the

meaning and intent of which has been forgotten amidst the progress of

a later civilisation. Pausanias is the great storehouse of such myths

as this, and Mr. Lang has, more than any other scholar, examined and

explained the process which has gone on.

There is also included in this secondary class of myth, the myths upon

which are founded the great systems of mythology. The Hindu mythology,

in spite of all that has been done to place it on the pedestal of

primitive original thought, is definitely relegated to the secondary

position by its best exponents. The Vedic religion is tribal in form,

and in the pre-mythological stage.[205] In the Ramayana and

Mahabharata, on the contrary, "we trace unequivocal indications of a

departure from the elemental worship of the Vedas, and the origin or

elaboration of legends which form the great body of the mythological

religion of the Hindus."[206] The pre-mythological and the

mythological stages of Hindu religion, therefore, are both

discoverable from the traditional literature which has descended from

both ages, and this fact is important in the classification of the

various phases of tradition. When once it is admitted that the

beginnings of mythology are to be traced in one section of the people

who are supposed to derive a common system of mythology from a common

home, future research will hesitate to interpret, as Kuhn and Max

Mueller and their school have done, the traditions of Celts, Teutons,

and Scandinavians as the detritus of ancient mythologies instead of

the beginnings of what, under favourable conditions, might have grown

into mythologies. Mythological tradition is essentially a secondary

not a primary stage. This fact is overlooked by many authorities, and

I have noted some of the unfortunate results. It is not overlooked by

those who study the principles of their subject as well as the

details. Thus, as Robertson-Smith has so well explained, "mythology

was no essential part of ancient religion, for it had no sacred

sanction and no binding force on the worshippers.... Belief in a

certain series of myths was neither obligatory as a part of true

religion, nor was it supposed that by believing a man acquired

religious merit and conciliated the favour of the gods. What was

obligatory or meritorious was the exact performance of certain sacred

acts prescribed by religious tradition. This being so, it follows that

mythology ought not to take the prominent place that is too often

assigned to it in the scientific study of ancient faiths."[207] This

is exactly the position, and all that I have advanced for the purpose

of aiming at a classification of the various kinds of tradition is in

accord with this view.

All that I am anxious to prove, all that it is possible to prove, from

these considerations of the position occupied by myth, is that myths

constitute a part of the serious life of the people. They belong to

the men and women, perhaps some of them to the men only and others to

the women only, but essentially to the life of the people.

I do not think that even Mr. Hartland in his special study of the

subject has quite understood this. He begins at a later period in the

history of tradition, the period of story-telling proper, when myths

have become folk-tales,[208] and he treats this period as the earliest

instead of the secondary stage of myth. In this stage something has

happened to push myth back from the centre of the people's life to a

lesser position--a new religious influence, a new civilisation, a new

home, any one of the many influences, or any combination of

influences, which have affected peoples and sent them along the paths

of evolution and progress.

It is in this way that we come upon the folk-tale. The folk-tale is

secondary to the myth. It is the primitive myth dislodged from its

primitive place. It has become a part of the life of the people,

independently of its primary form and object and in a different

sense. The mythic or historic fact has been obscured, or has been

displaced from the life of the people. But the myth lives on through

the affections of the people for the traditions of their older life.

They love to tell the story which their ancestors revered as myth even

though it has lost its oldest and most impressive significance. The

artistic setting of it, born of the years through which it has lived,

fashioned by the minds which have handed it down and embellished it

through the generations, has helped its life. It has become the fairy

tale or the nursery tale. It is told to grown-up people, not as belief

but as what was once believed; it is told to children, not to men; to

lovers of romance, not to worshippers of the unknown; it is told by

mothers and nurses, not by philosophers or priestesses; in the

gathering ground of home life, or in the nursery, not in the hushed

sanctity of a great wonder.[209]

The influence of changing conditions upon the position of mythic

tradition is well illustrated by Dr. Rivers in his account of the

Todas. This people, he says, "are rapidly forgetting their folk-tales

and the legends of their gods [that is, their myths], while their

ceremonial remains to a large extent intact and seems likely to

continue so for some time." Dr. Rivers attributes this to the effect

of intercourse with other people. This intercourse has had no

missionary results and has not therefore affected their religious

rites and ceremonies, but has shown itself largely in the form of loss

of interest in the stories of the past.[210] In other words, and in

accordance with the definitions I am suggesting, the primitive myths

of the Todas have definitely assumed a secondary position as

folk-tale, and not a strong position at that, while religion has clung

to rite and formula.

Primitive myth dislodged in this fashion is sometimes preserved in a

special manner and for religious purposes in its ancient setting as a

belief, or as a tradition belonging to sacred places and appertaining

to sacred things. This is what has happened to the Genesis myth of the

Hebrews; it has also happened to some of the sacred myths of the

Hindus, and perhaps to some of the sacred myths of the Greeks. In this

position the myth may even be reduced to writing, and where this

happens all the sacredness appertaining to tradition is transferred to

the written instrument.

Thus in Arkadia, Pausanias tells us, was a temple of Demeter, and

every second year, when they were celebrating what they called the

greater mysteries, they took out certain writings which bore on the

mysteries, and having read them in the hearing of the initiated, put

them back in their place that same night.[211] In India examples occur

of land being held for telling stories at the Uchaos or festivals of

the goddess Devi.[212] The colleges of Rome, composed of men specially

skilled in religious lore, and charged with the preservation of

traditional rules regarding the more general religious observances,

the proper fulfilment of which implied a certain amount of

information, and rendered it necessary for the state in its own

interest to provide the faithful transmission of that information,

have been described by Mommsen.[213]

I pass to the third class of tradition, namely, the legend, and this

need not detain us long. We have already illustrated it by the notes

on history and folklore, and by its very nature it belongs essentially

to the historic age. In dealing with legend, there is first to

determine whether its characters are historical, or are unknown to

history. If the former, there is next to disengage those parts of the

tradition which, by their parallels to other traditions, or by their

nature, may be safely certified as not belonging to the historical

hero or to the period of the historical hero. If the latter, the

details must be analysed to see what elements of culture are contained

therein. In both cases tradition will have served a purpose, and that

purpose must be sought. Tradition does not attach itself to an

historical personage without cause. There is necessity for it, and in

the case of Hereward the necessity was proved to have been the great

gap in the history of a national hero. Tradition does not preserve

details of primitive culture-history without cause, and in the

examples already quoted it has been shown that this cause rests upon

the indissoluble links which the uncultured peasant of to-day has with

the pre-cultured past of his race. He will have forgotten all about

his tribal life and its consequences, but will retain legends which

are founded upon tribal life. He will have lost touch with ideas which

proclaim that man or woman not of his tribe is an enemy to be feared

or attacked, but will gladly relate legends which deal with events

growing out of a state of perpetual strife among the ancestors of

people now in friendship. He will not understand the personal tie of

ancient times, but will listen to the legends attached to places in

such strange fashion as to make places seem to possess a personal life

full of events and happenings. He will know nothing of giants and

ogres, but will love the legends which tell of heroes meeting and

conquering such beings. The history of the school books is nothing to

him, but the history unknowingly contained in the legends is very

real, and is applied over and over again to such later events as by

force of circumstances become stamped upon the popular mind and thus

succeed in displacing the original. It would be an important

contribution to history to have these legends collected and examined

by a competent authority. They would be beacon lights of national

history preserved in legend.

It will be readily conceded, I think, that in attempting these

definitions of the various classes of tradition, and in illustrating

them from the records of man's life in various parts of the world, it

has been impossible for me to deal with certain points in the problem

before us. In particular I have not considered the favourite subject

of the diffusion of folk-tales. I do not believe in a general system

of diffusion, such a system, I mean, as would suffice to account for

the parallels to be found in almost all countries.[214] I think

diffusion occupies a very small part indeed of the problem, and that

it only takes place in late historical times. It is a large subject,

and I have virtually stated my answer to the theory of diffusion in

the definitions and classifications which I have ventured to put

forward. It may be considered by some that other facts in the

conditions of myth, folk-tale, and legend would not confirm the

general outline I have given of the three classes of tradition to

which I have applied these terms; and of course there are many side

issues in so great a problem. I would not urge the correctness of the

views I have put forward as applicable to every part of the world, or

to every phase in the history of tradition; but I would urge that in

the great centres of traditional life they are practically the only

means of arriving at the position occupied by tradition, and that in

all cases they form a working hypothesis upon which future inquirers

may well base their researches.

II

Of late years there have been placed alongside of the traditional

myth, folk-tale, and legend many other products of tradition--customs,

ceremonies, practices, and beliefs, and it has been argued, and argued

strongly and convincingly, that the tradition which has brought down

the saga and song as far-off echoes of an otherwise unrecorded past

has also brought down these other elements which must also belong to

the same distant past. This argument is now no longer seriously

disputed. But there still remains open for discussion the exact kind

of evidence which these elements of tradition supply, the particular

period or people from which they have descended, the particular

department of history to which they relate. All this is highly

disputed.

Folklore has in this department been greatly aided by Dr. Tylor's

impressive terminology, whereby the custom, ceremony, practice, and

belief which have come down by tradition are classed as "survivals."

This term implies an ancient origin, and the necessary work of the

student is to get back to the original. Until very lately the fact of

survival has carried with it the presumption of ancient origin, but

Mr. Crawley has raised an objection which I think it is well to meet.

He urges that "the history of religious phenomena exemplifies in the

most striking manner the continuity of modern and primitive culture;

but there is a tendency on the part of students to underestimate this

continuity, and, by explaining it away on a theory of survivals, to

lose the only opportunity we have of deducing the permanent elements

of human nature."

This sentence at once prepares us for much that follows; but Mr.

Crawley leaves the point itself untouched, except by implication,

until he is in the middle of his book, and then we have his dictum

that "it may be finally asserted that nothing which has to do with

human needs ever survives as a mere survival."[215] It will at once be

seen that we have here a new estimate of the force which survivals

play in the evidence of human progress. They prove the continuity of

modern and primitive culture. They are part and parcel of modern life,

filling a vacuum which has not been filled by modern thought, carrying

on, therefore, the standard of religious belief and religious ideal

from point to point until they can be replaced by newer ideas and

concepts. This definition of survivals is very bold. It answers Mr.

Crawley's purpose and argument in a way which no other fact in human

history, so far as we can judge, could answer it. It is the basis upon

which his whole argument is founded. Occupying such an important

place, it should have received explicit investigation, instead of

being treated as a sort of side issue of incidental importance.

When explicit investigation is undertaken, Mr. Crawley's case must, I

think, break down. Survivals are carried along the stream of time by

people whose culture-status is on a level with the culture in which

the survivals originated. It matters not that these people are placed

in the midst of a higher civilisation or alongside of a higher

civilisation. When once the higher civilisation penetrates to them,

the survival is lost. There is not continuity between modern and

primitive thought here, but, on the contrary, there is strong

antagonism, ending with the defeat and death of the primitive

survival. This is the evidence wherever survivals can be studied,

whether in the midst of our own civilisation, or even of primitive

civilisations, which constantly exhibit traces of older beliefs and

ideas being pushed out of existence by newer. It is, indeed, a mistake

to suppose, as some authorities apparently do, that survivals can only

be studied when they are embedded in a high civilisation. It is almost

a more fruitful method to study them when they appear in the lower

strata; and even in such a case as the Australian aborigines I think

that it is the neglect of observing survivals that has led to some of

the erroneous theories which have recently been advanced against

Messrs. Spencer and Gillen's conclusions.

For the purpose of examining survivals in custom, rite, and belief, we

have nothing more than a series of notes of customs and beliefs

obtaining among the lower and lowest classes of the people, and not

being the direct teaching of any religious or academic body. These

notes are very unequal in value, owing to the manner in which they

have been made. They are often accidental, they are seldom if ever the

result of trained observation, and they are often mixed up with

theories as to their origin and relationship to modern society and

modern religious beliefs. To a great extent the two first of these

apparent defects are real safeguards, for they certify to the

genuineness of the record, a certificate which is more needed in this

branch of inquiry than perhaps in any other. But with regard to the

third defect there is considerable danger. An inquirer with an object

is so apt to find what he wishes to find, either by the exercise of

his own credulity or the ingenuous extension of inquiry into answer;

whereas the inquirer who is content to note with the simplicity of

those who occupy themselves by collecting what others have not

collected, may be deficient in the details he gives, but is seldom

wrong or violently wrong in what he has recorded. In every direction,

however, great caution is needed, and especially where any section of

custom and belief has already been the subject of inquiry. It is

indeed almost safe to say that all research into custom and belief,

even that of such masters as Tylor, Lang, Hartland, Frazer, and

others, needs re-examination before we can finally and unreservedly

accept the conclusions which have been arrived at.

Such an examination must be directed towards obtaining some necessary

points in the life-history of each custom, rite, and belief. We have

to approach this part of our work guided by the fact that folklore

cannot by any possibility develop. The doctrine of evolution is so

strong upon us that we are apt to apply its leading idea insensibly to

almost every branch of human history. But folklore being what it is,

namely the survival of traditional ideas or practices among a people

whose principal members have passed beyond the stage of civilisation

which those ideas and practices once represented, it is impossible for

it to have any development. When the original ideas and practices

which it represents were current as the standard form of culture,

their future history was then to be looked for along the lines of

development. But so soon as they dropped back behind the standard of

culture, whatever the cause and whenever the event happened, then

their future history could only be traced along the lines of decay and

disintegration. We are acquainted with some of the laws which mark the

development of primitive culture, but we have paid no attention to the

influences which mark the existence of survivals in culture. For this

purpose we must first ascertain what are the component parts of each

custom or superstition; secondly, we must classify the various

elements in each example; and thirdly, we must group the various

examples into classes which associate with each other in motif and

character.

By this treble process we shall have before us examples of the changes

in folklore, and demonstrably they are changes of decay, not of

development. By grouping and arranging these changes it may be

possible to ascertain and set down the laws of change--for that there

are laws I am nearly certain. It is these laws which must be

discovered before we can go very far forward in our studies. Every

item of custom and superstition must be tested by analysis to find out

under which power it lives on in survival, and according to the result

in each case, so may we hope to find out something about the original

from which the survival has descended.

Each folklore item, in point of fact, has a life history of its own,

and a place in relationship to other items. Just as the biography of

each separate word in our language has been investigated in order to

get at Aryan speech as the interpretation of Aryan thought, so must

the biography of each custom, superstition, or story be investigated

in order to get at Aryan belief or something older than Aryan belief.

We must try to ascertain whether each item represents primitive belief

by direct descent, by symbolisation, or by changes which may be

discovered by some law equivalent to Grimm's law in the study of

language.

Analysis of each custom, rite, or belief will show it to consist of

three distinct parts, which I would distinguish by the following

names:--

1. The formula.

2. The purpose.

3. The penalty or result.

It will be found that these three component parts are not equally

tenacious of their original form in all examples. In one example we

may find the formula either actually or symbolically perfect, while

the purpose and penalty may not be easily distinguishable. Or it may

happen that the formula remains fairly perfect; the purpose may be set

down to the desire of doing what has always been done, and the penalty

may be given as luck or ill-luck. Of course, further variations are

possible, but these are usually the more general forms.

I will give an example or two of these phases of change or degradation

in folklore. First, then, where the formula is complete, or nearly so,

and the purpose and penalty have both disappeared. At Carrickfergus it

was formerly the custom for mothers, when giving their child the

breast for the last time, to put an egg in its hand and sit on the

threshold of the outer door with a leg on each side, and this ceremony

was usually done on a Sunday. Undoubtedly I think we have here a very

nearly perfect formula; but what is its purpose, and what is the

penalty for non-observance? Upon both these latter points the example

is silent, and before they can be restored we must search among the

other fragments of threshold customs and see whether they exist either

separately from the formula or with a less perfect example. Secondly,

where the formula has disappeared and the purpose and penalty remain,

nearly the whole range of those floating beliefs and superstitions

which occupy so largely the collections of folklore would supply

examples. But I will select one example which will be to the point.

When the Manx cottager looks for the traces of a foot in the ashes of

his firegrate for the purpose of seeing in what direction the toes

point, the penalty being that, if they point to the door, a death will

occur, if to the fireplace, a birth,[216] there is no trace of the

ancient formula. It is true we may find the missing formula in other

lands; for instance, among some of the Indian tribes of Bombay. There

the formula is elaborate and complete, while the purpose and the

penalty are exactly the same as in the Isle of Man. But this hasty

travelling to other lands is not, I contend, legitimate in the first

place. We must begin by seeing whether there is not some other item of

folklore, perhaps now not even connected with the house-fire group of

customs and superstitions, whose true place is that of the lost

formula of this interesting Manx custom. And when once we have taught

ourselves the way to restore these lost formulae to their rightful

places, the explanation of the mere waifs and strays of folklore will

be attended with some approach to scientific accuracy, and we shall

then be in a position to get rid of that shibboleth so dear to the

non-folklore critic, that all these things we deal with are "mere

superstitions."

Thirdly, when the formula is complete, or nearly so, and the purpose

and penalty become generalised. At St. Edmundsbury a white bull, which

enjoyed full ease and plenty in the fields, and was never yoked to the

plough or employed in any service, was led in procession in the chief

streets of the town to the principal gate of the monastery, attended

by all the monks singing and a shouting crowd. Knowing what Grimm has

collected concerning the worship of the white bull, knowing what is

performed in India to this day, there is no doubt that this formula of

the white bull at St. Edmundsbury has been preserved in very good

condition. The purpose of it was, however, not so satisfactory. It is

said to have taken place whenever a married woman wished to have a

child; and the penalty is lost in the obvious generalisation that not

to perform the ceremony is not to obtain the desired end.[217]

The second process, that of classification of the various elements in

each example, will reveal some characteristics of folklore, which, so

far as I know, have never yet been taken count of. One very important

characteristic is the prevalence of a particular belief attached to

different objects in different places. Thus Sir John Rhys in his

examination of Manx folklore stopped short in his explanation of the

superstition of the first-foot, because he had heard that, while in

the Isle of Man it was attached to a dark man, elsewhere it was

attached to a fair man. Of the examples where, on New Year's morning,

it is held to be unlucky to meet a dark person, I may mention

Lincolnshire, Durham, Yorkshire, and Northumberland. It is, on the

contrary, _lucky_ to meet, as first-foot, a dark-haired man in

Lancashire, the Isle of Man, and Aberdeenshire.[218] In these cases we

get the element of "dark" or "fair" as the varying factor of the

superstition; but instances occur in Sutherlandshire, the West of

Scotland, and in Durham, where the varying factor rests upon sex--a

man being lucky and a woman being unlucky.

Similarly of the well-known superstition about telling the bees of the

death of their owner, in Berkshire, Bucks, Cheshire, Cornwall,

Cumberland, Lincolnshire, Lancashire, Monmouthshire, Notts,

Northumberland, Shropshire, Somersetshire, Suffolk, Surrey, Sussex,

Wilts, Worcestershire, it appears that a relative may perform the

ceremony, or sometimes a servant merely, while in Derbyshire, Hants,

Northants, Rutland, and Yorkshire it must be the heir or successor of

the deceased owner. Again, while in the above places the death of the

owner is told to the bees, in other places it is told to the cattle,

and in Cornwall to the trees;[219] and, in other places, marriages as

well as death are told to the bees.[220]

In some cases the transfer from one object to another of a particular

superstition is a matter of absolute observation. Thus, the labourers

in Norfolk considered it a presage of death to miss a "bout" in corn

or seed sowing. The superstition is now transferred to the drill,

which has only been invented for a century. Again, in Ireland, it is

now considered unlucky to give any one a light for his pipe on

May-day--a very modern superstition, apparently. But the pipe in this

case has been the means of preserving the old superstition found in

many places of not giving a light from the homestead fire.

I will just refer to one other example, the well-known custom of

offering rags at sacred wells. Sir John Rhys thought that the object

of these scraps of clothing being placed at the well was for

transferring the disease from the sick person to some one else. But I

ventured to oppose this idea, and considered that they were offerings,

pure and simple, to the spirit of the well, and referred to examples

in confirmation. Among other items, I have come across an account of

an Irish "station," as it is called, at a sacred well, the details of

which fully bear out my view as to the nature of the rags deposited at

the shrine being offerings to the local deity. One of the devotees, in

true Irish fashion, made his offering accompanied by the following

words: "To St. Columbkill--I offer up this button, a bit o' the

waistband o' my own breeches, an' a taste o' my wife's petticoat, in

remimbrance of us havin' made this holy station; an' may they rise up

in glory to prove it for us in the last day."[221] I shall not attempt

to account for the presence of the usual Irish humour in this, to the

devotee, most solemn offering; but I point out the undoubted nature of

the offerings and their service in the identification of their

owners--a service which implies their power to bear witness in

spirit-land to the pilgrimage of those who deposited them during

lifetime at the sacred well.[222]

Now, in all these cases there is an original and a secondary, or

derivative, form of the superstition, and it is our object to trace

out which is which. Do the rags deposited at wells symbolise offerings

to the local deity? If so, they bring us within measurable distance of

a cult which rests upon faith in the power of natural objects to harm

or render aid to human beings. Does the question of first-foot rest

upon the colour of the hair or upon the sex of the person? I think,

looking at all the examples I have been able to examine, that colour

is really the older basis of the superstition, and, if so,

ethnological considerations are doubtless the root of it. Again, if

the eldest son of the deceased owner of bees appears in the earliest

form of the death-telling ceremony, we have an interesting fragment of

the primitive house-ritual of our ancestors.

When, however, we come upon the worship of local deities, when we can

suggest ethnological elements in folklore, and when we can speak of

the house-father, and can see that duties are imposed upon him by

traditional custom, unknown to any rules of civilised society, we are

in the presence of facts older than those of historic times. It is

thus that folklore so frequently points back to the past before the

age of history. Over and over again we pause before the facts of

folklore, which, however explained, always lead us back to some

unexplored epoch of history, some undated period, which has not

revealed its heroes, but which has left us a heritage of its mental

strivings.

The method of using these notes of custom, rite, and belief for

scientific purposes is therefore a very important matter. It is

essential that each single item should be treated definitely and

separately from all other items, and, further, that the exact wording

of the original note upon each separate item should be kept intact.

There must be no juggling with the record, no emendations such as

students of early literary work are so fond of attempting. Whatever

the record, it must be accepted. The original account of every custom

and belief is a corpus, not to be tampered with except for the purpose

of scientific analysis, and then after that purpose has been effected

all the parts must be put together again, and the original restored to

its form.

The handling of each custom or belief and of its separate parts in

this way enables us, in the first place, to disentangle it from the

particular personal or social stratum in which it happens to have been

preserved. It may have become attached to a place, an object, a

season, a class of persons, a rule of life, and may have been

preserved by means of this attachment. But because every item of

folklore of the same nature is not attached to the same agent

wherever that particular item has been preserved, it is important not

to stereotype an accidental association as a permanent one. Moreover,

the modern association is not necessarily the ancient association, and

there is the further difficulty created by writers on folklore

classifying into chapters of their own creation the items they collect

or discuss.[223] In the second place, we are enabled to prepare each

item of folklore for the place to which it may ultimately be found to

belong. The first step in this preparation is to get together all the

examples of any one custom, rite, or belief which have been preserved,

and to compare these examples with each other, first as to common

features of likeness, secondly as to features of unlikeness. By this

process we are able to restore what may be deficient from the

insufficiency of any particular record--and such a restoration is

above all things essential--and to present for examination not an

isolated specimen but a series of specimens, each of which helps to

bring back to observation some portion of the original. The

reconstruction of the original is thus brought within sight.

Generally, it may be stated that the points of likeness determine and

classify all the examples of one custom or belief; the points of

unlikeness indicate the line of decay inherent in survivals.

This partial equation and partial divergence between different

examples of the same custom or belief allows a very important point to

be made in the study of survivals. We can estimate the value of the

elements which equate in any number of examples, and the value of the

elements which diverge; and by noting how these values differ in the

various examples we shall discover the extent of the overlapping of

example with example, which is of the utmost importance. A given

custom consists, say, of six elements, which by their constancy among

all the examples and by their special characteristics may be

considered as primary elements, in the form in which the custom has

survived. Let us call these primary elements by algebraical signs,

a, b, c, d, e, f. A second example of the same custom has

four of these elements, a, b, c, d, and two divergences, which

may be considered as secondary elements, and which we will call by the

signs g, h. A third example has elements a, b, and divergences

g, h, i, k. A further example has none of the primary elements,

but only divergences g, h, i, l, m. Then the statement of the case

is reduced to the following:--

1 = a, b, c, d, e, f.

2 = a, b, c, d + g, h.

3 = a, b + g, h, i, k.

4 = + g, h, i, l, m.

The first conclusion to be drawn from this is that the overlapping of

the several examples (No. 1 overlapping No. 2 at a, b, c, d,

No. 2 overlapping No. 3 at a, b + g, h, No. 3 overlapping No.

4 at + g, h, i) shows all these several examples to be but

variations of one original custom, example No. 4, though possessing

none of the elements of example No. 1, being the same custom as

example No. 1. Secondly, the divergences g to m mark the line of

decay which this particular custom has undergone since it ceased to

belong to the dominant culture of the people, and dropped back into

the position of a survival from a former culture preserved only by a

fragment of the people.[224]

The first of these conclusions is not affected by the order in which

the examples are arranged; whether we begin with No. 4 or with No. 1,

the relationship of each example to the others, thus proved to be in

intimate association, is the same. The second conclusion is

necessarily dependent upon what we take to be "primary elements" and

"secondary elements;" and the question is how can these be determined?

As a rule it will be found that the primary elements are the most

constant parts of the whole group of examples, appearing more

frequently, possessing greater adherence to a common form, changing

(when they do change) with slighter variations; while the secondary

elements, on the other hand, assume many different varieties of form,

are by no means of constant occurrence, and do not even amongst

themselves tend to a common form. The primary elements, therefore,

constitute the form of the custom which represents the oldest part of

the survival. They alone will help us to determine the origin of the

custom, whether by features represented in the elements thus brought

together or by comparison with ancient custom elsewhere or with

survivals elsewhere similarly reconstituted. Altogether these

elements, thus linked together by the tie of common attributes, are

parts of one organic whole, and it is on this reconstructed organism

we have to rely for the evidence from tradition.

When any given custom or belief has undergone this double process of

analysis of its component parts and classification of its several

elements, another process has to be undertaken, namely, to ascertain

its association with other customs or beliefs, in the same country or

among the same people, each of which customs or beliefs, being treated

in exactly the same manner, is found to exhibit some degree of

relationship in origin, condition, or purpose to the whole group under

examination. In this way classification, analysis, and association go

hand in hand as the necessary methods of studying survivals. Without

analysis we cannot properly arrive at a classification; without

classification we cannot work out the association of survivals.

The process is perhaps highly technical and complicated. It may not be

of interest to all to discuss the process by which results are

attained when what is most desired are the results themselves. But in

truth the two parts of this study cannot well be separated. To judge

of the validity of the results one must know what the process has

been, and too often results are jumped at without warrant; items of

custom and usage or of belief and myth are docketed as belonging to a

given phase of culture, a given group of people, when they have no

right to such a place in the history of man. It is not only

distasteful to the inquirer, but almost impossible to dislodge any

item of folklore once so placed, and thus much of the value of the

material supplied by folklore is lost or discounted.

Custom, rite, and belief treated in this fashion become veritable

monuments of history--a history too ancient to have been recorded in

script, too much an essential part of the folk-life to have been lost

to tradition. We may hope to restore therefrom the surviving mosaic of

ancient institutions, ancient law, and ancient religion, and we may

further hope, with this mosaic to work upon, to restore much of the

entire fabric which has been lying so many centuries beneath the

accumulated and accumulating mass of new developments representing the

civilisation of the Western world.

III

It is only here that we can discover the point where we may properly

commence the work of comparative folklore. An item of folklore which

stands isolated is practically of no use for scientific investigation.

It may be, as we have seen, that the myth is in its primary stage as a

sacred belief among primitive people, in its secondary or folk-tale

stage as a sacred memory of what was once believed, in its final or

legendary stage when it does duty in preserving the memory of a hero

or a place of abiding interest. It may be, as we have seen, that the

custom, rite, or belief is a mere formula without purpose or result, a

mere traditional expression of a purpose without formula or result, a

mere statement of result without formula or purpose. We must know the

exact position of each item before we begin to compare, or we may be

comparing absolutely unlike things. The exact position of each item of

folklore is not to be found from one isolated example. It has first to

be restored to its association with all the known examples of its

kind, so that the earliest and most complete form may be recorded.

That is the true position to which it has been reduced as a survival.

This restored and complete example is then in a position to be

compared either with similar survivals in other countries on the same

level of culture, or within the same ethnological or political sphere

of influence, or with living customs, rites, or beliefs of peoples of

a more backward state of culture or in a savage state of culture.

Comparison of this kind is of value. Comparison of a less technical or

comprehensive kind may be of value in the hands of a great master; but

it is often not only valueless but mischievous in the hands of less

experienced writers, who think that comparison is justified wherever

similarity is discovered.

Similarity in form, however, does not necessarily mean similarity in

origin. It does not mean similarity in motive. Customs and rites which

are alike in practice can be shown to have originated from quite

different causes, to express quite different motifs, and cannot

therefore be held to belong to a common class, the elements of which

are comparable. Thus to take a very considerable custom, to be found

both in folk-tales and in usage, the succession of the youngest son,

it is pretty clear that among European peoples it originated in the

tribal practice of the elder sons going out of the tribal household to

found tribal households of their own, thus leaving the youngest to

inherit the original homestead. But among savage peoples where the

youngest son inherits the homestead, he does not do so because of a

tribal custom such as that to be found in the European evidence. It is

because of the conditions of the marriage rites. Thus among the Kafir

peoples of South Africa

"the young man of the commonality, who being a young

man has had but little or no means of displaying his

sagacity--a quality with them most frequently

synonymous with cunning--commences for himself in a

small way. Hence, too, being polygamous, and his wives

being bought with cattle, his first wife is taken from

a position accordant with that of a young, untried,

and poor or comparatively poor man. Hence also it

happens that his wives increase in number, and in--so

to speak--position, in accordance with his wealth, and

with his reputation for wisdom and sagacity, which may

have raised him to the rank of headman of a district,

and one of the Chief's counsellors. It is, therefore,

only when old in years that he takes to himself his

'great wife,' one of greater social and racial

position than were his previous wives, and her son,

that is, her eldest son, who is consequently the

father's youngest or nearly his youngest, becomes his

'great son,' and par excellence the heir. If the

father be a Chief, this son becomes the Chief at his

father's death.

"As, however, subordinate heirs, the father after some

consultation and ceremony chooses out of his other

sons, secondly 'the son of his right hand,' and

thirdly, 'the son of his grandfather.' If the father

be a Chief, these two are after his death accounted as

Chiefs in the tribe, subordinate to the 'great son,'

and even if through their superior energy, the size of

the tribe requiring emigration to pastures new, or

other causes, one or both of them break off, and with

their respective inheritance or following form a

separate tribe or tribes, yet they are federally bound

to their great brother, and their successors to his

successors, and recognise him as their supreme or

national Chief. Thus Krili, the Chief of the

Amagcaleka tribe across the Kei, was also paramount

Chief of all the Amaxosas, including his own tribe,

and those this side the Kei, who are divided into the

two great divisions--each of which includes several

tribes--of the Amangquika and Amandhlambi, which

latter has among it the Amagqunukwebi, a tribe of

Caffre intermingled with Hottentot blood, and

therefore rather looked down upon."[225]

Dr. Nicholson, from whom I quote this evidence, goes on to say that

the

"custom then of the heirship of the youngest, appears

to me to have not unlikely grown up among a polygamous

race, and to have arisen both from considerations of

self security and from those of race and rank."

Quite independently of Dr. Nicholson I had come to the same

conclusion;[226] and Dr. Nicholson, after handsomely acknowledging my

priority in the "discovery," very properly alludes to the not

unimportant fact of two workers in the same field coming to like

conclusions. It is remarkable that the same distinction between the

succession of the youngest son and of the son of the youngest wife

appears in folk-tales.[227] Now clearly it would be quite wrong to

suggest a parallel between the heirship of the youngest among the

Kafir peoples of Africa and heirship of the youngest among the tribal

people of early Europe. They are not comparable at all points, and it

is just where the point of comparison fails that it becomes so

important to science.[228]

I will take one other example, and this is the important practice of

human sacrifice which looms so largely in anthropological research,

and which is considered by so good an authority as Schrader to have

taken a prominent place among the Aryans,[229] though he takes his

examples, not from language, but from the unexamined customs of the

Greeks, Romans, northerns, Indians, and Persians. We know more about

the development of sacrifice now that Professor Robertson Smith has

dealt with the Semitic part of the evidence. Without resting on the

fact that the occurrence of human sacrifice in a country occupied by

Aryan-speaking people does not, of itself alone, imply that the rite

was Aryan, it is far more important to point out that among the higher

races "the feeling that the slaying involves a grave responsibility

and must be justified by divine permission" appears, and "care was

taken to slay the victim without bloodshed, or to make believe that it

had killed itself."[230] This feeling marks distinctly the Greek

sacrifice as at Thargelia and in the Leukadian ceremony, the Roman

sacrifice at the Tarpeian Rock, the sacrifice at the Valhalla rock of

the northerns, while among the Hindus there is much to show that the

idea of human sacrifice in some of the early writings is a literary

borrowing from the Hebrews; and that if it ever prevailed among the

Aryas of India it was very early superseded by the sacrifice of

animals.[231] Colonel Dalton has given good reasons for his views

"that the Hindus derived from the aboriginal races the practice of

human sacrifices."[232] Although, then, Greek ritual and Greek myth

are full of legends which tell of sacrifices once human, but

afterwards commuted into sacrifices where some other victim is slain

or the dummy of a man is destroyed;[233] although the significant

Hindu ceremonial of so throwing the limbs of an animal slaughtered to

be burnt with the dead that every limb lies upon a corresponding part

of the corpse;[234] although Teuton, Celt, and Norse[235] are credited

with the practice by authorities not to be questioned, it appears by

the evidence that the European form of human sacrifice has little in

common with the savage form except in the nature of the victim. It

occurred, as Grimm states, when some great disaster, some heinous

crime, had to be retrieved or purged, a kind of sacrifice, says Mr.

Lang, not necessarily savage except in its cruelty; and the victims

were not tribesmen, but captive enemies, purchased slaves, or great

criminals.

These two examples will serve as warning against the too general

acceptance of the custom and belief of savage and barbaric races, as

identical with the custom and belief of early or primitive man. Such

identification is in the main correct; but it is correct not because

it has been proved by the best methods to be so, but because, of all

possible explanations, this is the only one that meets the general

position in a satisfactory manner. In many cases, however, it is

monstrously incorrect, and it is the incorrect conclusion which weighs

far more against the acceptance of the results of folklore than do the

correct conclusions in its favour.

The work which has to be accomplished by the comparative method of

research is of such magnitude that it needs to be considered. The

labour and research might in point of volume be out of proportion to

the results, and it may be questioned, as it has already been

questioned by inference, whether it is worth the while. The first

answer to this objection is that all historical investigation is

justified, however much the labour, however extensive the research.

Secondly, considering the very few results which the study of folklore

has hitherto produced upon the investigations into prehistoric Europe,

it must be worth while for the student of custom and belief to conduct

his experiments upon a recognised plan in order to get at the secret

of man's place in the struggle for existence, which is determined more

by psychological than by physical phenomena. Thirdly, if the psychical

anthropology of prehistoric times is to be sought for in the customs

and beliefs of modern savages, it is of vital importance to

anthropological science that this should be established by methods

exactly defined. Whatever of traditional custom and belief is capable

of bearing the test and of being definitely labelled as belonging to

prehistoric man, becomes thereafter the data for the psychical

anthropology of civilised man. Edmund Spenser understood this when his

official duties took him among the "wild" Irish. "All the customs of

the Irish," he says, "which I have often noted and compared with that

I have read, would minister occasion of a most ample discourse of the

original of them, and the antiquity of that people, which in truth I

think to be more ancient than most that I know in this end of the

world; so as if it were in the handling of some man of sound judgment

and plentiful reading, it would be most pleasant and profitable."[236]

Comparative folklore, then, to be of value must be based upon

scientific principles. The unmeaning custom or belief of the peasantry

of the Western world of civilisation must not be taken into the

domains of savagery or barbarism for an explanation without any

thought as to what this action really signifies to the history of the

custom or belief in question. No doubt the explanation thus afforded

is correct in most cases, and perhaps it was necessary to begin with

the comparative method in order to understand the importance and scope

of the study of apparently worthless material. A new stage in

comparative folklore must now be entered upon. It must be understood

what the effective comparison of a traditional peasant custom or

belief with a savage custom or belief really amounts to. The process

includes the comparison of an isolated custom or belief belonging,

perhaps secretly, to a particular place, a particular class of

persons, or perhaps a particular family or person, with a custom or

belief which is part of a whole system belonging to a savage race or

tribe; of a custom or belief whose only sanction is tradition, the

conservative instinct to do what has been done by one's ancestors,

with a custom or belief whose sanction is the professed and

established polity or religion of a people; of a custom or belief

which is embedded in a civilisation, of which it is not a part and to

which it is antagonistic, with a custom or belief which helps to make

up the civilisation of which it is part. In carrying out such a

comparison, therefore, a very long journey back into the past of the

civilised race has been performed. For unless it be admitted that

civilised people consciously borrow from savages and barbaric peoples

or constantly revert to a savage original type of mental and social

condition, the effect of such a comparison is to take back the custom

or belief of the modern peasant to a date when a people of savage or

barbaric culture occupied the country now occupied by their

descendants, the peasants in question, and to equate the custom or

belief of this ancient savage or barbaric culture with the custom or

belief of modern savage or barbaric culture. The line of comparison is

not therefore simply drawn level from civilisation to savagery; but it

consists, first, of two vertical lines from civilisation and savagery

respectively, drawn to a height scaled to represent the antiquity of

savage culture in modern Europe, and then the level horizontal line

drawn to join the two vertical lines. Thus the line of comparison is

Ancient savagery Ancient savagery

+-------------------------------+

| |

| |

| |

| |

Savagery Civilisation

We thus arrive at some conception of the work to be accomplished by

and involved in comparative folklore. The results are worth the work.

They relate to stages of culture in the countries of civilisation

which are recoverable by no other means. The stages of culture are

practically lost to history. In ancient Greek and Roman history, and

in ancient Scandinavian history, there are priceless fragments of

information which tell us much. But these fragments are not the

complete story, and they belong to relatively small areas of European

history. Every nation has the right to go back as far in its history

as it is possible to reach. It can only do this by the help of

comparative folklore. In our own country we have seen how history

breaks down, and yet historical records in Britain are perhaps the

richest in Europe. The traditional materials known to us as folklore

are the only means left to us, and we can only properly avail

ourselves of these when we have mastered the methods of science which

it is necessary to use in their investigation.

FOOTNOTES:

[182] Mr. MacCulloch, in the title of his interesting book, the

_Childhood of Fiction_, has emphasised this mischievous idea. I am not

convinced to the contrary by the evidence he gives as to the popularity

of the folk-tale among all peoples (p. 2). Indeed, the book itself is

an emphatic testimony against its title. Mr. MacCulloch evidently began

with the idea that the folk-tale belonged to the domain of fiction.

Thus the opening words of his book are: "Folk-tales are the earliest

form of romantic and imaginative literature--the unwritten fiction of

early man and of primitive people in all parts of the world;" whereas

as he nears the end of his study he observes: "Thus, in their origin,

folk-tales may have had some other purpose than mere amusement; they

may have embodied the traditions, histories, beliefs, ideas, and

customs of men at an early stage of civilisation" (p. 451). Mr.

MacCulloch himself proves this to be the case, and it is therefore all

the more unfortunate that he should have stamped his very important

study with the word "fiction."

[183] A folk-tale of the Veys, a North African people, explains this

view most graphically in its opening sentences. The narrator begins his

tale by saying: "I speak of the long time past; hear! It is written in

our old-time-palaver-books--I do not say _then_; in old time the Vey

people had no books, but the old men told it to their children and they

kept it; afterwards it was written" (_Journ. Ethnol. Soc._, N.S., vi.

354). A parallel to this comes from Ireland: "What I have told your

honour is true; and if it stands otherwise in books, it's the books

which are wrong. Sure we've better authority than books, for we have it

all handed down from generation to generation" (Kohl's _Travels in

Ireland_, 140).

[184] I am the more willing to take this as my illustration of myth

because, strangely enough, Mr. MacCulloch has omitted it from the

examples he uses in his _Childhood of Fiction_.

[185] _Myth, Ritual, and Religion_, i. 166.

[186] Mr. Jeremiah Curtin has collected and published the _Creation

Myths of Primitive America_ (London, 1899), and his introduction is a

specially valuable study of the subject. I printed the Fijian myth from

Williams' _Fiji and Fijians_, i. 204, and the Kumis myth from Lewin's

_Wild Races of South-east India_, 225-6, in my _Handbook of Folklore_,

137-139, and Mr. Lang, in cap. vi. of his _Myth, Ritual, and Religion_

deals with a sufficient number of examples. _Cf._ also Tylor,

_Primitive Culture_, cap. ix.

[187] Grey, _Polynesian Mythology_, 1-15. I have only summarised the

full legend on the lines adopted by Dr. Tylor.

[188] On the Kronos myth consult Farnell, _Cults of the Greek States_,

i. 23-31, who gives an admirable summary of the evidence as it at

present stands; Harrison and Verrall, _Mythology and Monuments of Anc.

Athens_, 192; Lang, _Myth, Ritual, and Religion_, i. 295-323.

[189] Mr. Crawley discovered this story in Mr. Bain's _A Digit of the

Moon_, 13-15, and printed it in his _Mystic Rose_, 33-34.

[190] "The Interpreters of Genesis and the Interpreters of Nature," and

"Mr. Gladstone and Genesis," in _Science and Hebrew Tradition_, cap.

iv. and v.

[191] _Adonis, Attis and Osiris_, 4, 25. Mr. Jevons, too, lays stress

upon "the source of errors in religion" as human reason gone astray,

_Introd. to Hist. of Religion_, 463.

[192] Mr. Jevons practically arrives at this conclusion from a

different standpoint. "Beliefs," he says, "are about facts, are

statements about facts, statements that certain facts will be found to

occur in a certain way or be of a certain kind" (_Introd. to Hist. of

Religion_, 402). Mr. Curtin, _Creation Myths of Primitive America_ (p.

xx), confirms the view I take.

[193] Orpen, _Cape Monthly Magazine_. Quoted in Lang's _Myth, Ritual,

and Religion_, i. 71.

[194] This myth is, I think, worth giving, because of its obvious

object to account for the difference between white and black races. It

is as follows: "In the beginning of the world God created three white

men and three white women, and three black men and three black women.

In order that these twelve human souls might not thenceforth complain

of Divine partiality and of their separate conditions, God elected that

they should determine their own fates by their own choice of good and

evil. A large calabash or gourd was placed by God upon the ground, and

close to the side of the calabash was also placed a small folded piece

of paper. God ruled that the black man should have the first choice. He

chose the calabash, because he expected that the calabash, being so

large, could not but contain everything needful for himself. He opened

the calabash, and found a scrap of gold, a scrap of iron, and several

other metals of which he did not understand the use. The white man had

no option. He took, of course, the small folded piece of paper, and

discovered that, on being unfolded, it revealed a boundless stock of

knowledge. God then left the black men and women in the bush, and led

the white men and women to the seashore. He did not forsake the white

men and women, but communicated with them every night, and taught them

how to construct a ship, and how to sail from Africa to another

country. After a while they returned to Africa with various kinds of

merchandise, which they bartered to the black men and women, who had

the opportunity of being greater and wiser than the white men and

women, but who, out of sheer avidity, had thrown away their chance."

[195] _Native Tribes of South-east Australia_, cap. viii.

[196] _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, cap. xxii.; _Native

Tribes of Central Australia_, cap. xviii.

[197] Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes_, 624; _cf. Native Tribes of

Central Australia_, 564.

[198] Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, 229.

[199] Grey, _Polynesian Mythology_, p. xi. _Cf._ Taylor, _Te Ika a

Maui_, where myths told by the priests are given in cap. vi. and vii.,

and _Trans. Ethnological Soc._, new series, i. 45.

[200] White's _Anc. Hist. of the Maori_, i. 8-13.

[201] Curtin, _Creation Myths of Primitive America_, p. xxi.

[202] Im Thurn, _Indians of Guiana_, 335; Landtman, _Origin of

Priesthood_, 117.

[203] _Primitive Manners and Customs_, cap. i. "Some Savage Myths and

Beliefs," and cap. viii., "Fairy Lore of Savages."

[204] _Introd. to Hist. of Religion_, 263. Of course I do not accept

Mr. J. A. Stewart's "general remarks on the [Greek: mythologia] or

story-telling myth" in his _Myths of Plato_, 4-17. All Mr. Stewart's

research is literary in object and result, though he uses the materials

of anthropology.

[205] H. H. Wilson, _Rig Veda Sanhita_, i. p. xvii.

[206] H. H. Wilson, _Vishnu Purana_, i. p. iv; _Rig Veda Sanhita_, i.

p. xlv.

[207] _Religion of the Semites_, 19.

[208] Mr. Hartland passes rapidly in his opening chapter from the myth

as primitive science to the myth as fairy tale, from the savage to the

Celt (_Science of Fairy Tales_, pp. 1-5), and I do not think it is

possible to make this leap without using the bridge which is to be

constructed out of the differing positions occupied by the myth and the

fairy tale.

[209] It will be interesting, I think, to preserve here one or two

instances of the actual practice of telling traditional tales in our

own country. Mr. Hartland has referred to the subject in his _Science

of Fairy Tales_, but the following instances are additional to those he

has noted, and they refer directly back to the living custom. They are

all from Scotland, and refer to the early part of last century. "In

former times, when families, owing to distance and other circumstances,

held little intercourse with each other through the day, numbers were

in the habit of assembling together in the evening in one house, and

spending the time in relating the tales of wonder which had been handed

down to them by tradition" (Kiltearn in Ross and Cromarty; Sinclair,

_Statistical Account of Scotland_, xiv. 323). "In the last generation

every farm and hamlet possessed its oral recorder of tale and song. The

pastoral habits of the people led them to seek recreation in listening

to, and in rehearsing the tales of other times; and the senachie and

the bard were held in high esteem" (Inverness-shire, _ibid._, xiv.

168). "In the winter months, many of them are in the habit of visiting

and spending the evenings in each other's houses in the different

hamlets, repeating the songs of their native bard or listening to the

legendary tales of some venerable senachie" (Durness in

Sutherlandshire, _ibid._, xv. 95).

[210] W. H. R. Rivers, _The Todas_, 3-4.

[211] Pausanias, viii. cap. xv. Sec. 1.

[212] _Journ. Roy. Asiatic Soc._, ii. p. 218.

[213] _Hist. of Rome_, i. pp. 177-179. _Cf._ Gunnar Landtman, _Origin

of Priesthood_, p. 77.

[214] Perhaps Mr. Lang's study of "Cinderella and the Diffusion of

Tales" in _Folklore_, iv. 413 _et seq._, contains the best summary of

the position.

[215] Crawley, _Tree of Life_, 5, 144.

[216] Train, _Hist. of Isle of Man_, ii. 115.

[217] The ceremony is fully described in _Relics for the Curious_, i.

31; _Gentleman's Magazine_, 1784 (see _Gent. Mag. Library_, xxiii.

209), quoting from a tract first published in 1634; and see _Proc. Soc.

Antiq. Scot._, x. 669.

[218] See _Folklore_, iii. 253-264; Rhys, _Celtic Folklore_, i.

337-341.

[219] Couch, _Hist. of Polperro_, 168.

[220] I have investigated the bee cult at some length, and it will form

part of my study on _Tribal Custom_ which I am now preparing for

publication.

[221] Carleton, _Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry_.

[222] Mr. Eden Phillpotts mentions in one of his Cornish stories

exactly this conception. Rags were offered. "Just a rag tored off a

petticoat or some such thing. They hanged 'em up around about on the

thorn bushes, to shaw as they'd 'a' done more for the good saint if

they'd had the power."--_Lying Prophets_, 60.

[223] I gave an example of this false classification of folklore in

accord with its apparent modern association in my preface to _Denham

Tracts_, ii. p. ix. The left-leg stocking divination is not associated

with dress, but with the left-hand as opposed to the right-hand augury,

and I pointed out that the district of the Roman wall, the _locus_ of

the Denham tracts, thus preserves the luck of the left, believed in by

the Romans, in opposition to the luck of the right believed in by the

Teutons. See Schrader, _Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples_,

253-7.

[224] I elaborated this plan of comparative analysis in a report to the

British Association at Liverpool, in 1896 (see pp. 626-656),

illustrating it from the fire customs of Britain.

[225] _Archaeological Review_, ii. 163-166; _cf._ the Rev. J. Macdonald

in _Folklore_, iii. 338.

[226] _Athenaeum_, 29th December, 1883; _Archaeologia_, vol. l. p. 213.

[227] See MacCulloch's _Childhood of Fiction_, chap. xiii., where this

distinction is noted, though its significance is not pointed out.

[228] Dr. Rivers has dealt with a very similar case of dual origin in

connection with bride capture, see _Journ. Roy. Asiatic Soc._, 1907, p.

624.

[229] Schrader's _Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples_, 422.

[230] Robertson Smith's _Religion of the Semites_, 397.

[231] Monier Williams, _Indian Wisdom_, pp. 29-31. The word-equations

for sacrifice are given by Schrader, _op. cit._, 130, 415.

[232] _Journ. Asiatic Soc. Bengal_, xxxiv. p. 7. On the influence of

the aboriginal races _cf._ Monier Williams, _Indian Wisdom_, 312-313;

Steel and Temple's _Wide Awake Stories_, 395; Campbell, _Tales of West

Highlands_, l. p. xcviii.

[233] Lang, _Myth, Ritual, and Religion_, i. p. 271.

[234] H. H. Wilson, _Religion of the Hindus_, ii. 289. I compare this

with the custom of the cow following the coffin mentioned by Mannhardt,

_Die Gotterwelt_, 320, and the soul shot or gift of a cow at death

recorded by Brand, ii. 248.

[235] _Cf._ Olaus Magnus, pp. 168, 169, for the significant Norse

ceremony.

[236] Spenser, _View of the State of Ireland_, 1595 (Morley reprint),

73.