PSYCHOLOGICAL CONDITIONS
Although the great mass of folklore rests upon tradition and tradition
alone, an important aid to tradition comes from certain psychological
conditions which we must now consider. At an early stage all students
of folklore will have discovered that it is not entirely to tradition
that folklore is indebted for its material. There are still people
capable of thinking, capable of believing, in the primitive way and in
the primitive degree. Such people are of course the descendants of
long ancestors of such people--people whose minds are not attuned to
the civilisation around them; people, perhaps, whose minds have been
to an extent stunted and kept back by the civilisation around them.
There can be no doubt that civilisation and all it demands of mankind
acts as a deterrent upon the minds of some living within the
civilisation zone, and belonging apparently to the civilised society.
This is the root cause of some of the lunacy and much of the crime
which apparently exists as a necessary adjunct of civilisation, and it
leads to various forms of thought inconsistent with the knowledge and
ideas of the age. When these forms of thought are not concentrated
into a new religious sect by the operation of social laws, they
become what is sometimes called mere superstition, that kind of
superstition which consists of using the same power of logic to a
narrow set of facts which primitive man was in the habit of using, and
thus repeating in this age the methods of primitive science. We cannot
quite understand this in the age of railways and schools and
inventions, but it will be understood better if we go back for only a
generation or two to those parts of our country which are most remote
from civilising influences, and obtain some information as to their
condition.
This cannot be better accomplished than by referring to a Scottish
author writing, in 1835, of the superstitions then prevailing in
Scotland. "Our whole genuine records," says Dalyell,
"teem with the most repulsive pictures of the
weakness, bigotry, turbulence, and fierce and
treacherous cruelty of the populace. False and corrupt
innovations of literature, a compound of facts and
fiction, intermingling the old and the new in
heterogeneous assemblage, would persuade us to think
much more of our forefathers than they thought of
themselves. Scotland, until the most modern date, was
an utter stranger to civilisation, presenting a
sterile country with a famished people, wasted by
hordes of mendicants readier to seize than to
solicit--void of ingenious arts and useful
manufactures, possessed of little skill and learning,
plunged in constant war and rapine, full of
insubordination, disturbing public rule and private
peace. For waving pendants, flowing draperies,
brilliant colours, eagles' feathers, herons' plumes,
feasts or festivals so splendid in imagination, let
naked limbs, scanty, sombre garments to elude
discovery by the foe, bits of heath stuck in bonnets
if they had them, precarious sustenance, abject
humility and all those hardships inseparable from
uncultivated tribes and countries be instituted as a
juster portrait of earlier generations."[237]
This statement as to Scotland is correctly drawn from social
conditions which have now passed away, but which, down to the
beginning of last century, belonged to the ordinary life of the
people. Thus it is recorded that
"over all the highlands of Scotland, and in this
county in common with others, the practice of building
what are called head-dykes was of very remote
antiquity. The head-dyke was drawn across the head of
a farm, when nature had marked the boundary betwixt
the green pastures and that portion of hill which was
covered totally or partially with heath. Above this
fence the young cattle, the horses, the sheep and
goats were kept in the summer months. The milch cows
were fed below, except during the time the farmer's
family removed to the distant grazings called
sheilings. Beyond the head-dyke little attention was
paid to boundaries. These enclosures exhibit the most
evident traces of extreme old age."[238]
[Illustration: REPRESENTATION OF AN IRISH CHIEFTAIN SEATED AT DINNER, 1581
FROM DERRICKE'S "IMAGE OF IRELAND"]
In Ireland the same conditions obtained so late as the sixteenth
century; the native Irish retained their wandering habits, tilling a
piece of fertile land in the spring, then retiring with their herds to
the booleys or dairy habitations, generally in the mountain districts
in the summer, and moving about where the herbage afforded sustenance
to their cattle.[239] An eighteenth-century traveller in Ireland
was assured that the quarter called Connaught was "inhabited by a kind
of savages," and there is record of the capture of a hairy dwarf near
Longford, who appears hardly to belong to civilisation.[240] Similar
conditions obtained in the northern counties of England, and in other
parts.[241] Special circumstances kept the borderland outside the
influences of ordinary civilised thought and control, and these
circumstances have been recorded by an eighteenth-century observer,
from whom I will quote one or two facts as to the mode of life of
these people: "That they might be more invisible during their outrodes
and consequently less liable to the effects of their enemies'
vigilance, the colour of their cloathes resembled that of the scenes
of their employment or of their season of action, that is, of a brown
heath and cloudy evening. Thus examples of what might condemn their
conduct were never offered to them, and immemorial custom seemed as it
were to sanctify their wildness. Every border-man, almost without
exception, was brought up in a state which we would call unhappy, and
every circumstance of his life tended to confirm his partiality for an
uncertain bed and unprovided diet."[242]
The evidence which this acute observer collected led him to conclude
that the "almost uniform train of circumstances which affected these
countries from their border situation, and the little difference there
was between one of the dark ages and another, strongly induce me to
believe that the Northern people were little altered in manners from
very remote times to those immediately preceding the reign of Queen
Elizabeth," and this is confirmed by what we actually find from the
report of the Commissioners appointed to settle the peace of the
Marches by fixed and established ordinances, who collected "their
ordinances from the traditional accounts of ancient usages that had
been sanctified as laws by the length of time which they had endured.
These laws were different from most others, nay, almost peculiar to
the men to whom they belonged."[243]
I need not continue these notes as to the backwardness of portions of
the country compared with its general level of culture, because I have
dealt with the evidence elsewhere.[244] What I am anxious to point out
here is that the faculty of such people as these to think, not in
terms of modern science but in terms of their own psychological
conditions, must have been pronounced. If they ever put the question
to themselves as to the origin of things, they would answer themselves
according to the life impressions they were then receiving, and
according to the limited range of their actual knowledge. As with the
creators of the traditional myths, the scientific inquirers of
primitive times, so with these non-advanced people of later times,
they would deal with the problems they did not understand in fashions
suitable to their own understanding. It has always appeared to me that
the impressions of the surrounding life are not sufficiently regarded
in their influence upon primitive thought. They press down upon the
mind, and enclose it within barriers so that it can only act through
these surroundings. Child-life is, in this respect, much the same as
the life of primitive man. A child thinks and acts in terms of his
nursery, his school, or his playground. Thus a memory of my own is to
the point. When quite a child, probably about eight or nine years old,
I was entrusted with the changing of a small cheque drawn by my father
in a country town where we were staying. I had never seen a cheque
before. I remember the ceremony of writing it and the care with which
the necessary instructions were given to me, and I remember the
amazement with which I received the golden sovereigns. But my mind
dwelt upon this strange thing called a cheque, and after a time I
deliberately came to the conclusion that my father was allowed to get
money for these cheques on condition only that he wrote them without a
mistake and without a blot. The conception is absurd until we come to
analyse the cause of it. My young life at that time was receiving its
greatest impressions, its all-absorbing impressions, from my school
exercises in writing. It was a copybook life for the time being, and
when I turned to ask my question as to origins, as every human being
has asked himself in turn, I could express myself only in copybook
terms. It is so with the primitive mind. It can only express itself in
the terms of its greatest impressions, and it is in this way that
primitive animism, sympathetic magic and other conceptions obtained
from the results of anthropological research, are to be found in much
the same degree wherever humanity is found in primitive conditions.
As Mr. Hickson puts it so well: "Just as the little black baby of the
negro, the brown baby of the Malay, the yellow baby of the Chinaman,
are in face and form, in gestures and habits, as well as in the first
articulate sound they mutter, very much alike, so the mind of man,
whether he be Aryan or Malay, Mongolian or Negrito, has, in the course
of its evolution, passed through stages which are practically
identical. In the intellectual childhood of mankind natural phenomena,
or some other causes, of which we are at present ignorant, have
induced thoughts, stories, legends, and myths, that in their
essentials are identical among all the races of the world with which
we are acquainted;"[245] or to take one other example from the
experience of travellers, Mr. Mitchell, speaking of the Australians,
says: "I found a native still there, and on my advancing towards him
with a twig he shook another twig at me, waving it over his head, and
at the same time intimating with it that we must go back. He and the
boy then threw up dust at us with their toes (_cf._ 2 Sam. xvi. 13).
These various expressions of hostility and defiance were too
intelligible to be mistaken. The expressive pantomime of the man
showed the identity of the human mind, however distinct the races or
different the language."[246]
This identity is shown in many other ways to have been operating,
perhaps to be operating still, upon minds not attuned to the
civilisation around them. The resistance of agriculturists to change
is well known.[247] The crooked ridges of the open-field system were
believed to be necessary because they were supposed to deceive the
devil,[248] while a superstitious dislike was entertained against
winnowing machines, because they were supposed to interfere with the
elements.[249] This is nothing but a modern example of sympathetic
magic produced by the introduction of the new machine.
I need not go through the researches of the masters of anthropology to
explain what the psychological evidence exactly amounts to, and the
realms of primitive thought and experience which it connotes.[250] It
will, however, be useful for the purpose of our present study, if we
can find among the peasantry of our country (perchance from those
districts where we have noted conditions under which primitive thought
might retain a continuous hold) examples of belief or superstition
which belongs rather to psychological than to traditional influences.
The interpretation of dreams, the belief in spirit apparitions, the
practice of charms, all belong to this branch of our subject, though I
shall illustrate the points I wish to bring out by reference to less
common departments.
It was only in the seventeenth century that a learned divine of the
Church of England was shocked to hear one of his flock repeat the
evidence of his pagan beliefs in language which is as explicit as it
is amusing; and I shall not be accused of trifling with religious
susceptibilities if I quote a passage from a sermon delivered and
printed in 1659--a passage which shows not a departure from
Christianity either through ignorance or from the result of
philosophic study or contemplation, but a sheer non-advance to
Christianity, a passage which shows us an English pagan of the
seventeenth century.
"Let me tell you a story," says the Reverend Mr. Pemble, "that I have
heard from a reverend man out of the pulpit, a place where none should
dare to tell a lye, of an old man above sixty, who lived and died in a
parish where there had bin preaching almost all his time.... On his
deathbed, being questioned by a minister touching his faith and hope
in God, you would wonder to hear what answer he made: being demanded
what he thought of God, he answers that he was a good old man; and
what of Christ, that he was a towardly youth; and of his soule, that
it was a great bone in his body; and what should become of his soule
after he was dead, that if he had done well he should be put into a
pleasant green meadow."[251]
Of the four articles of this singular creed, the first two depict an
absence of knowledge about the central features of Christian belief,
the latter two denote the existence of knowledge about some belief not
known to English scholars of that time. If it had so happened that
the Reverend Mr. Pemble had thought fit to tell his audience only of
the first two articles of this creed, it would have been difficult to
resist the suggestion that they presented us merely with an example of
stupid, or, perhaps, impudent, blasphemy caused by the events of the
day. But the negative nature of the first two items of the creed is
counterbalanced by the positive nature of the second two items; and
thus this example shows us the importance of considering evidence as
to all phases of non-belief in Christianity.
Passing on to the two items of positive belief, it is to be noted that
the soul resident in the body in the shape of a bone is no part of the
early European belief, but equates rather with the savage idea which
identifies the soul with some material part of the body, such as the
eyes, the heart, or the liver; and it is interesting to note in this
connection that the backbone is considered by some savage races,
_e.g._, the New Zealanders, as especially sacred because the soul or
spiritual essence of man resides in the spinal marrow.[252] And there
is a well-known incident in folk-tales which seems to owe its origin
to this group of ideas. This is where the hero having been killed, one
of his bones tells the secret of his death, and thus acts the part of
the soul-ghost.
In the pleasant green fields we trace the old faiths of the
agricultural peasantry which, put into the words of Hesiod, tell us
that "for them earth yields her increase; for them the oaks hold in
their summits acorns, and in their midmost branches bees. The flocks
bear for them their fleecy burdens ... they live in _unchanged
happiness_, and need not fly across the sea in impious ships"--faiths
which are in striking contrast to the tribal warrior's conception as
set forth by the Saxon thane of King Eadwine of Northumbria. "This
life," said this poetical thane, "is like the passage of a bird from
the darkness without into a lighted hall where you, O King, are seated
at supper, while storms, and rain, and snow rage abroad. The sparrow
flying in at our door and straightway out at another is, while within,
safe from the storm; but soon it vanishes into the darkness whence it
came."
Such faiths as these, indeed, show us primitive ideas at their very
roots. This seventeenth-century pagan depended upon himself for his
faith. He worked out his own ideas as to the origin of soul and heaven
and God and Christ. They were terms that had filtered down to him
through the hard surroundings of his life, and he set to work to
define them in the fashion of the primitive savage. We meet with other
examples. Thus among the superstitions of Lancashire is one which
tells us of the lingering belief in a long journey after death, when
food is necessary to support the soul. A man having died of apoplexy,
near Manchester, at a public dinner, one of the company was heard to
remark: "Well, poor Joe, God rest his soul! He has at least gone to
his long rest wi' a belly full o' good meat, and that's some
consolation," and perhaps a still more remarkable instance is that of
the woman buried in Cuxton Church, near Rochester, who directed by
her will that the coffin was to have a lock and key, the key being
placed in her dead hand, so that she might be able to release herself
at pleasure.[253]
These people simply did not understand civilised thought or civilised
religion. To escape from the pressure of trying to understand they
turned to think for themselves, and thinking for themselves merely
brought them back to the standpoint of primitive thought. It could
hardly be otherwise. The working of the human mind is on the same
plane wherever and whenever it operates or has operated. The
difference in results arises from the enlarged field of observation.
When the Suffolk peasant set to work to account for the existence of
stones on his field by asserting that the fields produced the stones,
and for the origin of the so-called "pudding-stone" conglomerate, that
it was a mother stone and the parent of the pebbles,[254] he was
beginning a first treatise on geology; and when the Hampshire peasant
attributes the origin of the tutsan berries to having germinated in
the blood of slaughtered Danes,[255] other counties following the same
thought, I am not at all sure that he is not beginning all over again
the primitive conception of the origin of plants.
[Illustration: LONG MEG AND HER DAUGHTERS]
[Illustration: STONE CIRCLES ON STANTON MOOR]
This beginning shows the mark of the primitive mind, and that it was
operating in a country dominated by scientific thought is the
phenomenon which makes it so important to consider psychological
conditions among the problems of folklore. They account for some
beliefs which may not contain elements of pure tradition. When the
Mishmee Hill people of India affirm of a high white cliff at the foot
of one of the hills that approaches the Burhampooter that it is the
remains of the "marriage feast of Raja Sisopal with the daughter of the
neighbouring king, named Bhismak, but she being stolen away by Krishna
before the ceremony was completed, the whole of the viands were left
uneaten and have since become consolidated into their present
form,"[256] we can understand that the belief is in strict accord with
the primitive conditions of thought of the Mishmee people. Can we
understand the same conditions of the parallel English belief
concerning the stone circle known as "Long Meg and her daughters,"[257]
and of that at Stanton Drew;[258] or of the allied beliefs in Scotland
that a huge upright stone, Clach Macmeas, in Loth, a parish of
Sutherlandshire, was hurled to the bottom of the glen from the top of
Ben Uarie by a giant youth when he was only one month old;[259] and in
England that "the Hurlers," in Cornwall, were once men engaged in the
game of hurling, and were turned into stone for playing on the Lord's
Day; that the circle, known as "Nine Maidens," were maidens turned into
stone for dancing on the Lord's Day;[260] that the stone circle at
Stanton Drew represents serpents converted into stones by Keyna, a holy
virgin of the fifth century;[261] and that the so-called snake stones
found at Whitby were serpents turned into stones by the prayers of the
Abbess Hilda.[262] These are only examples of the kind of beliefs
entertained in all parts of the United Kingdom,[263] and they seem
based upon psychological, rather than traditional conditions.
The giant and the witch, or wizard, are terms applied to the unknown
personal agent. "The two standing stones in the neighbourhood of West
Skeld are said to be the metamorphosis of two wizards or giants, who
were on their way to plunder and murder the inhabitants of West Skeld;
but not having calculated their time with sufficient accuracy, before
they could accomplish their purpose, or retrace their steps to their
dark abodes, the first rays of the morning sun appeared, and they were
immediately transformed, and remain to the present time in the shape
of two tall moss-grown stones of ten feet in height."[264] This is
paralleled by the Merionethshire example of a large drift of stones
about midway up the Moelore in Llan Dwywe, which was believed to be
due to a witch who "was carrying her apron full of stones for some
purpose to the top of the hill, and the string of the apron broke, and
all the stones dropped on the spot, where they still remain under the
name of Fedogaid-y-Widdon."[265] Giant and witch in these cases are
generic terms by which the popular mind has conveyed a conception of
the origin of these strange and remarkable monuments, whether natural
or constructed by a long-forgotten people; and we cannot doubt that
such beliefs are generated by the peasantry of civilisation from a
mental conception not far removed from that of the primitive savage.
Neither their religion nor their education was concerned with such
things, so the peasants turned to their own realm and created a myth
of origins suitable to their limited range of knowledge.
It may perhaps be urged that such beliefs as these are on the
borderland of psychological and traditional influences. Witches and
giants certainly belong to tradition, but on the other hand they are
the common factors of the natural mind which readily attributes
personal origins to impersonal objects. I am inclined on the whole to
attribute the beliefs attachable to the unexplained boulders or
unknown monoliths to the eternal questionings in the minds of the
uncultured peasants of uncivilised countries similar to those of the
unadvanced savage. That the peasant of civilisation should confine his
questionings to the by-products of his surroundings and not to the
greater subjects which occupy the minds of savages, is only because
the greater subjects have already been answered for him by the
Christian Church.[266]
There is a point, however, where psychological and traditional
conditions are in natural conjunction, and I will just refer to this.
That matters of legal importance should be preserved by the agency of
tradition has already been shown to belong to that part of history for
which there are no contemporary records, and its importance in this
connection has been proved. Equally important from the psychological
side is the fact that law is also preserved by tradition where people
are unaccustomed to the use of writing, or by reason of their
occupation have little use for writing. To illustrate this, I will
quote an excellent note preserved by a writer on Cornish
superstitions.
"There is an old 'vulgar error'--that no man can swear
as a witness in a court of law to any thing he has
seen through glass. This is based upon the formerly
universal use of blown glass for windows, in which
glass the constant recurrence of the greenish, and
barely more than semi-transparent bull's eyes, so much
distorted the view that it was unsafe for a spectator
through glass to pledge his oath to what he saw going
on outside. Now, through our present glass, this
belief is relegated to the region of forgotten things,
but nevertheless it has hold on Westcountry people
still. I was, some years since, investigating the case
of a derelict ship which had been found off the Scilly
Islands, and towed by the pilots into a safe anchorage
for the night. Next morning the pilots going out to
complete their salvage, saw some men on board the
derelict casting off the anchor rope by which they had
secured her, but they distinctly declined to swear to
the truth of what they had seen, and it turned out
that they had seen through glass, by which they meant
a telescope. In the same case I found that when these
pilots (men intelligent much beyond the average, as
all Scillonians are) had, on boarding the derelict
(which had, of course, been deserted by her crew),
found a living dog, they had deliberately thrown it
overboard. They explained this act of cruelty to me by
saying that a ship was not derelict if on board of her
was found alive 'man, woman, child, dog, or cat.' And
it turned out, on after-investigation, that these were
the very words used in an obsolete Act of Parliament
of one of the early Plantagenet kings, forgotten
centuries ago by the English people, but borne in mind
as a living fact by the Scillonians."[267]
In some special departments elementary psychological conditions
operate in a considerable degree--operate to produce not waifs and
strays of primitive thought and belief, but whole classes. Thus in the
curious accretion of superstition around the objects connected with
church worship, the same agencies are at work. The general
characteristic of popular beliefs which originated with, or have grown
up around the consecrated objects of the Church, is that such objects
are beneficent in their action when employed for any given purpose.
Thus, as Henderson says of the North of England, "a belief in the
efficacy of the sacred elements in the Eucharist for the cure of
bodily disease is widely spread." Silver rings, made from the
offertory money, are very generally worn for the cure of epilepsy.
Water that had been used in baptism was believed in West Scotland to
have virtue to cure many distempers; it was a preventive against
witchcraft, and eyes bathed with it would never see a ghost. Dalyell
puts the evidence very succinctly. "Everything relative to sanctity
was deemed a preservative. Hence the relics of saints, the touch of
their clothes, of their tombs, and even portions of structures
consecrated to divine offices were a safeguard near the person. A
white marble altar in the church of Iona, almost entire towards the
close of the seventeenth century, had disappeared late in the
eighteenth, from its demolition in fragments to avert shipwreck." And
so what has been consecrated, must not be desecrated. In
Leicestershire and Northamptonshire there is a superstitious idea that
the removal or exhumation of a body after interment bodes death or
some terrible calamity to the surviving members of the deceased's
family.[268]
In the West of Ireland there were usually found upon the altars of the
small missionary churches one or more oval stones, either natural
waterwashed pebbles or artificially shaped and very smooth, and these
were held in the highest veneration by the peasantry as having
belonged to the founders of the churches, and were used for a variety
of purposes, as the curing of diseases, taking oaths upon them,
etc.[269] Similarly the using of any remains of destroyed churches for
profane purposes was believed to bring misfortune,[270] while the land
which once belonged to the church of St. Baramedan, in the parish of
Kilbarrymeaden, county Waterford, "has long been highly venerated by
the common people, who attribute to it many surprising virtues."[271]
In 1849 the people of Carrick were in the habit of carrying away from
the churchyard portions of the clay of a priest's grave and using it
as a cure for several diseases, and they also boiled the clay from the
grave of Father O'Connor with milk and drank it.[272] One of the
superstitious fancies of the Connemara folk in 1825 was credulity with
respect to the gospels, as they are called, which "they wear round
their neck as a charm against danger and disease. These are prepared
by the priest, and sold by him at the price of two or three
tenpennies. It is considered sacrilege in the purchaser to part with
them at any time, and it is believed that the charm proves of no
efficacy to any but the individual for whose particular benefit the
priest has blessed it. The charm is written on a scrap of paper and
enclosed in a small cloth bag, marked on one side with the letters
I. H. S. On one side of the paper is written the Lord's Prayer, and
after it a great number of initial letters."[273]
Such examples could be multiplied indefinitely, but no folklorist has
properly classified such beliefs and endeavoured to ascertain their
place in the science of folklore.[274] It is clear they have arisen
not from tradition, but from a new force acting on minds which were
not yet free to receive new influences without going back to old
methods of thought.
How completely the sanctity of the church exercises a constant
influence upon the minds of men, thus substituting a new form of
belief when older forms were thrust on one side by the advance of the
new religion, is perhaps best illustrated by a practice in early
Christian times for giving sanctity to the oath. Among the Jews the
altar in the Temple was resorted to by litigants in order that the
oath might be taken in the presence of Yahveh himself, and "so
powerful was the impression of this upon the Christian mind, that in
the early ages of the Church there was a popular superstition that an
oath taken in a Jewish synagogue was more binding and more efficient
than anywhere else."[275] In exactly the same way the altar of the
Christian Church is used in popular belief after its use in Church
ceremonial has been discontinued. Thus, to get in beneath the altar of
St. Hilary Church, Anglesey, by means of an open panel and then turn
round and come out is to ensure life for the coming year,[276] and the
white marble altar in Iona which has been entirely demolished by
fragments of it being used to avert shipwreck has already been
referred to.[277] These are cases where there has been a throwing back
from the new religion to the objects connected with the old religion,
and they are paralleled by the practice of Protestants appealing to
the Roman Catholic priesthood for protection against witchcraft, and
of Nonconformists believing that the clergy of the Episcopal Church
possess superior powers over evil spirits.[278]
Psychological evidence is therefore important. One can never be quite
sure to what extent civilised man is free from creating fresh myths in
place of acquired scientific result, and to what extent this
influences the production of primitive beliefs, or allows of the
acceptance of traditional belief on new ground. The great mass of
traditional belief has come through the ages traditionally, that is,
from parent to child, from neighbour to neighbour, from class to
class, from locality to locality, generation after generation.
Occasionally this main current of the traditional life of a people is
swollen by small side streams from fresh psychological sources.
Individual examples, such as those I have cited, have perhaps always
been present, but their effect must have died away with the passing of
those with whom they originated. There are, however, stronger effects
than these, coming not from individuals, but from classes. Thus the
votaries and enemies of witchcraft produced a more lasting effect.
Witchcraft, as Dr. Karl Pearson, I think, conclusively proves, and as
I have helped to prove,[279] is founded upon traditional belief and
custom, but its remarkable revival in the Middle Ages was in the main
a psychological phenomenon. Traditional practices, traditional
formulae, and traditional beliefs are no doubt the elements of
witchcraft, but it was not the force of tradition which produced the
miserable doings of the Middle Ages and of the seventeenth century
against witches. These were due to a psychological force, partly
generated by the newly acquired power of the people to read the Bible
for themselves, and so to apply the witch stories of the Jews to
neighbours of their own who possessed powers or peculiarities which
they could not understand, and partly generated by the carrying on of
traditional practices by certain families or groups of persons who
could only acquire knowledge of such practices by initiation or family
teaching. Lawyers, magistrates, judges, nobles, and monarchs are
concerned with witchcraft. These are not minds which have been crushed
by civilisation, but minds which have misunderstood it or have misused
it. It is unnecessary, and it is of course impossible on this occasion
to trace out the psychic issues which are contained in the facts of
witchcraft, but it may be advisable to illustrate the point by one or
two references.
I will note a few modern examples of the belief in witchcraft:--
"In 1879 extraordinary stories were current among the
populace of Caergwrle. Mrs. Braithwaite supplied a
Mrs. Williams with milk, but afterwards refused to
serve her, and the cause was as follows: Mrs.
Braithwaite had up to that time been very successful
in churning her butter, but about a month ago the
butter would not come. She tried every known agency;
she washed and dried her bats, but all to no purpose.
The milk would not yield an ounce of butter. Under the
circumstances she said Mrs. Williams had witched her.
The neighbours believed it, and Mrs. Williams was
generally called a witch. Hearing these reports, Mrs.
Williams went to Mrs. Braithwaite to expostulate with
her, when Mrs. Braithwaite said, 'Out, witch! If you
don't leave here, I'll shoot you.' Mrs. Williams
thereupon applied to the Caergwrle bench of
magistrates for a protection order against Mrs.
Braithwaite. She assured the Bench she was in danger,
as every one believed she was a witch. The Clerk: What
do they say is the reason? Applicant: Because she
cannot churn the milk. Mr. Kryke: Do they see you
riding a broomstick? Applicant (seriously): No, sir.
The Bench instructed the police officer to caution
Mrs. Braithwaite against repeating the threats."[280]
The next example is from Lancashire:--
"At the East Dereham Petty Sessions, William Bulwer,
of Etling Green, was charged with assaulting
Christiana Martins, a young girl, who resided near the
Etling Green toll-bar. Complainant deposed that she
was 18 years of age, and on Wednesday, the 2nd inst.,
the defendant came to her and abused her. The
complainant, who looks scarce more than a child,
repeated, despite the efforts of the magistrates'
clerk to stop her, and without being in the least
abashed, some of the worst language it was possible to
conceive--conversation of the most gross description,
alleged to have taken place between herself and the
defendant. They appeared to have got from words to
blows and, while trying to fasten the gate, the
defendant hit her across the hand with a stick. She
alleged that there was no cause for the abuse and the
assault, so far as she knew, and in reply to rigid
cross-examination as to the origin of the quarrel,
adhered to this statement. Mrs. Susannah Gathercole
also corroborated the statement as to the assault,
adding that the defendant said the complainant's
mother was a witch. Defendant then blazed forth in
righteous indignation, and, when the witness said she
knew no more about the origin of the quarrel, he said,
'Mrs. Martins is an old witch, gentlemen, that is what
she is, and she charmed me, and I got no sleep for her
for three nights, and one night at half-past eleven
o'clock, I got up because I could not sleep, and went
out and found a "walking toad" under a clod that had
been dug up with a three-pronged fork. That is why I
could not rest; she is a bad old woman; she put this
toad under there to charm me, and her daughter is just
as bad, gentlemen. She would bewitch any one; she
charmed me, and I got no rest day or night for her,
till I found this "walking toad" under the turf. She
dug a hole and put it there to charm me, gentlemen,
that is the truth. I got the toad out and put it in a
cloth, and took it upstairs and showed it to my
mother, and "throwed" it into the pit in the garden.
She went round this here "walking toad" after she had
buried it, and I could not rest by day or sleep by
night till I found it. The Bench: Do you go to church?
Defendant: Sometimes I go to church, and sometimes to
chapel, and sometimes I don't go nowhere. Her mother
is bad enough to do anything; and to go and put the
"walking toad" in the hole like that, for a man which
never did nothing to her, she is not fit to live,
gentlemen, to go and do such a thing; it is not as if
I had done anything to her. She looks at lots of
people, and I know she will do some one harm. The
Chairman: Do you know this man, Superintendent Symons?
Is he sane? Superintendent Symons: Yes, sir;
perfectly."[281]
In Somerset belief in witchcraft still lingers in nooks and corners of
the west, as appears from a case brought before the magistrates of the
Wiveliscombe division.
"Sarah Smith, the wife of a marine store dealer,
residing at Golden Hill, was for some time ill and
confined to her bed. Finding that the local doctor
could not cure her, she sent for a witch doctor of
Taunton. He duly arrived by train on St. Thomas's day.
Smith inquired his charge, and was informed he usually
charged 11s., remarking that unless he took it from
the person affected his incantation would be of no
avail. Smith then handed it to his wife, who gave it
to the witch doctor, and he returned 1s. to her. He
then proceeded to foil the witch's power over his
patient by tapping her several times on the palm of
her hand with his finger, telling her that every tap
was a stab on the witch's heart. This was followed by
an incantation. He then gave her a parcel of herbs
(which evidently consisted of dried bay leaves and
peppermint), which she was to steep and drink. She was
to send to a blacksmith's shop and get a donkey's shoe
made, and nail it on her front door. He then
departed."[282]
Such examples as these may be added to from various parts of the
country, but they do not compare with the terrible case at Clonmel, in
county Tipperary, which occurred in 1895. The evidence showed that the
husband, father, and mother of the victim, together with several other
persons, were concerned in this matter, and one of the witnesses, Mary
Simpson, stated "that on the night of March 14th she saw Cleary
forcibly administer herbs to his wife, and when the woman did not
answer when called upon in the name of the Trinity to say who she was,
she was placed on the fire by Cleary and the others. Mrs. Cleary did
not appear to be in her right senses. She was raving."[283] The whole
record of the trial is of the most amazing description, pointing back
to a system of belief which, if based upon traditional practices, has
been fed by entirely modern influences. Such records as these stretch
back through the ages, and almost every village, certainly every
county in the United Kingdom, has its records of trials for
witchcraft, in which clergy and layman, judge, jury, and victim play
strange parts, if we consider them as members of a civilised
community. Superstition which has been preserved by the folk as sacred
to their old faiths, preserved by tradition, has remained the
cherished possession, generally in secret, of those who practise it.
The belief in witchcraft is a different matter. Though it has
traditional rites and practices it has been kept alive by a cruel and
crude interpretation of its position among the faiths of the Bible,
and it has thus received fresh life.
The miserable records of witchcraft illustrate in a way no other
subject can how the human mind, when untouched by the influences of
advanced culture, has the tendency to revert to traditional culture,
and they demonstrate how strongly embedded in human memory is the
great mass of traditional culture. The outside civilisation, religious
or scientific, has not penetrated far. Science has only just begun her
great work, and religion has been spending most of her efforts in
endeavouring to displace a set of beliefs which she calls
superstition, by a set of superstitions which she calls revelation.
Not only have the older faiths not been eradicated by this, but the
older psychological conditions have not been made to disappear. The
folklorist has to make note of this obviously significant fact, and
must therefore deal with both sides of the question, the traditional
and the psychological, and because by far the greater importance
belongs to the former it does not do to neglect the importance, though
the lesser importance, of the latter.
It assists the student of tradition in many ways. People who will
still explain for themselves in primitive fashion phenomena which they
do not understand, and who remain content with such primitive
explanations instead of relying upon the discoveries of science, are
just the people to retain with strong persistence the traditional
beliefs and ideas which they obtained from their fathers, and to
acquire other traditional beliefs and ideas which they obtain from
neighbours. One often wonders at the "amazing toughness" of tradition,
and in the psychological conditions which have been indicated will be
found one of the necessary explanations.
FOOTNOTES:
[237] Dalyell, _Darker Superstitions of Scotland_, 197-198.
[238] Robertson, _Agriculture of Inverness-shire_. For Argyllshire see
_New Stat. Account of Scotland_, vii. 346; Brown, _Early Descriptions
of Scotland_, 12, 49, 99.
[239] Wilde, _Catalogue of Museum of Royal Irish Academy_, 99; Joyce,
_Social Hist. of Anc. Ireland_, ii. 27.
[240] _Tour in Ireland_, 1775, p. 144; _Gent. Mag._, v. 680.
[241] Hutchinson, _Hist. of Cumberland_, i. 216.
[242] James Clarke, _Survey of the Lakes_, 1789, p. xiii; _Berwickshire
Nat. Field Club_, ix. 512.
[243] Clarke, _Survey of the Lakes_, pp. x, xv. Referring to the
statutes enacted as a result of the Commissioners' work the facts are
as follows: There were certain franchises in North and South Tynedale
and Hexhamshire, by virtue of which the King's writ did not run there.
[Tynedale, though on the English side of the border, was an ancient
franchise of the Kings of Scotland.] In 1293 Edward I. confirmed this
grant in favour of John of Balliol (1 Rot. Parl., 114-16), and the
inhabitants took advantage of this immunity to make forays and commit
outrages in neighbouring counties. In the year 1414, at the Parliament
holden at Leicester, "grievous complaints" of these outrages were made
"by the Commons of the County of Northumberland." It was accordingly
provided (2 Henry V., cap. 5) that process should be taken against such
offenders under the common law until they were outlawed; and that then,
upon a certificate of outlawry made to lords of franchises in North and
South Tynedale and Hexhamshire, the offender's lands and goods should
be forfeited. In 1421 the provisions of this statute were extended to
like offenders in Rydesdale, where also the King's writ did not run (9
Henry V., cap. 7). Still these excesses continued in Tynedale. By an
enactment of Henry VII. (2 Henry VII., cap. 9) this "lordship and
bounds" were annexed to the county of Northumberland. "Forasmuch," the
preamble sets forth, "as the inhabitants and dwellers within the
lordships and bounds of North and South Tyndale, not only in their own
persons, but also oftentimes accompanied and confedered with Scottish
ancient enemies to this realm, have at many seasons in time past
committed and done, and yet daily and nightly commit and do, great and
heinous murders, robberies, felonies, depredations, riots and other
great trespasses upon the King our Sovereign lord's true and faithful
liege people and subjects, inhabiters and dwellers within the shires of
Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmoreland, Exhamshire [_sic_], the
bishopric of Durham and in a part of Yorkshire, in which treasons,
murders, robberies, felonies, and other the premises, have not in time
past in any manner of form been punished after the order and course of
the common law, by reason of such franchise as was used within the same
while it was in the possession of any other lord or lords than our
Sovereign lord, and thus for lack of punishment of these treasons,
murders, robberies and felonies, the King's true and faithful liege
people and subjects, inhabiters and dwellers within the shires and
places before rehearsed, cannot be in any manner of surety of their
bodies or goods, neither yet lie in their own houses, but either to be
murdered or taken or carried into Scotland and there ransomed, to their
great destruction of body and goods, and utter impoverishing for ever,
unless due and hasty remedy be had and found," it is therefore provided
that North and South Tynedale shall from thenceforth be gildable, and
part of the shire of Northumberland, that no franchise shall stand good
there, and the King's writ shall run, and his officers and all their
warrants be obeyed there as in every other part of that shire. Further,
lessees of lands within the bounds are to enter into recognisances in
two sureties to appear and answer all charges.
[244] See my _Ethnology in Folklore_, cap. vi.
[245] Hickson, _North Celebes_, 240.
[246] Mitchell's _Australian Expeditions_, i. 246.
[247] See my _Village Community_, 18; Stewart's _Highlanders of
Scotland_, i. 147, 228.
[248] _Notes and Queries_, second series, iv. 487.
[249] Wild, _Highlands, Orcadia and Skye_, 196.
[250] The psychology of primitive races is now receiving scientific
attention, thanks chiefly to Dr. Haddon and the scholars who
accompanied him upon his Torres Straits expedition in 1898. The volume
of the memoirs of this expedition which relates to psychology has
already been published, and students should consult it as an example of
scientific method.
[251] One is reminded of the famous Shakespearian emendation whereby
Falstaff on his death-bed "babbled o' green fields."
[252] Shortland, _New Zealanders_, 107. An Algonquin backbone story is
quoted by MacCulloch, _Childhood of Fiction_, 92, and he says, "the
spine is held by many people to be the seat of life," 93 and _cf._ III.
_Cf._ Frazer, _Adonis, Attis, and Osiris_, 277.
[253] _Gent. Mag. Lib._, _Popular Superstitions_, 122.
[254] _County Folklore, Suffolk_, 2.
[255] _Hardwick's Science Gossip_, vi. 281; _cf._ Worsaae, _Danes and
Norwegians_, 25.
[256] _Journ. Asiatic Soc., Bengal_, xiv. 479.
[257] King, _Munimenta Antiqua_, i. 195-6; _Gent. Mag. Lib._,
_Archaeology_, i. 319-321; Hutchinson, _Hist. Cumberland_, i. 226.
[258] _Arch. Journ._, xv. 204.
[259] Sinclair, _Stat. Acct. of Scotland_, xv. 191.
[260] _Journ. Anthrop. Inst._, i. 2; _Gent. Mag. Lib._, _Archaeology_,
i. 21.
[261] _Archaeologia_, xxv. 198.
[262] _Gent. Mag._, 1751, pp. 110, 182.
[263] Some Irish examples are collected in _Folklore Record_, v.
169-172.
[264] Sinclair, _Stat. Acct. of Scotland_, xv. 111.
[265] _Trans. Cymmrodorion Soc._ (1822), i. 170.
[266] It is not worth while, perhaps, to pursue this part of our
subject into further regions. It is to be sought for in innumerable
pamphlets, such, for instance, as those relating to the Civil War.
Beesley, _Hist. of Banbury_, 334, mentions one, the title of which I
will quote: "A great Wonder in Heaven shewing the late Apparitions and
prodigious noyses of War and Battels seen on Edge Hill neere Keinton,"
and the contents are "Certified under the hands of William Wood Esq and
Justice for the Peace in the said Countie, Samuel Marshall, Preacher of
God's Word in Keinton, and other Persons of Qualitie." The date is
exactly three months after the battle of Edgehill, "London, printed for
Thomas Jackson, January 23rd, 1642-3."
[267] _West of England Magazine_, February, 1888.
[268] Henderson, _Folklore of the Northern Counties_, 146; Napier,
_Folklore of West of Scotland_, 140; Dalyell, _Darker Superstitions of
Scotland_, 142; _Choice Notes_ (_Folklore_), 8; Brand, iii. 300; Dyer,
_English Folklore_, 146, 153 (Hereford, Lincoln, and Yorks).
[269] Wilde, _Catalogue of Royal Irish Academy_, 131.
[270] _Folklore Record_, iv. 105.
[271] Rev. R. H. Ryland, _Hist. of Waterford_, 271.
[272] Wilde, _Beauties of the Boyne_, 45; Croker, _Researches in South
of Ireland_, 170; _Revue Celtique_, v. 358.
[273] Blake, _Letters from the Irish Highlands_, 130-131.
[274] _Church Folklore_, by Rev. J. E. Vaux, is a collection of
material, and does not attempt to give any indication of its value.
[275] Lea, _Superstition and Force_, 28.
[276] _Journ. Brit. Arch. Assoc._, xxv. 142; Rev. W. Bingley, _North
Wales_, 216-217.
[277] Sacheverell, _Voyage to Isle of Man_, 132.
[278] Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, i. 115; Landt, _Origin of the
Priesthood_, 85; Henderson, _Folklore of Northern Counties_, 32-33;
_Folklore Record_, i. 46.
[279] Pearson's _Chances of Death_, ii. cap. ix., "Woman as Witch;"
Gomme, _Ethnology in Folklore_, 48-62.
[280] _Daily Chronicle_, 15th February, 1879.
[281] _Leigh Chronicle_, 19th April, 1879.
[282] _Somerset County Gazette_, 22nd January, 1881.
[283] _Standard_, 3rd April, 1895. The full details are reprinted in
_Folklore_, vi. 373-384.