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CUSTOM AND MYTH
BY
ANDREW LANG, M.A.
HON. FELLOW OF MERTON COLLEGE
OXFORD
_NEW EDITION_
LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
1893
_All rights reserved_
TO
E. B. TYLOR
AUTHOR OF 'PRIMITIVE CULTURE'
THESE STUDIES OF THE OLDEST STORIES
Are Dedicated
PREFACE.
Since the first publication of _Custom and Myth_, many other works
have appeared, dealing on the same principles with matters of belief,
fable and ritual. Were the book to be re-written, numerous fresh
pieces of evidence might be adduced in support of its conclusions. In
Mr. Frazer's _Golden Bough_ (Macmillan) the student will find a
carefully conceived argument, and a large collection of testimonies,
bearing on the wide diffusion, among savages and civilised peoples, of
ancient rites and ancient ideas. The works of Mannhardt have
practically been introduced to the English reader by Mr. Frazer, with
much new matter of his own. The main topics are the worship of human
gods and the superstitions connected with vegetation. To push a theory
too far is the common temptation of mythologists, and perhaps Mr.
Frazer's cornstalk does rather threaten to overshadow the whole earth
and exclude the light of sun and sky. But the reader, whatever his
opinions, will find great pleasure and profit in Mr. Frazer's
remarkable studies, and in those of Mannhardt, which were unknown to
myself when I wrote _Custom and Myth_.
In Miss Harrison's volume on Athenian Myths the student will find the
aetiological theory (namely, that many myths were invented to explain
obscure points of ritual) applied in a number of classical instances.
A singularly ingenious study of Roman myths is presented in Mr.
Jevons's edition of Plutarch's _Romaine Questions_ (Nutt). These are
recent instances of the use of the 'anthropological' method, first
firmly established by Mr. Tylor's _Primitive Culture_, and now holding
its own as a recognised instrument in the study of the historical
development of the imagination. In Rosscher's _Ausfuehrliches Lexikon_
of Greek and Roman mythology, the earlier method of the philologists
is usually adopted, and the work, still in course of publication, is
most useful for its recondite learning.
These notes are meant for the guidance of any reader who may care to
push his studies further than the sketches of the present volume.
On one or two points some remarks may be necessary. The author has
been not unnaturally accused of seeing Totems everywhere. He would
therefore protest that he does not regard every beast and bird which
appears in myths or in religious art as necessarily a Totem. But he
inclines to think that where Celts or Greeks claim descent from a god
who pursued his amours in animal shape, or where a tribe bears the
name of an animal, regards that animal with religious respect, and
places its effigy beside that of a god, the Totemistic hypothesis
colligates the phenomena, and deserves consideration. These and other
early features of religion occur mainly in Greece after the Homeric
age. It has been suggested, for example, by Mr. Walter Leaf, that
Homer's people, the Achaeans, were free from all such ideas as
Totemism, worship of the dead, ritual of purification for homicide,
the mysteries, and so forth. These were notions held by the Pelasgi,
and revived or retained by the Ionians, an older and distinct stock of
Pelasgian origin. I am unable to convince myself in this matter, not
knowing how much of the refinement in the Homeric poems is due to the
genius of the poet, who might ignore practices with which he was
familiar. They may have been Pelasgo-Ionians, who derived Helen's
birth from the Swan, or Homer may have chosen to slur over an Achaean
legend, and so on in other cases; for example, as to the descent of
the Myrmidons from Zeus in the shape of an Ant. On another point a
word may be said. One has been accused of believing that identical
popular tales, the same incident in the same sequence of plot, might
arise simultaneously in savage imaginations in all parts of the world.
In _Custom and Myth_ it will be plain that I say nothing of the sort.
'The Far-Travelled Tale' is one instance chosen to show that such a
story must probably have drifted, somehow, round the world. On the
other hand, in 'Cupid and Psyche,' it is asserted that _the central
incident_ might be invented wherever the nuptial taboo on which it is
based was recognised. The exact sequence of incidents in the 'Cupid
and Psyche' of Apuleius, on the other hand, could probably only be
invented once for all. But we find the central incident where we do
not find the sequence of incidents which make up 'Cupid and Psyche.' A
full statement of my ideas is prefixed to Miss Roalfe Cox's
_Cinderella_ (Folklore Society). As a rule, the incidents in _Maerchen_
are common to all races; an artistic combination of many of these in a
plot must probably be due to a single imagination, and the plot must
have been diffused in the ways described in _Custom and Myth_.
Independently evolved myths may closely resemble each other when they
account for some natural phenomenon, or are based on some common
custom. Wherever a sequence of such incidents is found in a distinct
and artistic plot, we may provisionally assign diffusion from an
original centre as that cause. Singular as are the coincidences of
fancy, it is unlikely that they ever produced _exactly_ the same tale
in lands which have never been in communication with each other. I am
unable to conjecture why Mr. Jacobs, M. Cosquin, and probably other
critics, regard me as maintaining that all similar tales in all
countries have been independently evolved. I have always allowed for
the possibility both of diffusion and, to a certain extent, of
coincidence, as in the Red Indian forms of 'Cupid and Psyche' and of
'The Dead Bride,' a shape of the story of Eurydice. Discussion would
be simpler, if controversialists took the trouble to understand each
other.
In the Report of the Folklore Congress of 1891 (p. 65) I find that I
said 'the suggestion that exactly the same plot, in exactly the same
shape, and with exactly the same incidents, can have been invented by
several persons independently, seems to me inconceivable,' and on p.
74 I find M. Cosquin alleging that my opinion is the very reverse,
followed by Mr. Jacobs (p. 85). I have tried to explain that I believe
in no such exact coincidences of imagination, though how far precisely
coincidence may go is a delicate question.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 1
THE METHOD OF FOLKLORE 10
THE BULL-ROARER 29
THE MYTH OF CRONUS 45
CUPID, PSYCHE, AND THE 'SUN-FROG' 64
A FAR-TRAVELLED TALE 87
APOLLO AND THE MOUSE 103
STAR MYTHS 121
MOLY AND MANDRAGORA 143
THE 'KALEVALA' 156
THE DIVINING ROD 180
HOTTENTOT MYTHOLOGY 197
FETICHISM AND THE INFINITE 212
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE FAMILY 245
THE ART OF SAVAGES 276
INDEX 305
CUSTOM AND MYTH.
_INTRODUCTION._
Though some of the essays in this volume have appeared in various
serials, the majority of them were written expressly for their present
purpose, and they are now arranged in a designed order. During some
years of study of Greek, Indian, and savage mythologies, I have become
more and more impressed with a sense of the inadequacy of the
prevalent method of comparative mythology. That method is based on the
belief that myths are the result of a disease of language, as the
pearl is the result of a disease of the oyster. It is argued that men
at some period, or periods, spoke in a singular style of coloured and
concrete language, and that their children retained the phrases of
this language after losing hold of the original meaning. The
consequence was the growth of myths about supposed persons, whose
names had originally been mere 'appellations.' In conformity with this
hypothesis the method of comparative mythology examines the proper
names which occur in myths. The notion is that these names contain a
key to the meaning of the story, and that, in fact, of the story the
names are the germs and the oldest surviving part.
The objections to this method are so numerous that it is difficult to
state them briefly. The attempt, however, must be made. To desert the
path opened by the most eminent scholars is in itself presumptuous;
the least that an innovator can do is to give his reasons for
advancing in a novel direction. If this were a question of scholarship
merely, it would be simply foolhardy to differ from men like Max
Mueller, Adalbert Kuhn, Breal, and many others. But a revolutionary
mythologist is encouraged by finding that these scholars frequently
differ from each other. Examples will be found chiefly in the essays
styled 'The Myth of Cronus,' 'A Far-Travelled Tale,' and 'Cupid and
Psyche.' Why, then, do distinguished scholars and mythologists reach
such different goals? Clearly because their method is so precarious.
They all analyse the names in myths;[1] but, where one scholar decides
that the name is originally Sanskrit, another holds that it is purely
Greek, and a third, perhaps, is all for an Accadian etymology, or a
Semitic derivation. Again, even when scholars agree as to the original
root from which a name springs, they differ as much as ever as to the
meaning of the name in its present place. The inference is that the
analysis of names, on which the whole edifice of philological
'comparative mythology' rests, is a foundation of shifting sand. The
method is called 'orthodox,' but, among those who practise it, there
is none of the beautiful unanimity of orthodoxy.
These objections are not made by the unscholarly anthropologist alone.
Curtius has especially remarked the difficulties which beset the
'etymological operations' in the case of proper names. 'Peculiarly
dubious and perilous is mythological etymology. Are we to look for the
sources of the divine names in aspects of nature, or in moral
conceptions; in special Greek geographical conditions, or in natural
circumstances which are everywhere the same: in dawn with her rays, or
in clouds with their floods; are we to seek the origin of the names of
heroes in things historical and human, or in physical phenomena?'[2]
Professor Tiele, of Leyden, says much the same thing: 'The
uncertainties are great, and there is a constant risk of taking mere
_jeux d'esprit_ for scientific results.'[3] Every name has, if we can
discover or conjecture it, a meaning. That meaning--be it 'large' or
'small,' 'loud' or 'bright,' 'wise' or 'dark,' 'swift' or 'slow'--is
always capable of being explained as an epithet of the sun, or the
cloud, or of both. Whatever, then, a name may signify, some scholars
will find that it originally denoted the cloud, if they belong to one
school, or the sun or dawn, if they belong to another faction.
Obviously this process is a mere _jeu d'esprit_. This logic would be
admitted in no other science, and, by similar arguments, any name
whatever might be shown to be appropriate to a solar hero.
The scholarly method has now been applied for many years, and what are
the results? The ideas attained by the method have been so popularised
that they are actually made to enter into the education of children,
and are published in primers and catechisms of mythology. But what has
a discreet scholar to say to the whole business? 'The difficult task
of interpreting mythical names has, so far, produced few certain
results'--so writes Otto Schrader.[4] Though Schrader still has hopes
of better things, it is admitted that the present results are highly
disputable. In England, where one set of these results has become an
article of faith, readers chiefly accept the opinions of a single
etymological school, and thus escape the difficulty of making up their
minds when scholars differ. But differ scholars do, so widely and so
often, that scarcely any solid advantages have been gained in
mythology from the philological method.
The method of philological mythology is thus discredited by the
disputes of its adherents. The system may be called orthodox, but it
is an orthodoxy which alters with every new scholar who enters the
sacred enclosure. Even were there more harmony, the analysis of names
could throw little light on myths. In stories the names may well be,
and often demonstrably are, the latest, not the original, feature.
Tales, at first told of 'Somebody,' get new names attached to them,
and obtain a new local habitation, wherever they wander. 'One of the
leading personages to be met in the traditions of the world is really
no more than--Somebody. There is nothing this wondrous creature cannot
achieve; one only restriction binds him at all--that the name he
assumes shall have some sort of congruity with the office he
undertakes, _and even from this he oftentimes breaks loose_.'[5] We
may be pretty sure that the adventures of Jason, Perseus, Oedipous,
were originally told only of 'Somebody.' The names are later
additions, and vary in various lands. A glance at the essay on 'Cupid
and Psyche' will show that a history like theirs is known, where
neither they nor their counterparts in the Veda, Urvasi and Pururavas
were ever heard of; while the incidents of the Jason legend are
familiar where no Greek word was ever spoken. Finally, the names in
common use among savages are usually derived from natural phenomena,
often from clouds, sky, sun, dawn. If, then, a name in a myth can be
proved to mean cloud, sky, sun, or what not (and usually one set of
scholars find clouds where others see the dawn), we must not instantly
infer that the myth is a nature-myth. Though, doubtless, the heroes in
it were never real people, the names are as much common names of real
people in the savage state, as Smith and Brown are names of civilised
men.
For all these reasons, but chiefly because of the fact that stories
are usually anonymous at first, that names are added later, and that
stories naturally crystallise round any famous name, heroic, divine,
or human, the process of analysis of names is most precarious and
untrustworthy. A story is told of Zeus: Zeus means sky, and the story
is interpreted by scholars as a sky myth. The modern interpreter
forgets, first, that to the myth-maker sky did not at all mean the
same thing as it means to him. Sky meant, not an airy, infinite,
radiant vault, but a person, and, most likely, a savage person.
Secondly, the interpreter forgets that the tale (say the tale of Zeus,
Demeter, and the mutilated Ram) may have been originally anonymous,
and only later attributed to Zeus, as unclaimed jests are attributed
to Sheridan or Talleyrand. Consequently no heavenly phenomena will be
the basis and explanation of the story. If one thing in mythology be
certain, it is that myths are always changing masters, that the old
tales are always being told with new names. Where, for example, is the
value of a philological analysis of the name of Jason? As will be seen
in the essay 'A Far-Travelled Tale,' the analysis of the name of Jason
is fanciful, precarious, disputed, while the essence of his myth is
current in Samoa, Finland, North America, Madagascar, and other lands,
where the name was never heard, and where the characters in the story
have other names or are anonymous.
For these reasons, and others too many to be adduced here, I have
ventured to differ from the current opinion that myths must be
interpreted chiefly by philological analysis of names. The system
adopted here is explained in the first essay, called 'The Method of
Folklore.' The name, Folklore, is not a good one, but 'comparative
mythology' is usually claimed exclusively by the philological
interpreters.
The second essay, 'The Bull-Roarer,' is intended to show that certain
peculiarities in the Greek mysteries occur also in the mysteries of
savages, and that on Greek soil they are survivals of savagery.
'The Myth of Cronus' tries to prove that the first part of the legend
is a savage nature-myth, surviving in Greek religion, while the sequel
is a set of ideas common to savages.
'Cupid and Psyche' traces another Aryan myth among savage races, and
attempts to show that the central incident of the tale may have had
its origin in a rule of barbarous etiquette.
'A Far-Travelled Tale' examines a part of the Jason myth. This myth
appears neither to be an explanation of natural phenomena (like part
of 'The Myth of Cronus'), nor based on a widespread custom (like
'Cupid and Psyche'). The question is asked whether the story may have
been diffused by slow filtration from race to race all over the globe,
as there seems no reason why it should have been invented separately
(as a myth explanatory of natural phenomena or of customs might be) in
many different places.
'Apollo and the Mouse' suggests hypothetically, as a possible
explanation of the tie between the God and the Beast, that
Apollo-worship superseded, but did not eradicate, Totemism. The
suggestion is little more than a conjecture.
'Star Myths' points out that Greek myths of stars are a survival from
the savage stage of fancy in which such stories are natural.
'Moly and Mandragora' is a study of the Greek, the modern, and the
Hottentot folklore of magical herbs, with a criticism of a scholarly
and philological hypothesis, according to which Moly is the dog-star
and Circe the moon.
'The Kalevala' is an account of the Finnish national poem; of all
poems that in which the popular, as opposed to the artistic, spirit is
strongest. The Kalevala is thus a link between _Maerchen_ and
_Volkslieder_ on one side, and epic poetry on the other.
'The Divining Rod' is a study of a European and civilised
superstition, which is singular in its comparative lack of copious
savage analogues.
'Hottentot Mythology' is a criticism of the philological method,
applied to savage myth.
'Fetichism and the Infinite' is a review of Mr. Max Mueller's theory
that a sense of the Infinite is the germ of religion, and that
Fetichism is secondary, and a corruption. This essay also contains a
defence of the _evidence_ on which the anthropological method relies.
The remaining essays are studies of the 'History of the Family,' and
of 'Savage Art.'
The essay on 'Savage Art' is reprinted, by the kind permission of
Messrs. Cassell & Co., from two numbers (April and May, 1882) of the
_Magazine of Art_. I have to thank the editors and publishers of the
_Contemporary Review_, the _Cornhill Magazine_, _Fraser's Magazine_,
and _Mind_, for leave to republish 'The Early History of the Family,'
'The Divining Rod,' and 'Star Myths,' 'The Kalevala,' and 'Fetichism.'
A few sentences in 'The Bull-Roarer,' and 'Hottentot Mythology,'
appeared in essays in the _Saturday Review_, and some lines of 'The
Method of Folklore' in the _Guardian_. To the editors of those
journals also I owe thanks for their courteous permission to make this
use of my old articles.
I must apologise for the controversial matter in the volume.
Controversy is always a thing to be avoided, but, in this particular
case, when a system opposed to the prevalent method has to be
advocated, controversy is unavoidable. My respect for the learning of
my distinguished adversaries is none the less great because I am not
convinced by their logic, and because my doubts are excited by their
differences.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Some of the names in Greek myths are Greek, and intelligible. A
few others (such as Zeus) can be interpreted by aid of Sanskrit. But
even when the meaning of the name is known, we are little advanced in
interpretation of the myth.
[2] Compare De Cara: _Essame Critico_.
[3] _Revue de l'Hist. des Rel._, ii. 136.
[4] _Sprachvergleichung und Urgeschichte_, p. 431.
[5] _Prim. Cult._, i. 394.
_THE METHOD OF FOLKLORE._
After the heavy rain of a thunderstorm has washed the soil, it
sometimes happens that a child, or a rustic, finds a wedge-shaped
piece of metal or a few triangular flints in a field or near a road.
There was no such piece of metal, there were no such flints, lying
there yesterday, and the finder is puzzled about the origin of the
objects on which he has lighted. He carries them home, and the village
wisdom determines that the wedge-shaped piece of metal is a
'thunder-bolt,' or that the bits of flint are 'elf-shots,' the heads
of fairy arrows. Such things are still treasured in remote nooks of
England, and the 'thunder-bolt' is applied to cure certain maladies by
its touch.
As for the fairy arrows, we know that even in ancient Etruria they
were looked on as magical, for we sometimes see their points set, as
amulets, in the gold of Etruscan necklaces. In Perugia the arrow-heads
are still sold as charms. All educated people, of course, have long
been aware that the metal wedge is a celt, or ancient bronze axe-head,
and that it was not fairies, but the forgotten peoples of this island,
who used the arrows with the tips of flint. Thunder is only so far
connected with them that the heavy rains loosen the surface soil, and
lay bare its long-hidden secrets.
There is a science, Archaeology, which collects and compares the
material relics of old races, the axes and arrow-heads. There is a
form of study, Folklore, which collects and compares the similar but
immaterial relics of old races, the surviving superstitions and
stories, the ideas which are in our time but not of it. Properly
speaking, folklore is only concerned with the legends, customs,
beliefs, of the Folk, of the people, of the classes which have least
been altered by education, which have shared least in progress. But
the student of folklore soon finds that these unprogressive classes
retain many of the beliefs and ways of savages, just as the Hebridean
people used spindle-whorls of stone, and bake clay pots without the
aid of the wheel, like modern South Sea Islanders, or like their own
prehistoric ancestors.[6] The student of folklore is thus led to
examine the usages, myths, and ideas of savages, which are still
retained, in rude enough shape, by the European peasantry. Lastly, he
observes that a few similar customs and ideas survive in the most
conservative elements of the life of educated peoples, in ritual,
ceremonial, and religious traditions and myths. Though such remains
are rare in England, we may note the custom of leading the dead
soldier's horse behind his master to the grave, a relic of days when
the horse would have been sacrificed.[7] We may observe the
persistence of the ceremony by which the monarch, at his coronation,
takes his seat on the sacred stone of Scone, probably an ancient
fetich stone. Not to speak, here, of our own religious traditions, the
old vein of savage rite and belief is found very near the surface of
ancient Greek religion. It wants but some stress of circumstance,
something answering to the storm shower that reveals the flint
arrow-heads, to bring savage ritual to the surface of classical
religion. In sore need, a human victim was only too likely to be
demanded; while a feast-day, or a mystery, set the Greeks dancing
serpent-dances or bear-dances like Red Indians, or swimming with
sacred pigs, or leaping about in imitation of wolves, or holding a
dog-feast, and offering dog's flesh to the gods.[8] Thus the student
of folklore soon finds that he must enlarge his field, and examine,
not only popular European story and practice, but savage ways and
ideas, and the myths and usages of the educated classes in civilised
races. In this extended sense the term 'folklore' will frequently be
used in the following essays. The idea of the writer is that mythology
cannot fruitfully be studied apart from folklore, while some knowledge
of anthropology is required in both sciences.
The science of Folklore, if we may call it a science, finds
everywhere, close to the surface of civilised life, the remains of
ideas as old as the stone elf-shots, older than the celt of bronze. In
proverbs and riddles, and nursery tales and superstitions, we detect
the relics of a stage of thought, which is dying out in Europe, but
which still exists in many parts of the world. Now, just as the flint
arrow-heads are scattered everywhere, in all the continents and isles,
and everywhere are much alike, and bear no very definite marks of the
special influence of race, so it is with the habits and legends
investigated by the student of folklore. The stone arrow-head buried
in a Scottish cairn is like those which were interred with Algonquin
chiefs. The flints found in Egyptian soil, or beside the tumulus on
the plain of Marathon, nearly resemble the stones which tip the reed
arrow of the modern Samoyed. Perhaps only a skilled experience could
discern, in a heap of such arrow-heads, the specimens which are found
in America or Africa from those which are unearthed in Europe. Even in
the products of more advanced industry, we see early pottery, for
example, so closely alike everywhere that, in the British Museum,
Mexican vases have, ere now, been mixed up on the same shelf with
archaic vessels from Greece. In the same way, if a superstition or a
riddle were offered to a student of folklore, he would have much
difficulty in guessing its _provenance_, and naming the race from
which it was brought. Suppose you tell a folklorist that, in a certain
country, when any one sneezes, people say 'Good luck to you,' the
student cannot say _a priori_ what country you refer to, what race you
have in your thoughts. It may be Florida, as Florida was when first
discovered; it may be Zululand, or West Africa, or ancient Rome, or
Homeric Greece, or Palestine. In all these, and many other regions,
the sneeze was welcomed as an auspicious omen. The little superstition
is as widely distributed as the flint arrow-heads. Just as the object
and use of the arrow-heads became intelligible when we found similar
weapons in actual use among savages, so the salutation to the sneezer
becomes intelligible when we learn that the savage has a good reason
for it. He thinks the sneeze expels an evil spirit. Proverbs, again,
and riddles are as universally scattered, and the Wolufs puzzle over
the same _devinettes_ as the Scotch schoolboy or the Breton peasant.
Thus, for instance, the Wolufs of Senegal ask each other, 'What flies
for ever, and rests never?'--Answer, 'The Wind.' 'Who are the comrades
that always fight, and never hurt each other?'--'The Teeth.' In
France, as we read in the 'Recueil de Calembours,' the people ask,
'What runs faster than a horse, crosses water, and is not
wet?'--Answer, 'The Sun.' The Samoans put the riddle, 'A man who
stands between two ravenous fishes?'--Answer, 'The tongue between the
teeth.' Again, 'There are twenty brothers, each with a hat on his
head?'--Answer, 'Fingers and toes, with nails for hats.' This is like
the French '_un pere a douze fils?_'--'_l'an_.'[9] A comparison of M.
Rolland's 'Devinettes' with the Woluf conundrums of Boilat, the Samoan
examples in Turner's 'Samoa,' and the Scotch enigmas collected by
Chambers, will show the identity of peasant and savage humour.
A few examples, less generally known, may be given to prove that the
beliefs of folklore are not peculiar to any one race or stock of men.
The first case is remarkable: it occurs in Mexico and Ceylon, and has
been found in other regions. In _Macmillan's Magazine_[10] is
published a paper by Mrs. Edwards, called 'The Mystery of the Pezazi.'
The events described in this narrative occurred on August 28, 1876, in
a bungalow some thirty miles from Badiella. The narrator occupied a
new house on an estate called Allagalla. Her native servants soon
asserted that the place was haunted by a Pezazi. The English visitors
saw and heard nothing extraordinary till a certain night: an abridged
account of what happened then may be given in the words of Mrs.
Edwards:--
Wrapped in dreams, I lay on the night in question tranquilly
sleeping, but gradually roused to a perception that
discordant sounds disturbed the serenity of my slumber. Loth
to stir, I still dosed on, the sounds, however, becoming, as
it seemed, more determined to make themselves heard! and I
awoke to the consciousness that they proceeded from a belt of
adjacent jungle, and resembled the noise that would be
produced by some person felling timber.
Shutting my ears to the disturbance, I made no sign, until,
with an expression of impatience, E---- suddenly started up,
when I laid a detaining grasp upon his arm, murmuring that
there was no need to think of rising at present--it must be
quite early, and the kitchen cooly was doubtless cutting
firewood in good time. E---- responded, in a tone of slight
contempt, that no one could be cutting firewood at that hour,
and the sounds were more suggestive of felling jungle; and he
then inquired how long I had been listening to them. Now
thoroughly aroused I replied that I had heard the sounds for
some time, at first confusing them with my dreams, but soon
sufficiently awakening to the fact that they were no mere
phantoms of my imagination, but a reality. During our
conversation the noises became more distinct and loud; blow
after blow resounded, as of the axe descending upon the tree,
followed by the crash of the falling timber. Renewed blows
announced the repetition of the operations on another tree,
and continued till several were devastated.
It is unnecessary to tell more of the tale. In spite of minute
examinations and close search, no solution of the mystery of the
noises, on this or any other occasion, was ever found. The natives, of
course, attributed the disturbance to the _Pezazi_ or goblin. No one
perhaps has asserted that the Aztecs were connected by ties of race
with the people of Ceylon. Yet when the Spaniards conquered Mexico,
and when Sahagun (one of the earliest missionaries) collected the
legends of the people, he found them, like the Cingalese, strong
believers in the mystic tree-felling. We translate Sahagun's account
of the 'midnight axe':--
When so any man heareth the sound of strokes in the night as
if one were felling trees, he reckons it an evil boding. And
this sound they call _youaltepuztli_ (_youalli_, night; and
_tepuztli_, copper), which signifies 'the midnight hatchet.'
This noise cometh about the time of the first sleep, when all
men slumber soundly, and the night is still. The sound of
strokes smitten was first noted by the temple-servants,
called _tlamacazque_, at the hour when they go in the night
to make their offering of reeds or of boughs of pine, for so
was their custom, and this penance they did on the
neighbouring hills, and that when the night was far spent.
Whenever they heard such a sound as one makes when he splits
wood with an axe (a noise that may be heard afar off), they
drew thence an omen of evil, and were afraid and said that
the sounds were part of the witchery of Tezcatlipoca, that
often thus dismayeth men who journey in the night. Now, when
tidings of these things came to a certain brave man, one
exercised in war, he drew near, being guided by the sound,
till he came to the very cause of the hubbub. And when he
came upon it, with difficulty he caught it, for the thing was
hard to catch; natheless at last he overtook that which ran
before him; and behold, it was a man without a heart, and, on
either side of the chest, two holes that opened and shut, and
so made the noise. Then the man put his hand within the
breast of the figure and grasped the breast and shook it
hard, demanding some grace or gift.
As a rule, the grace demanded was power to make captives in war. The
curious coincidence of the 'midnight axe,' occurring in lands so
remote as Ceylon and Mexico, and the singular attestation by an
English lady of the actual existence of the disturbance, makes this
_youaltepuztli_ one of the quaintest things in the province of the
folklorist. But, whatever the cause of the noise, or of the beliefs
connected with the noise, may be, no one would explain them as the
result of community of _race_ between Cingalese and Aztecs. Nor would
this explanation be offered to account for the Aztec and English
belief that the creaking of furniture is an omen of death in a house.
Obviously, these opinions are the expression of a common state of
superstitious fancy, not the signs of an original community of
origin.[11]
Let us take another piece of folklore. All North-country English folk
know the _Kernababy_. The custom of the 'Kernababy' is commonly
observed in England, or, at all events, in Scotland, where the writer
has seen many a kernababy. The last gleanings of the last field are
bound up in a rude imitation of the human shape, and dressed in some
tag-rags of finery. The usage has fallen into the conservative hands
of children, but of old 'the Maiden' was a regular image of the
harvest goddess, which, with a sickle and sheaves in her arms,
attended by a crowd of reapers, and accompanied with music, followed
the last carts home to the farm.[12] It is odd enough that 'the
Maiden' should exactly translate ~Kore~, the old Sicilian name of the
daughter of Demeter. 'The Maiden' has dwindled, then, among us to the
rudimentary kernababy; but ancient Peru had her own Maiden, her
Harvest Goddess. Here it is easy to trace the natural idea at the
basis of the superstitious practice which links the shores of the
Pacific with our own northern coast. Just as a portion of the yule-log
and of the Christmas bread were kept all the year through, a kind of
nest-egg of plenteous food and fire, so the kernababy, English or
Peruvian, is an earnest that corn will not fail all through the year,
till next harvest comes. For this reason the kernababy used to be
treasured from autumn's end to autumn's end, though now it commonly
disappears very soon after the harvest home. It is thus that Acosta
describes in Grimston's old translation (1604) the Peruvian kernababy
and the Peruvian harvest home:--
This feast is made comming from the chacra or farme unto the
house, saying certaine songs, and praying that the Mays
(maize) may long continue, the which they call _Mama cora_.
What a chance this word offers to etymologists of the old school: how
promptly they would recognise, in _mama_ mother--~meter~, and in
_cora_--~kore~, the Mother and the Maiden, the feast of Demeter and
Persephone! However, the days of that old school of antiquarianism are
numbered. To return to the Peruvian harvest home:--
They take a certaine portion of the most fruitefull of the
Mays that growes in their farmes, the which they put in a
certaine granary which they do calle Pirua, with certaine
ceremonies, watching three nightes; they put this Mays in the
richest garments they have, and, being thus wrapped and
dressed, they worship this Pirua, and hold it in great
veneration, saying it is the Mother of the Mays of their
inheritances, and that by this means the Mays augments and is
preserved. In this moneth they make a particular sacrifice,
and the witches demand of this Pirua, 'if it hath strength
sufficient to continue until the next yeare,' and if it
answers 'no,' then they carry this Mays to the farme to
burne, whence they brought it, according to every man's
power, then they make another Pirua, with the same
ceremonies, saying that they renue it, to the ende that the
seede of the Mays may not perish.
The idea that the maize can speak need not surprise us; the Mexican
held much the same belief, according to Sahagun:--
It was thought that if some grains of maize fell on the
ground he who saw them lying there was bound to lift them,
wherein, if he failed, he harmed the maize, which plained
itself of him to God, saying, 'Lord, punish this man, who saw
me fallen and raised me not again; punish him with famine,
that he may learn not to hold me in dishonour.'
Well, in all this affair of the Scotch kernababy, and the Peruvian
_Mama cora_, we need no explanation beyond the common simple ideas of
human nature. We are not obliged to hold, either that the Peruvians
and Scotch are akin by blood, nor that, at some forgotten time, they
met each other, and borrowed each other's superstitions.[13] Again,
when we find Odysseus sacrificing a black sheep to the dead,[14] and
when we read that the Ovahereroes in South Africa also appease with a
black sheep the spirits of the departed, we do not feel it necessary
to hint that the Ovahereroes are of Greek descent, or have borrowed
their ritual from the Greeks. The connection between the colour black,
and mourning for the dead, is natural and almost universal.
Examples like these might be adduced in any number. We might show how,
in magic, negroes of Barbadoes make clay effigies of their enemies,
and pierce them, just as Greeks did in Plato's time, or the men of
Accad in remotest antiquity. We might remark the Australian black
putting sharp bits of quartz in the tracks of an enemy who has gone
by, that the enemy may be lamed; and we might point to Boris Godunof
forbidding the same practice among the Russians. We might watch
Scotch, and Australians, and Jews, and French, and Aztecs spreading
dust round the body of a dead man, that the footprints of his ghost,
or of other ghosts, may be detected next morning. We might point to a
similar device in a modern novel, where the presence of a ghost is
suspected, as proof of the similar workings of the Australian mind and
of the mind of Mrs. Riddell. We shall later turn to ancient Greece,
and show how the serpent-dances, the habit of smearing the body with
clay, and other odd rites of the mysteries, were common to Hellenic
religion, and to the religion of African, Australian, and American
tribes.
Now, with regard to all these strange usages, what is the method of
folklore? The method is, when an apparently irrational and anomalous
custom is found in any country, to look for a country where a similar
practice is found, and where the practice is no longer irrational and
anomalous, but in harmony with the manners and ideas of the people
among whom it prevails. That Greeks should dance about in their
mysteries with harmless serpents in their hands looks quite
unintelligible. When a wild tribe of Red Indians does the same thing,
as a trial of courage, with real rattlesnakes, we understand the Red
Man's motives, and may conjecture that similar motives once existed
among the ancestors of the Greeks. Our method, then, is to compare the
seemingly meaningless customs or manners of civilised races with the
similar customs and manners which exist among the uncivilised and
still retain their meaning. It is not necessary for comparison of this
sort that the uncivilised and the civilised race should be of the same
stock, nor need we prove that they were ever in contact with each
other. Similar conditions of mind produce similar practices, apart
from identity of race, or borrowing of ideas and manners.
Let us return to the example of the flint arrow-heads. Everywhere
neolithic arrow-heads are pretty much alike. The cause of the
resemblance is no more than this, that men, with the same needs, the
same materials, and the same rude instruments, everywhere produced the
same kind of arrow-head. No hypothesis of interchange of ideas nor of
community of race is needed to explain the resemblance of form in the
missiles. Very early pottery in any region is, for the same causes,
like very early pottery in any other region. The same sort of
similarity was explained by the same resemblances in human nature,
when we touched on the identity of magical practices and of
superstitious beliefs. This method is fairly well established and
orthodox when we deal with usages and superstitious beliefs; but may
we apply the same method when we deal with myths?
Here a difficulty occurs. Mythologists, as a rule, are averse to the
method of folklore. They think it scientific to compare only the myths
of races which speak languages of the same family, and of races which
have, in historic times, been actually in proved contact with each
other. Thus, most mythologists hold it correct to compare Greek,
Slavonic, Celtic, and Indian stories, because Greeks, Slavs, Celts,
and Hindoos all speak languages of the same family. Again, they hold
it correct to compare Chaldaean and Greek myths, because the Greeks and
the Chaldaeans were brought into contact through the Phoenicians, and
by other intermediaries, such as the Hittites. But the same
mythologists will vow that it is unscientific to compare a Maori or a
Hottentot or an Eskimo myth with an Aryan story, because Maoris and
Eskimo and Hottentots do not speak languages akin to that of Greece,
nor can we show that the ancestors of Greeks, Maoris, Hottentots, and
Eskimo were ever in contact with each other in historical times.
Now the peculiarity of the method of folklore is that it will venture
to compare (with due caution and due examination of evidence) the
myths of the most widely severed races. Holding that myth is a product
of the early human fancy, working on the most rudimentary knowledge of
the outer world, the student of folklore thinks that differences of
race do not much affect the early mythopoeic faculty. He will not be
surprised if Greeks and Australian blacks are in the same tale.
In each case, he holds, all the circumstances of the case must be
examined and considered. For instance, when the Australians tell a
myth about the Pleiades very like the Greek myth of the Pleiades, we
must ask a number of questions. Is the Australian version authentic?
Can the people who told it have heard it from a European? If these
questions are answered so as to make it apparent that the Australian
Pleiad myth is of genuine native origin, we need not fly to the
conclusion that the Australians are a lost and forlorn branch of the
Aryan race. Two other hypotheses present themselves. First, the human
species is of unknown antiquity. In the moderate allowance of 250,000
years, there is time for stories to have wandered all round the
world, as the Aggry beads of Ashanti have probably crossed the
continent from Egypt, as the Asiatic jade (if Asiatic it be) has
arrived in Swiss lake-dwellings, as an African trade-cowry is said to
have been found in a Cornish barrow, as an Indian Ocean shell has been
discovered in a prehistoric bone-cave in Poland. This slow filtration
of tales is not absolutely out of the question. Two causes would
especially help to transmit myths. The first is slavery and
slave-stealing, the second is the habit of capturing brides from alien
stocks, and the law which forbids marriage with a woman of a man's own
family. Slaves and captured brides would bring their native legends
among alien peoples.
But there is another possible way of explaining the resemblance
(granting that it is proved) of the Greek and Australian Pleiad myth.
The object of both myths is to account for the grouping and other
phenomena of the constellations. May not similar explanatory stories
have occurred to the ancestors of the Australians, and to the
ancestors of the Greeks, however remote their home, while they were
still in the savage condition? The best way to investigate this point
is to collect all known savage and civilised stellar myths, and see
what points they have in common. If they all agree in character,
though the Greek tales are full of grace, while those of the
Australians or Brazilians are rude enough, we may plausibly account
for the similarity of myths, as we accounted for the similarity of
flint arrow-heads. The myths, like the arrow-heads, resemble each
other because they were originally framed to meet the same needs out
of the same material. In the case of the arrow-heads, the need was for
something hard, heavy, and sharp--the material was flint. In the case
of the myths, the need was to explain certain phenomena--the material
(so to speak) was an early state of the human mind, to which all
objects seemed equally endowed with human personality, and to which no
metamorphosis appeared impossible.
In the following essays, then, the myths and customs of various
peoples will be compared, even when these peoples talk languages of
alien families, and have never (so far as history shows us) been in
actual contact. Our method throughout will be to place the usage, or
myth, which is unintelligible when found among a civilised race,
beside the similar myth which is intelligible enough when it is found
among savages. A mean term will be found in the folklore preserved by
the non-progressive classes in a progressive people. This folklore
represents, in the midst of a civilised race, the savage ideas out of
which civilisation has been evolved. The conclusion will usually be
that the fact which puzzles us by its presence in civilisation is a
relic surviving from the time when the ancestors of a civilised race
were in the state of savagery. By this method it is not necessary that
'some sort of genealogy should be established' between the Australian
and the Greek narrators of a similar myth, nor between the Greek and
Australian possessors of a similar usage. The hypothesis will be that
the myth, or usage, is common to both races, not because of original
community of stock, not because of contact and borrowing, but because
the ancestors of the Greeks passed through the savage intellectual
condition in which we find the Australians.
The questions may be asked, Has race nothing, then, to do with myth?
Do peoples never consciously borrow myths from each other? The answer
is, that race has a great deal to do with the development of myth, if
it be race which confers on a people its national genius, and its
capacity of becoming civilised. If race does this, then race affects,
in the most powerful manner, the ultimate development of myth. No one
is likely to confound a Homeric myth with a myth from the Edda, nor
either with a myth from a Brahmana, though in all three cases the
substance, the original set of ideas, may be much the same. In all
three you have anthropomorphic gods, capable of assuming animal
shapes, tricky, capricious, limited in many undivine ways, yet endowed
with magical powers. So far the mythical gods of Homer, of the Edda,
of any of the Brahmanas, are on a level with each other, and not much
above the gods of savage mythology. This stuff of myth is _quod
semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus_, and is the original gift of the
savage intellect. But the final treatment, the ultimate literary form
of the myth, varies in each race. Homeric gods, like Red Indian,
Thlinkeet, or Australian gods, can assume the shapes of birds. But
when we read, in Homer, of the arming of Athene, the hunting of
Artemis, the vision of golden Aphrodite, the apparition of Hermes,
like a young man when the flower of youth is loveliest, then we
recognise the effect of race upon myth, the effect of the Greek genius
at work on rude material. Between the Olympians and a Thlinkeet god
there is all the difference that exists between the Demeter of Cnidos
and an image from Easter Island. Again, the Scandinavian gods, when
their tricks are laid aside, when Odin is neither assuming the shape
of worm nor of raven, have a martial dignity, a noble enduring spirit
of their own. Race comes out in that, as it does in the endless
sacrifices, soma drinking, magical austerities, and puerile follies of
Vedic and Brahmanic gods, the deities of a people fallen early into
its sacerdotage and priestly second childhood. Thus race declares
itself in the ultimate literary form and character of mythology, while
the common savage basis and stuff of myths may be clearly discerned in
the horned, and cannibal, and shape-shifting, and adulterous gods of
Greece, of India, of the North. They all show their common savage
origin, when the poet neglects Freya's command and tells of what the
gods did 'in the morning of Time.'