The customs and beliefs, the superstitious practices and supernatural
beings, of modern European folk-lore are sometimes explained as the wrecks
and remnants of the Pagan polytheism which preceded Christianity. And if
the Aryan peoples were from the very beginning polytheists; if the Hellenes
and the Hindoos, the Teutons and the Scandinavians, brought their myths and
their cults with them from the original Aryan home, then this explanation
seems more reasonable than that which proceeds on a mere conjecture, a pure
assumption that the Aryan religion was animistic ere it was polytheistic;
for then we are obliged to relegate Aryan animism almost to the æon "of
chaos and eternal night,"—at any rate, to an abysm of time which is such
that neither linguistic palæontology nor any other science has dared
"to venture down
The dark descent and up to reascend."
But if the proposition submitted in the previous sections be sound, if in
early but still historic times Italian religion was still in a stage
anterior to polytheism, then Aryan animism is no longer a mere assumption,
and need no longer be thrust back into pro-ethnic times. Early Italian
customs and beliefs will not be the _débris_ of a previous polytheism, and
it will therefore be unreasonable to explain their counterparts in modern
folk-lore as mutilated myths or as the cult of gods degraded but worshipped
still.
Plutarch, in the fifth of his _Romane Questions_ (p. 8 below), propounds an
interesting problem: _Why are they who have beene falsly reported dead in a
strange countrey, although they returne home alive, not received nor
suffred to enter directly at the dores, but forced to climbe up to the
tiles of the house, and so to get down from the roufe into the house?_ This
remarkable custom continued to be practised long after its origin and
object had been forgotten; for Plutarch relates a tale which is obviously a
popular explanation, invented to account for a practice the _rationale_ of
which had become unintelligible.[30] Hard, however, as Plutarch's question
appears at first sight, it may by the aid of modern folk-lore and savage
custom be explained. We have to note, in the first place, that the mode of
entry prescribed for the returned traveller is not spontaneously adopted by
him; and presumably, therefore, is not prescribed in his interest: it is
enforced by his relatives, and probably for their own protection. In the
next place, though the traveller himself knows, of course, that he has not
returned from that bourne from which no traveller returns, his relatives
have no such assurance: it may be, indeed, that he did not die whilst away,
as they were informed or led to believe; but, on the other hand, he may be
"the ghost of their dear friend dead," seeking to obtain an entrance into
his old home. The reasonable course for them to pursue, therefore, is to
treat him as though he were a ghost: if he is no ghost, it will do him no
harm; if he is, they will have protected themselves.
Thus far our explanation is hypothetical: to verify the hypothesis it is
necessary to show that the dead are or were as a matter of fact treated as
the Roman custom prescribes that the _soi disant_ living man shall be
treated. That the spirits of the dead are considered unwelcome visitors
both in modern folk-lore and by savage man, has been insisted on most
recently by Mr. G. L. Gomme.[31] I will, therefore, only add one or two
instances of the precautions taken to prevent the return of the deceased to
his home.[32] The first thing is to get the soul out of the house; this may
be effected by sweeping out the house and by flapping dusters about, care
being taken to shake and turn upside down all vessels, meal-boxes, &c., in
which the soul might take refuge. Then the coffin must be carried foot
foremost through the door; for if the corpse's face be turned to the house,
the ghost can return. In Siam they run the corpse three times round the
house, apparently on the same principle as, in the game of blind-man's
buff, the blind-man is spun round in order to make him lose his bearings.
In Bohemia they turn the coffin about cross-wise, outside the house-door,
to prevent the dead man from coming back.
More pertinent for our present purpose are the precautions taken to prevent
the dead from obtaining access to the house through the door. The safest
course is to carry the corpse out, not through the door, for that gives the
dead man the right of way which it is sought to bar, but through some
opening which is specially made for the purpose and can be permanently
closed. Thus the Hottentots make a breach through the wall for the purpose.
The ancient Norsemen did the same.[33] The Teutons, in pre-Christian times,
dug a hole under the threshold and pulled the corpse through with a rope.
In Christian times they only treated the bodies of criminals and suicides
in this way, though in the thirteenth century Brother Berthhold of
Regensburg recommended it in the case of heretics and usurers.
When circumstances make it difficult or impossible to construct a special
exit of this kind for the corpse, then some other means is found to avoid
carrying the corpse through the door. The Eskimo take the body through a
window; and a window was in 1858 used in Sonneberg in the case of a hanged
man; while even now in East Prussia, if several children have died one
after another, the corpse of the next to die is conveyed through the
window.
Eventually it comes to be considered sufficient if a special means of
egress is provided, not for the corpse, which is not likely to "walk," but
for the spirit, which may want to return. Thus in China, at the moment of
death, a small hole is made through the roof; while the custom of opening
the window, to allow the soul of the dying man to depart, is universal in
Germany and not unknown in England.
Finally, all that is considered necessary to bar the right of way to the
dead man's spirit is to close the house-door immediately after the
departure of the corpse, and keep it closed until the return of the funeral
party.
If the explanation which has now been given of Plutarch's fifth question be
correct, we must ascribe to the early Italians beliefs and customs similar
to or identical with those quoted above from modern folk-lore; and it will
not be illegitimate to seek further parallels to Italian religion from the
same source. Thus, in _Romane Questions_, 51, Plutarch inquires why the
Lares Præstites are represented as clad in dog-skins and as having a dog by
their side.[34] Now, it is universally admitted that the Lar Familiaris of
the Romans is the same as the house-spirit of the Teutons, and that both
are the spirits of a deceased ancestor, the founder of the family and its
spirit guardian. In the absence of any presumption to the contrary, we may
conclude that the Lares Præstites were also spirits of deceased ancestors.
The dog which accompanies the Lares was explained by the ancients as a
symbolic representation of the fidelity and watch-dog functions of the
Lares.[35] So, too, the priests of ancient Egypt said that the animal forms
in which their gods were represented were merely symbolical.[36] But it may
safely be laid down as a law in the evolution of religion that
beast-worship is primitive, and that the theory of symbolism is but a _via
media_ whereby more elevated conceptions of deity are reconciled with the
older and more savage worship. Analogy, then, is all in favour of the
supposition that the Lares Præstites were originally conceived not in human
shape, but in the form of dogs. What we require to confirm the analogy is
evidence that the dead—if possible, evidence that guardian
spirits—sometimes appear in the shape of a dog. As a matter of fact, the
belief that a dead man's spirit may manifest itself in the likeness of a
black dog still survives in Germany.[37] As for the guardian spirit, I
would suggest that the Mauthe dog of Peel Castle is a house-spirit; for as
the hearth was the peculiar seat of the Lar Familiaris and of the Hûsing or
Herdgota, and as the English house-spirit
"Stretch'd out all the chimney's length
Basks at the fire;"
so the Mauthe dog, "as soon as candles were lighted, came and lay down
before the fire."[38] From this point of view we may consider that the
black dog, which in modern folk-lore comes and lies down or howls before a
house, in token that one of the inmates is about to die, was originally a
spirit summoning the inmate to join the dead. This belief, it may further
be conjectured, has been incorporated into Hindoo mythology, where a dog
acts as the messenger of the death-god, Yama; and probably the Greek dog,
Cerberus, was taken up into the literary mythology of Hellas from the same
folk-belief.
Finally, we may here notice the fifty-second of Plutarch's Questions,
wherein he wonders why a dog was sacrificed to Genita Mana, and a prayer
made to her that none born in the house should become Manes. Genita Mana
was, as her name plainly indicates, a spirit of birth and of death; and the
prayer was such as might properly be offered to her. The sacrifice may be
explained on the principle laid down by Professor Robertson Smith,[39] that
an animal sacrificed to a deity was itself originally the deity. That one
and the same spirit should have to do with "the child from the womb and the
ghost from the tomb," points to the existence of a belief among the Romans
similar to one held by the Algonkins. "Algonkin women who wished to become
mothers flocked to the side of a dying person, in the hope of receiving and
being impregnated by the passing soul."[40]
Let us now turn to another point in which early Italian beliefs and modern
folk-lore mutually illustrate each other. On the origin of fairies various
theories have been held, and without denying that fairies are sometimes the
representatives of earlier gods, sometimes of still earlier satyrs, fauns,
nymphs, and wild men of the wood, we may recognise that they are sometimes
spirits of the departed. In the first place, as the Italians called the
dead "the good," _manes_, so in England and in Ireland fairies are "the
good people."[41] Next, fairies are small; and the savage conceives the
soul of man as a smaller man. It is, according to Hurons, "a complete
little model of the man himself," like the man, but smaller, of course,
because, as the Australian blacks explain, it is within the man's
breast.[42] According to Kaffir ideas, the world of _manes_ is exactly like
that of the living, only much smaller, and the dead are themselves but
mannikins.[43] Again, the Teutonic house-spirit on the one hand is
admittedly a deceased ancestor, and on the other is an indubitable fairy.
Further, fairies are sometimes explicitly stated in folk-tales to be
deceased spirits.[44]
Now, one of most marked differences between the Greek and the Roman modes
of worship was that the Greeks worshipped with their heads uncovered, the
Romans with heads covered, _velato capite_. Roman antiquaries explained the
practice as due to fear lest the worshipper should see anything of evil
omen during his prayer. But I submit that we must connect it with the
folk-belief that fairies resent being seen by mortals. "They are fairies;
he that speaks to them shall die." If fairies were originally departed
souls, the fear and the danger of seeing them is at once explained. On the
other hand, the Roman custom of worshipping _velato capite_ dates from a
time before the introduction of polytheism, and must therefore have been
attached originally to the worship of some beings other than gods. It is at
least plausible, therefore, to conjecture that it was a precaution adopted
in the worship of deceased ancestors and of spirits, which, like Genita
Mana, are best explained as spirits of the departed. The conjecture is
somewhat confirmed by the fact that the Romans veiled their heads at the
funeral of father or mother (_R. Q._ 14).