the Semang people of the Malay Peninsula, and I suggest that we have
the closest parallel between Semang belief and custom and Arunta
totemism, not quite the same formula perhaps, but assuredly the same
fundamental conception of every child at birth being in intimate
association with objects of nature, and this association being the
determining force of the newly-born man's social status and class,
lasting all through life. In each case the kinless basis of totemism
is thus fully shown. The totem names given by women, or assumed on
account of the conditions attachable to women as mothers, did not
extend to the human fathers. The fathers may be known or unknown to
the mothers, but they did not become associated with the totems which
the mothers associated with their children. To the extent of
fatherhood, therefore, totemism of this type was clearly not based
upon the natural fact of blood kinship, but upon the conscious
adoption of a non-kinship form of society. To the extent of motherhood
also it was not based upon blood kinship, for it was the local totem,
not the mother's totem, which became the totem of the newly-born
member of the group. We thus have an entirely non-kinship form of
society to deal with, a kinless society, "where there is no necessary
relationship of any kind between that of children and parents."[376]
Primitive man consciously adapted certain of his observations of
nature to his social needs, and among these observations the fact of
actual blood kinship with father and mother played no part. It would
appear therefore that totemism at its foundation was based upon a
theoretical conception of relationship between man and animal or
plant. Place of birth, association with natural objects, not
motherhood and not fatherhood, are the determining factors.
We may proceed to inquire as to the social form which has become
evolved from this kinless system.
In the case of the Semangs we have the kinless totemic belief and
custom existing within a kinless society. In the case of the Arunta we
have the kinless totemism existing in a society based on a kinless
organisation still, but containing also full recognition of
motherhood,[377] and perhaps recognition of physical fatherhood.[378]
There is, therefore, an important distinction in the social position
of the two parallel systems. Among the Semang people, their totemic
belief and custom do not carry with them a superstructure of society.
They form the substantive cult of the scattered social groups, which
are kinless groups dependent upon ties local in character and derived
from the conscious use of the facts of nature surrounding them. Among
the Arunta people, on the contrary, the totem belief and custom are
contained within a social system of extraordinary dimensions and
proportions. Of course, the obvious questions to raise are--have the
Semang people lost a once existing social system connected with their
totemic cult? Have the Arunta people had imposed upon them a social
system which has not destroyed their primitive totemic cult?
To answer these questions I can only deal with the Semang evidence as
it appears in researches of great authority and weight, and there is
undoubtedly in all the evidence produced by Messrs. Skeat and
Blagden, and the authorities they use, nothing whatever to suggest
that Semang totemism once possessed above it an elaborate social
organisation of the usual totemic type. There is indeed, the myth
which points to a two-class exogamous division for marital
purposes,[379] but there is more than myth for the unrestricted
intercourse of the sexes both before and after marital rights.[380] In
every other direction we get simple groups fashioned on no larger
basis than nomadic roaming and journeying to fresh food grounds. On
the other hand, there is much to suggest that the Arunta have a dual
system of organisation; one, in which the primitive types are still
surviving, the second, a more advanced type which covers but does not
crush out the first. If this is so, it is clear that the parallel
between Semang and Arunta totemism is considerably closer than at
first appears.
It will be necessary, therefore, to deal with the two principal signs
of alleged Arunta progress, male descent and the exogamous classes. I
see no evidence whatever of male descent; male ascendancy, a very
different thing, appears, but there cannot strictly be male descent
where fatherhood is unrecognised. And here I would interpose the
remark that the use of the term descent, male descent and female
descent, in these studies is far too indiscriminate.[381] Descent
means succession by blood kinship by acknowledged sons or daughters,
and this is exactly what does not always occur. Sonship and
daughtership in our sense of the term are not always known to
savagery. They were not known to the Arunta males, for fatherhood was
not recognised by them and motherhood was not definitely used in the
social sense. All that the Arunta can be said to have developed is a
mother-right society with male ascendancy in the group.[382] Group
sons succeeded to group fathers, but individual descent from father to
son there is not.
There remain the exogamous classes. In the first place, it is
necessary to get rid of a difficulty raised by Mr. Lang. "In no tribe
with female descent can a district have its local totem as among the
Arunta.... This can only occur under male reckoning of descent."[383]
But surely so acute an observer as Mr. Lang would see that with female
descent right through, as it exists among the Khasia and Kocch people
of Assam, local totem centres are just as possible as with male
descent. Mr. Lang is conscious of some discrepancy here, for a little
later on he repeats the statement that local totem centres "can only
occur and exist under male reckoning of descent," but adds the
significant qualification "in cases where the husbands do not go to
the wives' region of abode."[384] This is the whole point. Where
husbands do go to the wives' region of abode, as they do among the
Khasis and the Kocch, female descent would allow of the formation of
local totem centres. This is not far from the position of the Arunta.
They are mother-right societies. The mother secures the totem name.
The father, _de facto_, is not father according to the ideas of the
Arunta people, is at best only one of a group of possible fathers
according to the practices of the Arunta people. Therefore, the local
totem centre is formed out of a system which may be called a
mother-right system for the purpose of scientific description, but
which is not even a mother-right system to the natives, because
motherhood is not the foundation of the local group.
Secondly, we have the important fact, which Mr. Lang has duly noted,
though he does not apparently see its significance in the argument as
to origins, that the class system "arose in a given centre and was
propagated by emigrants and was borrowed by distant tribes."[385]
Messrs. Spencer and Gillen distinctly affirm that the "division into
eight has been adopted (or rather the names for the four new divisions
have been) in recent times by the Arunta tribe from the Ilpirra tribe
which adjoins the former on the north, and the use of them is at the
present time spreading southwards."[386] This view is supported by the
widespread organisation of eaglehawk and crow, and by the general
homogeneity of Australian social forms. It is clear, therefore, that
room is made for the external organisation of the class system and the
consequent production of the dual characteristics of the Arunta--the
joint product of the fossilisation of mother-right society at the end
of the migration movement, and the superimposing upon this
fossilisation, with its tendency towards the class system, of the
fully organised class system. The two systems are not now fully welded
in the Arunta group. Whatever view is taken of these, whether they be
considered advanced or primal, the undoubted dualism has to be
accounted for, and the best way of accounting for this dualism is, I
submit, that of differential evolution. Further study of Messrs.
Spencer and Gillen's work, together with the criticisms of various
scholars, Mr. Lang, Mr. Hartland, Mr. Frazer, Mr. Thomas, and others,
convinces me that the extreme artificiality of the class system is due
partly to a want of understanding of the entire facts, and partly to
the _ad hoc_ adoption by the natives themselves of new plans to meet
difficulties which must arise out of a too close adhesion to their
rules. Mr. Lang has allowed me to see a manuscript note of his, in
which he points out that the inevitable result of the one totem to the
one totem rule of marital relationship,--that is, totem A always
intermarrying with totem B, males and females from both totems, and
with no others,--is the consanguineous relationship of all the members
of the two totems. The rule for non-consanguineous marriage has
therefore broken down, and when it breaks down the Australian
introduces a new rule which satisfies immediate necessities. When this
in turn breaks down a further new rule is made, and this is the way I
think the differing rules resulted. They represent, therefore, not
varying degrees of culture progress, but only varying degrees of
artificial social changes, and they spring from the oldest conditions
of all where there is no class system at all.[387] Arunta society is
not a "sport" under this view, but a product--a product to be
accounted for and explained by anthropological rules, derived not only
from Australian society but from the general facts of human society
which have remained for observation by the science of to-day. The
parallel between Semang and Arunta, therefore, helps us in two ways.
It enables us to go back to Semang totemism as an example of primitive
kinless society, and forward to Arunta totemism as an example of early
development therefrom. We have, in point of fact, discovered the datum
line of totemism. Upon this may be constructed the various examples
according to their degrees of development, and we may thus see in
detail the commencing elements of totemism as well as the means by
which we may proceed from the commencing elements to the more advanced
elements, and finally to the last stages of totemic society where
blood kinship is fully recognised and used, where, in fact, totemic
tribes as distinct from totemic peoples take their place in the
world's history.
IV
I do not propose in this chapter to proceed further with this inquiry.
It will not advance my object, nor is it absolutely necessary.
Totemism in the full has been described adequately by Mr. Frazer in
his valuable abstract of the evidence supplied from all parts of the
world, and there is not much in dispute among the authorities when
once the stage of origin is passed. There is danger, however, at the
other extreme, namely, the attempt to discover totemism in impossible
places in civilisation. Mr. Morgan has shown us totemic society in its
highest form of development, untouched by other influences of
sufficient consequence to divert its natural evolution. This, I think,
is the merit of Mr. Morgan's great work, and not his attempt, his
futile attempt as I think, to apply the principles of totemic society
to the elucidation of societies that have long passed the stage of
totemism. In particular, the great European civilisations are not
totemic, nor are they to be seen passing from totemism. It is true
that Mr. Lang, Mr. Grant Allen, and others have attempted to trace in
certain features of Greek ritual and belief, and in certain tribal
formations discoverable in Anglo-Saxon Britain, the relics of a living
totemism in the civilised races of Europe;[388] but I do not believe
either of these scholars would have endorsed his early conclusions in
later studies. Mr. Grant Allen did not, so far as I know, repeat this
theory after its first publication, and Mr. Lang has given many signs
of being willing to withdraw it. The fact is, there is no necessity to
think of Greek or English totem society because in Greece and England
there are traces of totem beliefs. We may disengage them from their
national position and put them back to the position they occupied
before the coming of Greek or Englishman into the countries they have
made their own.
In that position there may well have been totemic peoples in Britain
of the type we have been considering from Australia. I have already
indicated that totemic survivals in folklore have been the subject of
a special study of my own which still in the main stands good, and for
which I have collected very many additional illustrations and proofs.
I discovered that folklore contained some remarkably perfect examples
of totemic belief and custom, and also a considerable array of
scattered belief and custom connected with animals and plants which,
unclassified, seemed to lead to no definite stage of culture history,
yet when classified, undoubtedly led to totemism. The result was
somewhat remarkable. At many points there are direct parallels to
savage totemism, and the whole associated group of customs received
adequate explanation only on the theory that it represented the
detritus of a once existing totemic system of belief.
The present study enables me to take the parallel to primitive
totemism much closer. One of the perfect examples was of a local
character. This was found in Ossory. Giraldus Cambrensis tells an
extraordinary legend to the following effect: "A priest benighted in a
wood on the borders of Meath was confronted by a wolf, who after some
preliminary explanations gave this account of himself: There are two
of us, a man and a woman, natives of Ossory, who through the curse of
one Natalis, saint and abbot, are compelled every seven years to put
off the human form and depart from the dwellings of men. Quitting
entirely the human form, we assume that of wolves. At the end of the
seven years, if they chance to survive, two others being substituted
in their places, they return to their country and their former
shape."[389] Here is a saintly legend introduced to explain the
current tradition of the men of Ossory, that they periodically turned
into wolves. Fynes Moryson, in 1603, ridiculed the beliefs of "some
Irish who will be believed as men of credit," that men in Ossory were
"yearly turned into wolves."[390] But an ancient Irish MS. puts the
matter much more clearly in the statement that the "descendants of the
wolf are in Ossory,"[391] while the evidence of Spenser and Camden
explains the popular beliefs upon even more exact lines. Spenser says
"that some of the Irish doe use to make the wolf their gossip;"[392]
and Camden adds that they term them "Chari Christi, praying for them
and wishing them well, and having contracted this intimacy, professed
to have no fear from their four-footed allies." Fynes Moryson
expressly mentions the popular dislike to killing wolves, and they
were not extirpated until the eighteenth century.[393] Aubrey adds
that "in Ireland they value the fang-tooth of an wolfe, which they set
in silver and gold as we doe ye Coralls;"[394] and Camden notes the
similar use of a bit of wolf's skin.[395]
In the local superstitions of Ossory, therefore, we have several of
the cardinal features of savage totemism, the descent from the
totem-animal, the ascription to the totem of a sacred character, the
belief in its protection, and a taboo against killing it. I will
venture to suggest, however, that to these important features there is
to be added a parallel in survival to the Semang and Arunta features
where the local circumstances of birth are the determining forces
which supply the totem name, for the relationship of "gossip,"
"god-sib," is clearly of the same character as that of the soul-tree
of the Semang and the alcheringa of the Australian.[396] The condition
of survival has altered the detail of the parallel, but the parallel
is on the same plane.
The wolf as gossip to the men of Ossory leads us on to inquire whether
any other animal had such close connections with human beings. In
Erris, a part of Connaught, "the people consider that foxes perfectly
understand human language, that they can be propitiated by kindness,
and even moved by flattery. They not only make mittens for Reynard's
feet to keep him warm in winter, and deposit these articles carefully
near their holes, but they make them sponsors for their children,
supposing that under the close and long-established relationship of
Gossipred they will be induced to befriend them."[397] Thus it appears
that the selfsame conception which the men of Ossory had in the
thirteenth century for the wolf, the men of Erris had for the fox in
the nineteenth century. No explanation from the dry details of the
natural history of these animals is sufficient to account for this
curious parallel, and we must turn to ancient beliefs for the
explanation.
The general attitude of the men of Erris towards the fox is confirmed
as an attribute of totemism when we come to examine a special local
form of it. This we can do by turning to Galway. The Claddagh fishermen
in Galway would not go out to fish if they saw a fox: their rivals of
a neighbouring village, not believing in the fox, do all they can
to introduce a fox into the Claddagh village.[398] These people
are peculiar in many respects, and are distinctively clannish. They
retain their old clan-dress--blue cloaks and red petticoats--which
distinguishes them from the rest of the county of Galway, and it may be
conjectured that the present-day custom of naming from the names of
fish--thus, Jack the hake, Bill the cod, Joe the eel, Pat the trout,
Mat the turbot, etc.[399]--may be a remnant of the mental attitude of
the folk towards that belief in kinship between men and animals which
is at the basis of totemism. But, returning to the fox, we have in the
belief that meeting this animal would prevent them from going out to
fish, a parallel to the prohibition against looking at the totem which
is to be found among savage people, and we have in the neighbours'
disbelief in the fox and a corresponding belief in the hare,[400] that
local distribution of different totems which is also found in savagery.
But all these particulars about the relationship of the fox to the
Claddagh fishermen receive unexpected light when we inquire into the
biography of their local saint, named MacDara. This saint is the patron
saint of the fishermen who, when passing MacDara's island, always dip
their sails thrice to avoid being shipwrecked. But then, in the
folk-belief, we have this remarkable fact, that MacDara's real name was
Sinach, a fox[401]--an instance, it would seem, of a totem cult being
transferred to a Christian saint. Thus, then, in the superstitions of
these Claddagh fisherfolk we can trace the elements of totemism, the
root of which is contained, first, in the nominal worship of a
Christian saint, and second, in the actual worship of an animal, the
fox.
These examples of local totemism may be followed by a remarkable
example of tribal or kinship totemism. It was noted by Mr. G. H.
Kinahan in his researches for Irish folklore, and is mentioned quite
incidentally among other items, the collector himself not fully
perceiving the importance of his "find." This really enhances the
value of the evidence, because it destroys any possibility of an
objection to its validity--a really important matter, considering the
remarkable character of this survival of totem-stocks in Western
Europe. The exact words of Mr. Kinahan are as follows:--
"In very ancient times some of the clan Coneely, one of the early
septs of the county, were changed by 'art magick' into seals; since
then no Coneely can kill a seal without afterwards having bad luck.
Seals are called Coneelys, and on this account many of the name
changed it to Connolly."[402] The same local tradition is mentioned by
Hardiman in one of his notes to O'Flaherty's _Description of West or
H-iar Connaught_,[403] but the note is equally significant of
genuineness from the fact that the tradition is styled "a ridiculous
story." It strengthens Mr. Kinahan's note in the following passage:
"In some places the story has its believers, who would no more kill a
seal, or eat of a slaughtered one, than they would of a human
Coneely."
The clan Coneely is mentioned both by Mr. Kinahan and by Mr. Hardiman
as one of the oldest Irish septs; and that it is widely spread, and
not congregated into one locality, is to be inferred from the
description of the tradition as prevalent in Connaught, especially
from Mr. Hardiman's words, describing that "in some places" the story
has its believers now; and hence we may conclude that wherever the
clan Coneely are situated there would exist this totem belief.
The full significance of these facts may best be tested by reference
to the conditions laid down by Dr. Robertson Smith for the discovery
of the survivals of totemism among the Semitic races. These conditions
are as follows:--
"'(1) The existence of stocks named after plants and
animals'--such stocks, it is necessary to add, being
scattered through many local tribes; (2) the
prevalence of the conception that the members of the
stock are of the blood of the eponym animal, or are
sprung from a plant of the species chosen as totem;
(3) the ascription to the totem of a sacred character
which may result in its being regarded as the god of
the stock, but at any rate makes it be regarded with
veneration, so that, for example, a totem animal is
not used as ordinary food. If we can find all these
things together in the same tribe, the proof of
totemism is complete; but even when this cannot be
done, the proof may be morally complete if all the
three marks of totemism are found well developed
within the same race. In many cases, however, we can
hardly expect to find all the marks of totemism in its
primitive form; the totem, for example, may have
become first an animal god, and then an
anthropomorphic god, with animal attributes or
associations merely."[404]
Now in the Irish case all three of these conditions are found together
in the same tribe, the clan Coneely, and it is impossible to overlook
the importance of such a discovery. It proves from survivals in
folklore that totemistic people once lived in ancient Ireland, just as
the corresponding evidence proved that the ancient Semitic stock
possessed the totemic organisation.
We have now examined the most archaic forms of the survival of
totemism in Britain. If we pass on to inquire whether we can detect
the more scattered and decayed remnants of totem beliefs and customs,
we turn to Mr. Frazer as our guide. From Mr. Frazer's review of the
beliefs and customs incidental to the totemistic organisation of
savage people, it is possible to extract a formula for ascertaining
the classification of savage beliefs and practices incidental to
totemism. This formula appears to me to properly fall into the
following groups:--
(a) Descent from the totem.
(b) Restrictions against injuring the totem.
(c) Restrictions against using the totem for food.
(d) The petting and preservation of totems.
(e) The mourning for and burying of totems.
(f) Penalties for non-respect of totem.
(g) Assistance by the totem to his kin.
(_h_) Assumption of totem marks.
(_i_) Assumption of totem dress.
(_j_) Assumption of totem names.
My suggestion is that if a reasonable proportion of the superstitions
and customs attaching to animals and plants, preserved to us as
folklore, can be classified under these heads this is exactly what
might be expected if the origin of such superstitions and customs is
to be sought for in a primitive system of totemism which prevailed
amongst the people once occupying these islands. The clan Coneely and
the Ossory wolves are proofs that such a system existed, and if such
perfect survivals have been able to descend to modern times, in spite
of the influences of civilisation, there is no _prima facie_ reason
why the beliefs and customs incidental to such a system should not
have survived, even though they are no longer to be identified with
special clans. When once a primitive belief or custom becomes
separated from its original surroundings, it would be liable to
change. Thus, when the wolf totem of Ossory passes into a local
cultus, we meet with the belief that human beings may be transformed
into animal forms, as the derivative from the totem belief in descent
from the wolf. Fortunately, the process by which this change took
place is discernible in the Ossory example; but it will not be so in
other examples, and we may therefore assume that the Ossory example
represents the transitional form and apply it as a key to the origin
of similar beliefs elsewhere.
Again, if we endeavour to discover how the associated totem-beliefs of
the clan Coneely would appear in folklore supposing they had been
scattered by the influences of civilisation, we can see that at the
various places where members of the clan had resided for some time
there would be preserved fragments of the once perfect totem-belief.
Thus, one place would retain traditions about a fabulous animal who
could change into human form; another place would preserve beliefs
about its being unlucky to kill a seal (or some other animal specially
connected with the locality); another place would preserve a
superstitious regard for the seal (or some other local animal) as an
augury; and thus the process of transference of beliefs into folklore,
from one form into other related forms, from one particular object
connected with the clan to several objects connected with the
localities, would go on from time to time, until the difficulty of
tracing the original of the scattered beliefs and customs would be
well-nigh insurmountable without some key. But having once proved the
existence of such examples as the clan Coneely and the Ossory wolves,
this difficulty, though still great, is very much lessened. Our method
would be as follows. We first of all postulate that totem peoples did
actually exist in ancient Britain, or whence such extraordinary
survivals? We next examine and classify the beliefs and customs which
are incidental to totemism in savage society, and having set these
forth by the aid of Mr. Frazer's admirable study on the subject, we
ascertain what parallels to these beliefs and customs may be found in
the folklore of Britain. And then our position seems to be very
clearly defined. We prove that in folklore certain customs and
superstitions are identical, or nearly so, with the beliefs and
customs of totemism among savage tribes, and we conclude that this
identity in form proves an identity in origin, and therefore that
this section of folklore originated from the totemistic people of
early Britain.
I shall not take up all these points on the present occasion,
especially as they have in all essentials appeared in the study to
which I have referred; but as an example of the scattering of totem
beliefs I will refer to the well-known passage in Caesar (lib. v. cap.
xii.), from which we learn that certain people in Britain were
forbidden to eat the hare, the cock, or the goose, and see whether
this does not receive its only explanation by reference to the totemic
restriction against using the totem for food. Mr. Elton, with this
passage in his mind, notices that "there were certain restrictions
among the Britons and ancient Irish, by which particular nations or
tribes were forbidden to kill or eat certain kinds of animals;" and he
goes on to suggest that "it seems reasonable to connect the rule of
abstaining from certain kinds of food with the superstitious belief
that the tribes were descended from the animals from which their names
and crests or badges were derived."[405]
Let us see whether this reasonable conjecture holds good. The most
famous example is that of Cuchulainn, the celebrated Irish chieftain,
whose name means the hound of Culain. It is said that he might not eat
of the flesh of the dog, and he came by his death after transgressing
this totemistic taboo. The words of the manuscript known as the Book
of Leinster are singularly significant in their illustration of this
view. "And one of the things that Cuchulainn was bound not to do was
going to a cooking hearth and consuming the food [_i.e._ the dog];
and another of the things that he must not do was eating his
namesake's flesh."[406] Diarmaid, whose name seems to be continued in
the current popular Irish name for pig (Darby), was intimately
associated with that animal, and his life depended on the life of the
boar.[407] These examples are so much to the point that we may examine
the cases mentioned by Caesar from the same standard.
Mr. Frazer points out that even among existing totem-tribes the
respect for the totem has lessened or disappeared, and among the
results of this he notes instances where, if any one kills his totem,
he apologises to the animal. Under such an interpretation as this, we
may surely classify a "memorandum" made by Bishop White-Kennett about
the hare, the first of the British totems mentioned by Caesar: "When
one keepes a hare alive and feedeth him till he have occasion to eat
him, if he telles before he kills him that he will doe so, the hare
will thereupon be found dead, having killed himself."[408] But respect
for the hare, in accordance with totem ideas, was carried further than
this at Biddenham, where, on the 22nd September, a little procession
of villagers carried a white rabbit [a substitute for hare] decorated
with scarlet ribbons through the village, singing a hymn in honour of
St. Agatha. All the young unmarried women who chanced to meet the
procession extended the first two fingers of the left hand pointing
towards the rabbit, at the same time repeating the following
doggerel:--
Gustin, Gustin, lacks a bier,
Maidens, maidens, bury him here.[409]
This points to a very ancient custom, not yet fully explained, but
which clearly had for its object the reverential burying of a rabbit
or hare. It is characteristic of the totem animal that it serves as an
omen to its clansmen, and we find that the hare is an omen in Britain.
Boudicca is said to have drawn an augury from a hare, taken from her
bosom, and which when released pursued a course that was deemed
fortunate for her attack upon the Roman army;[410] and in modern south
Northamptonshire the running of a hare along the street or mainway of
a village portends fire to some house in the immediate vicinity.[411]
In 1648 Sir Thomas Browne tells us that in his time there were few
above three-score years that were not perplexed when a hare crossed
their path.[412] In Wilts and in Scotland it was unlucky to meet a
hare, but the evil influence did not extend after the next meal had
been taken.[413] Then, too, the prohibition against naming the totem
object is found in north-east Scotland attached to the hare, whose
name may not be pronounced at sea, and Mr. Gregor adds the significant
fact that some animal names and certain family names were never
pronounced by the inhabitants of some of the villages, each village
having an aversion to one or more of the words.[414] A classification
of the beliefs and customs connected with the hare takes us, indeed,
to almost every phase of totemistic belief, and it is impossible to
reject such a mass of cumulative evidence.
Of the second of the British food taboos mentioned by Caesar we have
the most perfect illustration in the instance of the Irish chieftain,
Conaire, who, descended from a fowl, was interdicted from eating its
flesh.[415]
Turning next to the goose, we find that at Great Crosby, in
Lancashire, there is held an annual festival which is called the
"Goose Fair," and although it is accompanied by great feasting, the
singular fact remains that the goose itself, in whose honour the feast
seems to have been held, is considered too sacred to eat, and is never
touched by the villagers.[416] In Scotland also the goose was never
eaten, being too sacred for food.[417]
Thus the hare, the fowl, and the goose have retained their sacred
character in a special manner in various parts of the country, and I
may add a further note of more general significance. In Scotland there
exists a prejudice against eating hares and cocks and hens.[418] In
the south-western parts of England the peasant would not eat hares,
rabbits, wild-fowl, or poultry, and when asked whence this dislike
proceeds, he asserts that it was derived from his father[419]--the
traditional sanction which is so essential to folklore.[420]
The ideas surrounding these three special animals might be easily
extended to others, but I will only observe that Mr. Elton, noting
both the classical and modern accounts of certain districts in
Scotland and Ireland where fish, though abundant, is tabooed as food,
quotes with approval a modern suggestion that this abstinence was a
religious observance.[421] That fish are carved on numerous stones is
a curious commentary on this assertion, while another point to be
noted is that the inhabitants of the various islands have each their
peculiar notions as to what fish are good for food. Some will eat
skate, some dog-fish, some eat limpets and razor-fish, and as a matter
of course, says Miss Gordon Cumming, those who do not, despise those
who do.[422] A prejudice also existed against white cows in Scotland,
and Dalyell ventures upon the acute supposition that this was on
account of the unlawfulness of consuming the product of a consecrated
animal.[423] These are not stray notes of inexperienced observers, and
with two centuries between them it must be that they contain the
essence of the people's conception--a conception which leads us back
to totemism for its explanation.
I do not think we could get closer to totemic beliefs and ideas than
this, nor could we have a better example of the necessity of examining
early historical data by anthropological tests and by folklore
parallels. Caesar's words are unimportant by themselves. They convey
nothing of any significance to the modern reader--a mere dietetic
peculiarity which means nothing and counts for nothing. And yet it
might be considered certain that Caesar knew that the details he
recorded were of importance in the historical sense. He did not
indicate what the importance was, probably because he was not aware of
it; but because he was conscious that among the influences which
counted with these people were the food taboos, he rightly recorded
the facts. They have remained unconsidered trifles until now, when
anthropology has brought them within the range of scientific
observation, and they are now to be reckoned with as part of the
material which tells of the culture conditions of a section of the
early British peoples.
I must here interpose a remark with reference to this grouping of the
evidence. Apart from the significance of the superstitions as they are
recorded in their bare condition among the peasantry, there is the
additional fact to note that the superstition against eating or
killing certain animals or birds, or against looking at them or naming
them, etc., is not universal. It obtains in one place and not in
another. If the injunction not to kill, injure, or eat a certain
animal were simply the reflection of a universal practice, such a
practice might originate in some attribute of the animal itself which
characteristically would produce or tend to produce superstition. But
the spread of this class of superstition in certain districts, and not
in others, is indicative of an ancient origin, and it is exactly what
might be expected to have been produced from totem-peoples.
Unfortunately, neither the negative evidence of superstitious beliefs
nor the local distribution of superstitious beliefs has ever been
considered worthy of attention. But some little evidence is
incidentally forthcoming, and I would submit that this may be taken as
indicative of what might be obtained more fully by further research
into this neglected aspect of folklore. I drew Miss Burne's attention
to this subject, and she has noted some particulars in her valuable
_Shropshire Folklore_.[424] But for the most part this portion of our
evidence wants picking out by a long and tedious process from the mass
of badly recorded facts about popular superstitions. I do not believe
in the generally stated opinion that certain superstitions are
universally believed or practised. It is difficult to prove a
negative, and such evidence is not absolutely scientific, but when it
comes in direct antithesis to positive, there does not seem any harm
in accepting it. Every class of superstition wants tracing out
geographically, and local variants want careful noting. I cannot doubt
if this were properly done that many so-called universal superstitions
would be found to be distinctly local. In the meantime, it is not with
universal superstitions that we have to deal. It is primarily with
those local variants which show us side by side the differences of
belief. It is thus that we can afford evidence of that intermixture
of totem-objects which is to be expected from the known facts of
totem-beliefs and customs. Indeed, Mr. McLennan has laid it down that
"we might expect that while here and there perhaps a tribe might
appear with a single animal god, as a general rule tribes and nations
should have as many animal and vegetable gods as there were distinct
stocks in the population ... we should not expect to find the same
animal dominant in all quarters, or worshipped even everywhere within
the same nation."[425]
It is important that we should thoroughly understand what these
survivals of totemism in the British isles really mean. On the extreme
west coast of Ireland, farthest away from the centres of civilisation,
there are found these unique examples of a savage institution. The
argument that they might have been transplanted thither by travellers
from the far west, where totemism has developed to its highest form,
cannot seriously be advanced. The argument that they might be the
accidental form into which some merely superstitious fancies of
ignorant peasants happened to have ultimately shaped themselves, is
met by the mathematical demonstration that the ratio of chance against
such a development would be well-nigh incalculable. The remaining
argument is that they indicate the last outpost, or perhaps one of the
last outposts, of a primitive savage organisation which once existed
throughout these lands. This is the view that appears to me to be the
only possible one to meet all the conditions of the case; one proof
in support of this view being the discovery of evidence in other
parts of the country which shows that totemism has left its stamp in
more or less perfect form upon the traditional beliefs and practices
of the nation. Though we are not able to identify further complete
examples of the same type as the seal clan of Western Ireland, or the
wolf people of Ossory, we should be able, if the explanation I have
advanced of their origin be the correct one, to produce examples of
the varying forms which such an institution as totemism must have
assumed when it had been broken up by the advance of civilising
influences. If the seal clan, or the wolf clan, is in truth the last
outpost of a savage organisation, there will be in the lands less
remote from the centres of civilisation some evidences of the break-up
of savagery as it has been driven westward. Somewhere in tradition,
somewhere in local observances of beliefs or superstition, there must
still be echoes, more or less faint, but still echoes, from totemism.
Having discovered these undoubted examples of totemism, the argument
shifts its ground. We can no longer say that the theory of totemism
may possibly explain some of the customs and traditions of the people.
We are, by the logic of the position, compelled to say that custom and
tradition must have preserved many relics of totemism, and that so far
from seeking to explain custom and tradition by the theory of
totemism, we must seek to explain the survival of totemism by custom
and tradition. I lay stress on this view of the case because it is
hard to combat the views of those who look upon "mere superstition" as
no explanation of primitive originals. To us of the present day the
beliefs of the peasantry are no doubt properly definable as "mere
superstition." But when we examine it as folklore we are seeking for
its origin, not for its modern aspect; we are asking how "mere
superstition" first arose, and in what forms, not how it exists; we
are pushing back the inquiry from to-day when it exists side by side
with a philosophical and moral religion to the time when it existed as
the sole substitute for philosophy and morals. Even if it is "mere
superstition" it has a dateless history. It is not conceivable that it
suddenly arose at a particular period before which "mere superstition"
did not exist, and all, both peasant and chief, were philosophical and
moral. It is not conceivable that the mere superstition of to-day has
replaced bodily the mere superstition of other ages. Every succeeding
age of progress has influenced it, no doubt, but not eradicated it,
and hence the mere superstition of to-day has just such an unbroken
continuity of history as language or institutions. That we are able to
pick out from among its items undoubted forms of totemism, and that we
may add to these complete examples a classified grouping of customs
and beliefs in survival parallel to the customs and beliefs of savage
totemism, affords proof that at least we may carry back that history
to the era of totemism, at whatever point that era may cross the line
of, or come into contact with, political history.
This is the definite conclusion to be drawn from the anthropological
interpretation of the presence of totemic beliefs among the survivals
of folklore. The study of the anthropological conditions has occupied
a wide range of thought and inquiry, but it leads us back to a safe
basis for research, for it brings definitely within touch of that
realm of man which lies outside the civilisation wherein folklore is
embedded, the peoples who have made, and the peoples who are dominated
by, that civilisation. The savage of Britain cannot with this evidence
before us be considered as the mere product of the literature of
Greece and Rome. He is part and parcel of the savagery of the human
race. Anthropology has shown us that savagery reached the land we now
call Britain as part of the general movement of people which has
caused the whole earth to become a dwelling-place for man, and now
that we know this we must appeal to anthropology whenever we find that
the problems of folklore take us out of the culture period of a
civilisation known to history.[426]
APPENDIX
I append a synopsis of the culture-structure of the Semangs of the
Malay Peninsula (references are to Skeat and Blagden's _Pagan Races of
the Malay Peninsula_ where not otherwise specified), in order that the
position claimed for the one section of totemic belief may be tested
by the remaining characteristics of Semang culture. I claim that there
is nothing that remains which is inconsistent with the interpretation
given of the totemic items.
_Physical_:--
(a). Live exclusively in the forest surrounded by hostile fauna (i.
13).
(b). Food consists of such wild vegetable food as may happen to fall
from time to time in season (i. 109, 341, 525), together with small
mammals and birds (i. 112), fish (i. 113).
(c). As soon as they have exhausted the sources of food in one
neighbourhood they move on to the next (i. 109).
(d). Fire obtained by friction (i. 111, 113), but meat is eaten raw
(i. 112).
(e). Nudity is alleged (_Journ. Indian Archipelago_, i. 252; ii.
258); no satisfactory proof (i. 137); do not use skins of animals nor
feathers of birds (i. 138); a girdle of fungus string (i. 138, 142,
380); fringe of leaves suspended from a string (i. 139, 142);
necklaces and ligatures of jungle fibre (i. 144, 145); women wear a
comb made of bamboo as a charm against diseases (i. 149).
(f). Habitations are rock shelters (i. 173), tree shelters afforded
by branches of trees improved by construction of a weather screen (i.
174); ground screen of palm leaves (i. 175).
(g). Hunt successfully the largest animals, escaping easily up the
trees (i. 202-204).
(h). Knives made of bamboo, flakes and chips of stone, knives of
bone (i. 249, 269); bow and arrow (i. 251, 255); not sufficiently
advanced to have produced neolithic implements (i. 268); wooden spear
(i. 270).
(i). Ignorant of pottery, vessels made from big stems of bamboo (i.
383).
_Social_:--
(j). Chief of the group is the principal medicine man, but is on an
equal footing with his men, no caste and property is in common (i.
497, 499).
(k). Marriage rights are secured by the presentation of a jungle
knife to the bride's parents and a girdle to the bride, and the bride
never lets the girdle part from her for fear of its being used to her
prejudice in some magic ceremony; adultery is punishable by death (ii.
58, 59) [but this information was not obtained from the most primitive
of the Semang people].
(l). Semang women are common to all men (Newbold, _Political and
Stat. Acc. of Settlements in Straits of Malacca_, ii. 379). Great
ante-nuptial freedom (ii. 56, 218); "Of the Semang I have not had an
opportunity of personally judging" (ii. 377, Newbold).
[Illustration: TREE HUT, ULU BATU, ABOUT 12 MILES FROM KUALA LUMPUR,
SELANGOR]
(m). Eat dead kindred except head (Newbold, ii. 379); burial takes
place in the ground, and the older practice was exposure in trees;
the Semang have no dread of ghosts of the deceased (ii. 89, 91).
(n). No sacred shrines or places (ii. 197).
(o). Avoidance of mother-in-law (ii. 204).
(p). Myth of the ringdove informing the children of the first woman
that they had married within prohibited degrees of consanguinity, and
advising them to separate and marry "other people" (ii. 218).
(q). Myth as to ignorance of cause of birth being dispelled by the
cocoanut monkey informing the first man and woman (ii. 218).
(r). The Semang are almost ineradicably nomadic, have no fixed
habitation, and rove about like the beasts of the forest (i. 172; ii.
470).
(s). Women and girls are not allowed to eat until the men and boys
have finished their repast (i. 116); the men do most of the hunting
and trapping, and the women take a large share in the collecting of
roots and fruits; all the cooking is performed by the women and girls
(i. 375).
(t). They are split up into a large number of dialects, each of
which is confined to a relatively small area, and it often happens
that a little [clan] or even a single family uses a form of speech
which is differentiated from other dialects to be practically
unintelligible to all except the members of the little community
itself (ii. 379).
(u). Natural segregation of the [tribes] into small [clans] to some
extent cut off from one another and surrounded by settled Malay
communities (ii. 379).
(v). The most thoroughly wild and uncivilised members of our race,
regarded by the Malays as little better than brute beasts, with no
recorded history (ii. 384).
(w). Nomadic life of the Semang leads them over a considerable tract
of country (ii. 388).
_Psychical_:--
(x). Decorative patterns on quivers representing natural objects,
and possessing magical virtue to bring down various species of monkeys
and apes and other small mammals (i. 417), and as charms for the men
(i. 423).
(y). Decorative pattern on magic comb worn by women to serve as a
charm against venomous reptiles and insects, similar design for
similar reason sometimes painted on the breast (i. 41, 420-436).
(z). Child's name is taken from some tree which stands near the
prospective birthplace of the child. As soon as the child is born this
name is shouted aloud by the _sage femme_, who then hands over the
child to another woman, who buries the afterbirth underneath the
birth-tree or name-tree of the child. As soon as this is done the
father cuts a series of notches in the tree, starting from the ground
and terminating at the height of the breast. The cutting of these
notches is intended to signalise the arrival on earth of a new human
being, since it thus shows that Kari registers the souls that he has
sent forth by notching the tree against which he leans. Trees thus
"blazed" are never felled. The child must not in later life injure any
tree which belongs to the species of his tree; for him all such trees
are taboo, and he must not even eat their fruit, the only exception
being when an expectant mother revisits her birth-tree. Every tree of
its species is regarded as identical with the birth-tree (ii. 3, 4).
When an East Semang dies his birth-tree dies too (ii. 5).
(aa). The child's soul is conveyed in a bird, which always inhabits
a tree of the species to which the birth-tree belongs. It flies from
one tree of the species to another, following the as yet unborn body.
The souls of first-born children are always young birds newly hatched,
the offspring of the bird which contained the soul of the mother. If
the mother does not eat the soul-bird during her accouchement the
child will be stillborn or will die shortly after birth (ii. 4, 192,
194, 216). She keeps the soul-bird within the birth-bamboo, and does
not eat it all at once, but piecemeal (ii. 6). All human souls grow
upon a soul-tree in the other world, whence they are fetched by a bird
which was killed and eaten by the expectant mother (ii. 194).
(bb). Semang religion, in spite of its recognition of a thunder-god
(Kari) and certain minor deities (so called), has very little indeed
in the way of ceremonial, and appears to consist mainly of mythology
and legend. It shows remarkably few traces of demon worship, very
little fear of ghosts of the deceased, and still less of any sort of
animistic beliefs (ii. 174). [As the Kari is the deity common to the
Semang and the people higher in culture than the Semang, it is
difficult to trace out the primitive idea. The myths also show a
common impress, "which is probably mainly due to the same savage
Malay element" (ii. 183).]
(cc). During a storm of thunder and lightning the Semang draw a few
drops of blood from the region of the shin bone, mix it with a little
water in a bamboo receptacle, and throw it up to the angry skies (ii.
204).
(dd). Pretend entire ignorance of a supreme being, but on pressure
confessed to a very powerful yet benevolent being, the maker of the
world (ii. 209).
FOOTNOTES:
[284] Beddoe, _Races of Britain_, cap. ii., and _Journ. Anthrop.
Inst._, xxxv. 236-7; Boyd-Dawkins, _Early Man in Britain_, cap. vii.
viii. and ix.; Ripley, _Races of Europe_, cap. xii.
[285] Rhys, _Celtic Britain_, 271; Rhys, _Celtic Heathendom_, _passim_;
Rhys and Jones, _Welsh People_, cap. i. and Appendix B on "Pre-Aryan
Syntax in Insular Celtic," by Professor Morris Jones.
[286] Barrows, mounds, tumuli, stone circles, monoliths are generally
admitted to belong to the Stone Age people before the Celts arrived,
and when they are adequately investigated, as Mr. Arthur Evans has
investigated Stonehenge (_Archaeological Review_, vol. ii. pp. 312-330),
and the Rollright Stones (_Folklore_, vol. vi. pp. 5-51), the evidence
of a prehistoric origin is unquestioned.
[287] I have worked out the evidence for this in the _Archaeological
Review_, vol. iii. pp. 217-242, 350-375, and though I do not endorse
all I have written there, the main points are still, I think, good.
[288] Wallace, _Darwinism_, cap. xv.
[289] Spencer and Gillen, _Central Tribes of Australia_, 12, 272, 324,
368, 420.
[290] _Descent of Man_, i. cap. vii. 176.
[291] _Cf._ Topinard's _Anthropology_, part iii., "On the Origin of
Man," pp. 515-535, for the details of the various authorities ranged on
the sides of monogenists and polygenists.
[292] Keane, _Man, Past and Present_, discusses the important evidence
obtained by Dr. Dubois from Java, and Dr. Noetling from Upper Burma,
pp. 5-8. It is only fair to that brilliant scholar, Dr. Latham, to
point out that without the evidence before him to prove the point, he
came to the same conclusion that the original home of man was
"somewhere in intra-tropical Asia, and that it was the single locality
of a single pair."--Latham, _Man and his Migrations_, 248.
[293] The most recent example of this is Mr. Thomas's extraordinary
treatment of the evidence of migration in Australia. It produces in his
mind "novel conditions," but has effects which he cannot neglect, but
which he strangely misinterprets. N. W. Thomas, _Kinship Organisations
in Australia_, 27-28.
[294] Spencer, _Principles of Sociology_, i. 18.
[295] Lord Avebury, _Prehistoric Times_, 586.
[296] _Man, Past and Present_, pp. 1, 8.
[297] Latham, _Man and his Migrations_, 155-6.
[298] The ethnographic movement is a very definite fact in
anthropological evidence, though it has been little noted. Thus "the
Coles are evidently a good pioneering race, fond of new clearings and
the luxuriant and easily raised crops of the virgin soil, and have
constitutions that thrive on malaria, so it is perhaps in the best
interest of humanity and cause of civilisation that they be kept moving
by continued Aryan propulsion. Ever armed with bow, arrows, and
pole-axe, they are prepared to do battle with the beasts of the forest,
holding even the king of the forest, the 'Bun Rajah,' that is, the
tiger, in little fear."--Col. Dalton in _Journ. Asiatic Soc., Bengal_,
xxxiv. 9.
[299] Traditions of great migrations exist among most primitive races.
Some of these contain unexpected corroboration from actual discoveries.
Thus the natives of New Zealand had a tradition that their ancestors,
when they arrived in their canoes some four centuries ago, buried some
sacred things under a large tree. It is said that the tree was blown
down in recent times and that the sacred things were discovered. Taplin
records "a good specimen of the kind of migration which has taken place
among the aborigines all over the continent" (_The Narrinyeri_, p. 4);
and similar evidence could be produced in almost every direction. Mr.
Mathew in _Eaglehawk and Crow_ deals with "the argument from mythology
and tradition" as to the origin of the Australians in a very suggestive
fashion (pp. 14-22). Stanley has preserved an African native tradition
of local groups spreading out from the parent home _(Through the Dark
Continent_, i. 346).
[300] I am aware this is disputed by O. Peschel--_Races of Man_, 137
_et seq._--but I think the evidence is sufficient; and it must be
remembered that there is direct evidence of the most backward races not
using the fire they possess for cooking, but always eating their animal
food raw, as, for instance, the Semang people of the Malay Peninsula.
(See Skeat and Blagden, _Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula_, i. 112.)
The Andaman Islanders could not make fire, though they possessed and
kept it alive. This shows that they must have borrowed it and did not
previously possess it.--Quatrefages, _The Pygmies_, 108. Tylor, _Early
History of Mankind_, cap. ix., should be consulted.
[301] The term political is, I confess, a little awkward, owing to its
specially modern use, but it is the only term which, in its early
sense, expresses the stage of social development represented by a
polity as distinct from a mere localisation.
[302] It was one of the first efforts of the science of language to
endeavour to trace out the original home of the so-called Aryas and
their subsequent migrations. "Emigration," said Bunsen, "is the great
agent in forming nations and languages" (_Philosophy of Hist._, i. 56);
and Niebuhr, who has traced out most of the migrations of the Greek
tribes, observes that "this migration of nations was formerly not
mentioned anywhere" (_Anc. Hist._, ii. 212). Quite recently, Professor
Flinders Petrie has worked at the question of European migrations in
the Huxley lecture of 1907 (_Journ. Anthrop. Inst._, xxxvi. 189-232),
his valuable maps showing "the movements of twenty of the principal
peoples that entered Europe during the centuries of great movements
that are best known to us" (204). In the meantime, the folklorist has
much to do in this direction, and up to the present he has almost
entirely ignored or misread the evidence. I do not know whether Mr.
Nutt would still adhere to his conclusion that the myth embodied in the
Celtic expulsion-and-return formula is undoubtedly solar (_Folklore
Record_, iv. 42), but a restatement of Mr. Nutt's careful and elaborate
analysis would lead me to trace the myth to the migration period of
Aryan history, just as I agree with von Ihering that the _ver sacrum_
of the Romans is a rite continued from the migration period to express
in religious formulae, and on emergency to again carry out, the ancient
practice of sending forth from an overstocked centre sufficient of the
tribesmen and tribeswomen to leave those who remained economically
well-conditioned (_The Evolution of the Aryan_, 249-290). Pheidon's law
at Corinth, alluded to by Aristotle (_Pol._, ii. cap. vi.), could only
be carried out by a sending out of the surplus. See also Aristotle,
_Pol._, ii. cap. xii.; and Newman's note to the first reference,
quoting similar laws elsewhere. Both the "junior-right" traditions and
customs take us back to the same conditions. The occupation of fresh
territories is an observable feature of the Russian mir (Wallace,
_Russia_, i. 255; Laveleye _Primitive Property_, 34), and Mr. Chadwick
has recently called attention to the corresponding Scandinavian
evidence (_Origin of the English Nation_, 334).
[303] Mr. J. R. Logan long ago pointed out that "the further we go
back, we find ethnic characteristics more uniform," and further
concluded that certain facts observed by himself "lead to the inference
that the Archaic world was connected."--_Journ. Indian Archipelago_,
iv. 290, 291.
[304] _Descent of Man_, pp. 590, 591.
[305] _Studies in Ancient History_, i. 84.
[306] _History of Human Marriage_, cap. ii.
[307] _Ancient Society_, p. 10.
[308] _Secret of the Totem_, p. 32.
[309] N. W. Thomas, _Kinship Organisation in Australia_, 4.
[310] _Folklore_, xii. 232.
[311] Both Dr. Haddon and myself made the same point on a criticism of
Mr. Fraser's _Golden Bough_, mine being from the Aricia rites, and Dr.
Haddon's from the savage parallels thereto. See _Folklore_, xii. 223,
224, 232.
[312] Sproat's _Scenes and Studies of Savage Life_, 19. The use of the
term "tribe" in this quotation is, of course, descriptive only. There
is no tribal constitution among the Ahts, and "group" would have been
the preferable term.
[313] Dr. W. H. Rivers' recently published work on the Todas is the
best authority.
[314] Rivers, _op. cit._, 432, 455.
[315] Rivers, _op. cit._, cap. xxi. 504, 517.
[316] Rivers, _op. cit._, 452-456.
[317] Latham, _Descriptive Ethnology_, ii, 137.
[318] Bucher, _Industrial Evolution_, 56.
[319] Rev. George Taplin, _The Narrinyeri; South Australian
Aborigines_, 40. _Cf._ Howitt, _Native Tribes of South-east Australia_,
710-720; Grierson, _The Silent Trade_, 22.
[320] _Cf._ Skeat and Blagden, _Pagan Tribes of Malay Peninsula_, i,
10.
[321] Graham, _Bheel Tribes of Khandesh_, 3.
[322] Herodotos, iv. 180.
[323] _Journ. Asiatic Soc., Bengal_, xiii. 625.
[324] Major Gurdon, _The Khasis_, 76, 82.
[325] N. W. Thomas, _Kinship Organisations in Australia_, 124.
[326] Fustel de Coulange's _Cite Antique_, cap. xiv. and xv., is,
however, the most exaggerated example of this point of view.
[327] Lang, _Social Origins_, 1. The latest exponent of anthropological
principles affirms that "the family which exists in the lower stages of
culture, though it is overshadowed by the other social phenomena, has
persisted through all the manifold revolutions of society."--N. W.
Thomas, _Kinship Organisations in Australia_, 1.
[328] Jevons' _Introd. to Hist. of Religion_, 195.
[329] See also Prof. Geikie in _Scottish Geographical Mag._ (Sept.
1897).
[330] _Early Hist. of Mankind_, 303; MacCulloch, _Childhood of
Fiction_, 396; Gould, _Mythical Monsters_.
[331] Mr. Westermarck has collected excellent evidence as to the
economic influences upon savage society (_Hist. of Human Marriage_,
39-49), and we may quite properly assume the same conditions for
earliest man.
[332] A very good summary of the pygmy peoples in all parts of the
world is given by Mr. W. A. Reed in his useful _Negritos of Zambales_,
13-22. _Cf._ Keane, _Man, Past and Present_, 118-121; Keane,
_Ethnology_, 246-248; and Sir W. H. Flower, _Essays on Museums_, cap.
xix.
[333] Latham, _Man and his Migrations_, 55, 56. Dr. Beke was a most
cautious observer, and I have consulted all his contributions to the
_Journal of the Geographical Society_ (vol. xiii.) and have found no
sign of his retraction of the evidence. His correspondence in the
_Literary Gazette_ of 1843, p. 852, discusses the question of the Dokos
being pygmies, but he adheres to his information as to the absence of
social structure being correct.
[334] Lib. ii. 32, 8; _cf._ Quatrefages, _The Pygmies_, cap. 1, "The
Pygmies of the Ancients."
[335] Lieut.-Col. Sutherland, _Memoir respecting the Kaffirs,
Hottentots, and Bosjemans_, i. 67 (Cape Town, 1846).
[336] Burrows, _The Land of Pygmies_, 182.
[337] Mr. A. B. Lloyd's volume _In Dwarfland and Cannibal Country_, p.
96, is the most recent evidence.
[338] It is worth noting here that the Chinese traditions of the
pygmies are exceedingly suggestive and curious. See Moseley, _Notes by
a Naturalist_, 369.
[339] Skeat and Blagden, _Malay Peninsula_, ii. 443.
[340] _Journ. Indian Archipelago_, iv. 425-427; _cf._ _Journ. Anthrop.
Inst._, xvi. 228; Wallace, _Malay Archipelago_, 452.
[341] Clifford, _In Court and Kampong_, 171-181.
[342] Skeat and Blagden, _Pagan Races of Malay Peninsula_, i. 13.
[343] _Op. cit._, i. 53-4, 139, 169, 172, 341.
[344] _Op. cit._, i. 170.
[345] _Op. cit._, i. 243-248, 268.
[346] _Op. cit._, i. 494; ii. 56, 218.
[347] _Op. cit._, ii. 3. Compare _Journ. Indian Archipelago_, iv. 427,
"they are called after particular trees, that is, if a child is born
under or near a cocoanut or durian, or any particular tree in the
forest, it is named accordingly," and John Anderson, _Considerations
relative to Malayan Peninsula_, 1824, p. xli.
[348] _Op. cit._, ii. 4, 192, 194.
[349] _Op. cit._, ii. 174, 209.
[350] _Archaeological Review_, i. 13, from an official report published
in a Government Blue Book.
[351] Brinton, _The American Race_; Curtin, _Creation Myths of
Primitive America_.
[352] Darwin, _Journal of Researches_, 228.
[353] _Anthropological Inst._, vii. 502-510.
[354] Quatrefages, _The Pygmies_, 24, 48, 69.
[355] There is ample evidence of this characteristic. Thus, of the
Australians of Port Lincoln district, it is said that "the habit of
constantly changing their place of rest is so great that they cannot
overcome it even if staying where all their wants can be abundantly
supplied."--_Trans. Roy. Soc., Victoria_, v. 178.
[356] _Fortnightly Review_, lxxviii. 455.
[357] _Secret of the Totem_, 125, 140.
[358] _British Association Report_, 1902, p. 745. _Cf._ Spencer and
Gillen, _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, 160.
[359] Lang, _Secret of the Totem_, 140, quoting Grey, _Vocabulary of
the Dialects of South-west Australia_.
[360] Spencer and Gillen, _Tribes of Central Australia_, 119.
[361] The reader should consult Mason's _Women's Share in Primitive
Culture_, and Bucher's _Industrial Evolution_, for evidence on this
point.
[362] Livingstone, _South Africa_, 462.
[363] Sleeman, _Rambles of an Indian Official_, i. 43. "Banotsarg is
the name given to the marriage ceremony performed in honour of a newly
planted orchard, without which preliminary observance it is not proper
to partake of its fruit. A man holding the Salagram personates the
bridegroom, and another holding the sacred Tulsi personates the bride.
After burning a hom or sacrificial fire, the officiating Brahmin puts
the usual questions to the couple about to be united. The bride then
perambulates a small spot marked out in the centre of the orchard.
Proceeding from the south towards the west, she makes the circuit three
times, followed at a short distance by the bridegroom holding in his
hand a strip of her chadar of garment. After this, the bridegroom takes
precedence, making his three circuits, and followed in like manner by
his bride. The ceremony concludes with the usual offerings" (Elliot,
_Folklore of North-west Provinces of India_, i. 234).
[364] Myths explaining the domestication of animals belong to this
stage of culture. The dog is a sacred animal among the Khasis, with
certain totemic associations, and there is a very realistic and
humanising myth relating how the dog came to be regarded as the friend
of man (Gurdon, _The Khasis_, 51, 172-3). The Kyeng creation legend
includes a good example of animal friendship with man (Lewin, _Wild
Races of South-east India_, 238-9). The American creation myths afford
remarkable testimony to this view of the case. "Game and fish of all
sorts were under direct divine supervision ... maize or Indian corn is
a transformed god who gave himself to be eaten to save men from hunger
and death" (Curtin, _Creation Myths of Primitive America_, pp. xxvi,
xxxviii). The Narrinyeri Australians "do not appear to have any story
of the origin of the world, but nearly all animals they suppose
anciently to have been men who performed great prodigies, and at last
transformed themselves into different kinds of animals and stones"
(Taplin, _The Narrinyeri_, 59).
[365] _Legend of Perseus_, i. cap. vi.
[366] _Secret of the Totem_, 29.
[367] Mitchell, _Australian Expeditions_, i. 307; _cf._ Fison and
Howitt, _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, 200, 224; Taplin, _The Narrinyeri_, 10.
[368] Curr, _Australian Race_, i. p. 193; _cf._ Smyth, _Aborigines of
Victoria_, ii. p. 316.
[369] Fison and Howitt, _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, 66, 285, 289.
[370] Fison and Howitt, _op. cit._, 68, 73.
[371] Lang, _Secret of the Totem_, 64.
[372] Spencer and Gillen, _Central Tribes_, 7.
[373] Spencer and Gillen, _Central Tribes_, 120, 124, 133.
[374] _Globus_, xci, a very important criticism of Spencer and Gillen's
work.
[375] Spencer and Gillen, _op. cit._, 139, 154.
[376] Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes_, 144.
[377] _Globus_, xci, gives important evidence of traces of female descent
among the Arunta.
[378] There is conflict of testimony on this point. Spencer and Gillen
deny that the Arunta recognise the fact of paternity in any way (see
_Northern Tribes_, pp. xiii, 145, 330), and yet talk of the "actual
father" in ceremonial functions (p. 361).
[379] Skeat and Blagden, _Malay Peninsula_, ii. 218.
[380] Newbold, _Political and State Acc. of Malacca_, ii.; Skeat and
Blagden, _op. cit._, ii. 56.
[381] Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, _Central Tribes_, 36, give a useful
note on this point.
[382] In this they are exactly paralleled by the Khasi people of Assam,
among whom we find a limited sort of male chiefship by succession
through females, and an absolute succession to property by females by
succession through females (Gurdon, _The Khasis_, 68, 88). Descent from
the female is absolute in both cases, and all we get is male
ascendancy.
[383] _Secret of the Totem_, 73.
[384] _Op. cit._, 79.
[385] Lang, _Secret of the Totem_, 148.
[386] _Central Tribes_, 72. Mrs. Langloh Parker's information as to the
origin of the Euahlayi two-class division having arisen from an
amalgamation of two distinct tribes, points to the same
facts.--_Euahlayi Tribe_, 12.
[387] Spencer and Gillen, _Tribes of Central Australia_, 96, 99, 106.
[388] Lang's Introd. to Bolland's _Aristotle's Politics_ (1877), p.
104; Grant Allen's _Anglo-Saxon Britain_ (1888), pp. 79-83.
[389] _Topography of Ireland_, lib. ii. cap. 19.
[390] _Hist. of Ireland_, ii. 361.
[391] _Irish Nennius_, p. 205; Lang, _Custom and Myth_, p. 265; _Revue
Celtique_, ii. 202.
[392] _View of the State of Ireland_, p. 99.
[393] Moryson, _Hist. of Ireland_, ii. 367.
[394] Aubrey, _Remaines of Gentilisme_, 204.
[395] Camden, _Britannia_, iii. 455; iv. 459.
[396] The significance of the word "gossip" is worth noting. Halliwell
says it "signified a _relation_ or sponsor in baptism, all of whom were
to each other and to the parents _God-sibs_, that is, _sib_, or related
by means of religion." This meaning does not seem to have died out in
the days of Spenser, and his use of the word to describe the
relationship of the men of Ossory to wolves is very significant. For
the history of this important word see Hearn's _Aryan Household_, 290.
[397] Otway, _Sketches in Erris_, 383-4.
[398] _Folklore Record_, iv. 98.
[399] _Ulster Journ. Arch._, ii. 161, 162. They have also another
primitive trait. Their trade emblems are carved on their tombstones.
_Roy. Irish Acad._, vii. 260.
[400] This I gather from _Ulster Journ. Arch._, ii. 164, where it is
stated that the hare is unpropitious.
[401] _Folklore Journal_, ii. 259.
[402] _Folklore Journal_, ii. 259; _Folklore Record_, iv. 104. Miss
Ffennell kindly informed me at the meeting of the Folklore Society
where I read a paper on the subject, that she had frequently heard the
islanders of Achill, off the coast of Ireland, state their belief that
they were descended from seals.
[403] Published by the _Irish Archaeological Society_, p. 27; there is a
Seal Island off the coast of Donegal (Joyce, _Irish Place-Names_, ii.
282); and some Shetland legends of the seal will be found in _Soc.
Antiq. Scot._, i. 86-89. Seals are eaten for food in the island of
Harris (see Martin, _Western Islands_, 36), and one called the Virgin
Mary's Seal is offered to the minister (Reeves, _Adamnan Vita.
Columb._, 78, note _g_). The attitude of the Irish to seals is shown by
the two following notes:--"At Erris, in Ireland, seals are considered
to be human beings under enchantment, and they consider it unlucky to
have anything to do with seals, and to have one live near their
dwelling is considered as productive of evil to life and property. A
story current, in 1841, describes how a young fisherman came in a fog
upon an island whereon lived these enchanted men in their human form,
but when they quitted it they turned to seals again" (Otway, _Sketches
of Erris_, 398, 403). Off Downpatrick Head they used to take seals, but
have given up the practice, because once two young fellows had urged
their curraghs into a cave where the seals were known to breed, and
they were killing them right and left when, in the farthest end of the
cave and sitting up on its bent tail in a corner, there sat an old
seal. One of the boys was just making ready to strike him, when the
seal cried out, "Och, boys! och, ma bouchals, spare your old
grandfather, Darby O'Dowd." He then proceeded to tell the boys his
story. "It's true I was dead and dacently buried, but here I am for my
sins turned into a sale as other sinners are and will be, and if you
put an end to me and skin me maybe it's worser I'll be, and go into a
shark or a porpoise. Lave your ould forefather where he is, to live out
his time as a sale. Maybe for your own sakes you will ever hereafter
leave off following and parsecuting and murthering sales who may be
nearer to yourselves nor you think." The story is universally believed,
and on the strength of it the people have given up seal hunting (Otway,
_Sketches of Erris_, 230).
[404] _Kinship and Marriage in Arabia_, 188. _Cf._ Mr. Jacobs' articles
in _Archaeological Review_, "Are there totem clans in the Old
Testament?" vol. iii. pp. 145-164.
[405] _Origins of English History_, 297.
[406] _Proc. Roy. Irish Acad._, x. 436; Lang's _Custom and Myth_, 265;
Elton's _Origins of English History_, 299-300; _Revue Celtique_, i. 50;
iii. 176.
[407] _Rev. Celtique_, vi. 232.
[408] Aubrey's _Remaines of Gentilisme_, 102.
[409] _Folklore Record_, i. 243.
[410] Xiphilinus in _Mon. Hist. Brit._, p. lvii.
[411] _Choice Notes, Folklore_, p. 16.
[412] _Vulgar Errors_, p. 320.
[413] Aubrey, _Gentilisme and Judaisme_, 109; Napier, _Folklore of West
of Scotland_, 26. Consult Mr. Billson's valuable paper on "The Easter
Hare" in _Folklore_, iii. 441-466.
[414] Gregor, _Folklore of North-East Scotland_, 129, 199.
[415] O'Curry, _Manners of the Anc. Irish_, i. p. ccclxx.
[416] _Notes and Queries_, 3rd ser. iv. 82, 158; Dyer's _Popular
Customs_, 384.
[417] Gordon Cumming, _Hebrides_, 369.
[418] Gordon Cumming, _Hebrides_, 369.
[419] _Gentleman's Magazine Library, Pop. Sup._, 216.
[420] It will be useful to refer to Mr. Thrupp's paper on "British
Superstition as to Hares, Geese, and Poultry" in _Trans. Ethnological
Society of London_, new ser. vol. v. pp. 162-167.
[421] _Origins of English History_, 170.
[422] Gordon Cumming, _Hebrides_, 365.
[423] Dalyell's _Darker Superstitions of Scotland_, 431. It should be
noted that Dalyell wrote before the age of scientific folklore, and
therefore his observations are founded more upon conjectures derived
from the practices and beliefs themselves than from any theory as to
origins.
[424] White horse, p. 208; black cat, p. 211, note 3; two magpies, p.
224; crickets, p. 238; hawthorn, p. 244.
[425] _Fortnightly Review_, xii. 562.
[426] It is just possible that the value of investigating Australian
totemism may prove to have a still more direct bearing upon British
folklore, for Huxley's opinion as to the Australoid race is not
entirely to be neglected. He argued that "The Australoid race are dark
complexion, ranging through various shades of light and dark chocolate
colour; dark or black eyes; the hair of the scalp black and soft, silky
and wavy; the skull dolichocephalic. The great continent of Australia
is the headquarters of the Australoid race.... The Dekkan, which is so
remarkably isolated on the north by the valleys of the Ganges and
Indus, beyond these by the Himalaya Mountains, and on the east and west
by the sea, was originally inhabited, and is still largely peopled by
men who completely come under the definition of the Australoid race
given above. In Abyssinia and Egypt there is a smooth-haired,
dark-complexioned, long-headed stock which I am strongly inclined to
regard as a westward extension of the Australoid race. I would venture
to suggest that the dark whites who stretch from Northern Hindostan
through Western Asia, skirt both shores of the Mediterranean, and
extend through Western Europe to Ireland, may have had their origin in
a prolongation of the Australoid race, which has become modified by
selection or intermixture" (Huxley in _Prehistoric Congress, 1868_, pp.
92-94). This point of view is confirmed by Mr. Mathew's conclusions,
_Eaglehawk and Crow_, cap. iii.