Chapter 16

[112]Origins of Pictish Symbolism, 1893.

[113]G. Stephens,Studies on Northern Mythology, 1883, p. 167.

[114]For a more detailed treatment the reader is referred to Dr. H. Colley March’s essay on “The Pagan-Christian Overlap in the North,”Trans. Lanc. and Cheshire Antiquarian Soc., ix., 1892.

[115]Garrick Mallery, “On the Pictographs of the North American Indians,”Fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1882-83 (1886). See alsoTenth Ann. Rep., 1888-89 (1893).

[116]Originally published by Dr. W. J. Hoffman,Trans. Anthrop. Soc., Washington, ii., 1883, p. 134.

[117]Garrick Mallery, “Sign Language among North American Indians,”First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1879-80 (1881).

[118]Mallery, “Sign Language,” etc., 1881, p. 389.

[119]J. Newton,Athenæum, No. 3385, September 10, 1892, p. 353; and for further details cf.Manx Note-Book, January 1886.

[120]Sir George Birdwood, Introduction to Count Goblet d’Alviella’sThe Migration of Symbols.

[121]Isaac Taylor,The Alphabet, an Account of the Origin and Development of Letters, 1883.

[122]Newspaper Report.

[123]H. Balfour,The Evolution of Decorative Art, 1893, p. 73.

[124]E. B. Taylor,Primitive Culture(2nd ed.), 1873, p. 463.

[125]Loc. cit., p. 464.

[126]A. C. Haddon, “The Ethnography of the Western Tribe of Torres Straits,”Jour. Anth. Inst., xix., 1890.

[127]Voyage of the “Rattlesnake,”1852.

[128]Annual Report of British New Guinea, C.A. 1, 1892. p. 66.

[129]Further Correspondence respecting New Guinea, 1890, C. 5883, p. 251.

[130]W. Ridgeway,The Origin of Metallic Currency and Weight Standards, 1892.

[131]Loc. cit., p. 23.

[132]Loc. cit., p. 22.

[133]Loc. cit., p. 45.

[134]Loc. cit., p. 40.

[135]J. Silvestre, “Notes pour servir à la recherche et au classement des monnaies et des médailles de Annam et de la Cochin-Chine Française,”Excursions et Reconnaissances, No. 15 (1883), p. 395.

[136]W. S. Ament, “The Ancient Coinage of China,”American Journ. Archæol., iv., 1888, p. 284, Pls. XII., XIII.

[137]H. C. Millies,Recherches sur les Monnaies des Indigènes de l’Archipel Indien et de la Péninsule Malaie, 1871.

[138]W. Ridgeway,The Origin of Metallic Currency and Weight Standards, 1892, p. 27.

[139]“Ten double-headed axes he set and ten single,” in the translation by E. Meyers.The Iliad of Homer, xxiii. 850 (Macmillan & Co.), 1883.

[140]Prof. D’Arcy W. Thompson, jun., has published a paper (“On Bird and Beast in Ancient Symbolism,”Trans. Roy. Soc. Edinb., xxxviii. pt.i., 1895, p. 179), in which he combats Prof. Ridgeway’s theory, as being foreign to all we know of ancient symbolism. “We must see fallacy in any theory which treats as nascent and primitive the civilisation of a period of exalted poetry, the offspring of ages of antecedent culture; which sees but a small advance on recent barbarism in ways of life simple in some respects, but rich in developed art and stored with refined tradition; that looks only for the ways and habits and thoughts of primitive man in races supported by a background of philosophical and scientific culture of an unfathomed, and may be unfathomable, antiquity. Behind early Hellenic civilisation was all the wisdom of Egypt and the East, and the first Greeks of whom we have knowledge looked upon the old Heaven and the old Earth not with the half-open, wondering eyes of wakening intelligence, but with perceptions trained in an ancient inheritance of accumulated learning. “I print this extract, as I consider that D’Arcy Thompson’s reminder is needed in the present search after origins. With regard to the point at issue, it appears to me that both may be right. Some of the representations on Greek coins may have the significance which Ridgeway ascribes to them, while others may bear the interpretation given by D’Arcy Thompson, whose theory I shall refer to later.

[141]J. G. Frazer,The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion, 1890, p. 9.

[142]“Die Zaubermuster der Orang Sĕmang,”Zeitschr. für Ethnologie, xxv., 1893, p. 71; “Die Zaubermuster der Orang hûtan,”loc. cit., xxvi., 1894, p. 141.

[143]Probably a mud-tortoise.

[144]The Architectural Record, iii., 1893, p. 139.

[145]Page 145.

[146]H. Colley March, “Magic Knots,”Trans. Rochdale Lit. and Sci. Soc.

[147]Cf. for example,Folk-lore, vi., 1895, pp. 154, 160;Proc. Roy. Irish Acad.(3), ii., 1893, p. 818.

[148]H. C. March, “The Pagan-Christian Overlap in the North,”Trans. Lanc. and Cheshire Ant. Soc., ix., 1892.

[149]J. G. Frazer,Totemism, 1887. (An expansion of the article on “Totemism” in theEncyclopedia Britannica, ninth edition.)

[150]A. C. Haddon, “The Ethnography of the Western Tribe of Torres Straits,”Journ. Anth. Inst., xix., 1890, p. 393.

[151]“Die Zaubermuster der Orang hutan,” Hrolf Vaughan Stevens, edited by Albert Grünwedel,Zeitschr. f. Ethnol., xxvi., 1894, p. 141.

[152]W. W. Gill,Myths and Songs of the South Pacific, p. 38. Quoted by Frazer,loc. cit., p. 58.

[153]Fison and Howitt,Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 53; cf. Brough Smyth,The Aborigines of Victoria, i. p. 91, quoted by Frazer, p. 67.

[154]E. Grosse,Die Anfänge der Kunst, 1894, p. 112.

[155]The Rev. Mr. Bulmer, of Lake Tyers in Gippsland.

[156]An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, 1804, p. 377.

[157]A. Lang,Custom and Myth, 1884, p. 276.

[158]Cf. A. B. Cook, “Animal Worship in the Mycenæan Age,”Journ. Hellenic Studies, xiv., 1894, p. 81. Mr. Cook says: “On the whole, I gather that the Mycenæan worshippers were not totemists pure and simple, but that the mode of the worship points to its having been developed out of still earlier totemism” (p. 158).

[159]In a letter Dr. Codrington writes: “I do not think that the very prognathous human head has anything to do with a bird. If you look at the very excellent coloured frontispiece to Brenchley’sVoyage of the Curaçoa, representing a canoe on a voyage, you will see that all the men are excessively prognathous. The original is in the Maidstone Museum. I have looked at my few Solomon Island things—a common bowl supported by two human figures, which are just the same. A carved bit of soft stone and the head of a betel lime stick, things just cut for amusement, have the same prognathism. In fact I believe that the ordinary representation of the human head is such, the more prognathous the better it is liked.”

[160]“It is certain that, according to the Florida people (and their neighbours who use the word), atindalowas once a man; but there are some whose names they know and of whom they know nothing as men. I am by no means of opinion that there was once a man named Daula. The name of the frigate-bird beingkaulain Ulawa is against that (k=t=d). Rather daula is the name of the bird, and the birds are vehicles oftindalos. So as everytindalowho takes up his abode in a shark is Bagea in Florida (a common shark beingbagea), so everytindaloin a frigate-bird is Daula.”—Dr. Codringtonin a letter to the author.

[161]H. Stolpe,Utvecklingsföreteelser i Naturfolkens Ornamentik. Ymer, 1890. Translated into English by Mrs. March, “Evolution in the Ornamental Art of Savage People,”Trans. Rochdale Lit. and Sci. Soc., 1892; and into German,Mittheil. Anth. Gesell.Wien, 1892, xxii. p. 43.

[162]C. H. Read, “On the Origin and Sacred Character of certain Ornaments of the S.E. Pacific,”Jour. Anth. Inst., xxi., 1891, p. 139.

[163]H. Colley March, “Polynesian Ornament a Mythography; or a Symbolism of Origin and Descent,”Jour. Anth. Inst., xxii., 1893, p. 307.

[164]Probably anadze, not anaxe.

[165]W. Wyatt Gill,Jottings from the Pacific, 1885, p. 224.

[166]W. Ellis,Polynesian Researches, 1840, i. p. 343.

[167]Cf. pp. 119, 122, 213.

[168]The Migration of Symbols, 1894.

[169]Loc. cit., p. 1.

[170]H. Colley March, “The Fylfot and the Futhorc Tir,”Trans. Lancashire and Cheshire Ant. Soc., 1886.

[171]Ezekiel ix. 4-6.

[172]Schliemann,Ilios, p. 350.

[173]G. Ferrero,Les Lois Psychologiques du Symbolisme, 1895, p. 142.

[174]The Earl of Southesk,Origins of Pictish Symbolism, 1893, p. 12.

[175]Karl Blind, “Discovery of Odinic Songs in Shetland,”Nineteenth Century, June 1879, pp. 1097, 1098.

[176]Karl Blind, “Troy found again,”Antiquary, 1884, p. 200.

[177]Max Müller in Schliemann,Ilios, 1880, Eng. edn., p. 349.

[178]Loc. cit., p. 264.

[179]Karl Blind, “Discovery of Odinic Songs in Shetland,”Nineteenth Century, June 1879, p. 1098.

[180]Goblet d’Alviella,loc. cit., p. 40.

[181]Loc. cit., p. 42.

[182]Ilios, 1880, Eng. edn., p. 353.

[183]Goblet d’Alviella,loc. cit., p. 45.

[184]Loc. cit., p. 45.

[185]R.P. Greg, “The Fylfot and the Swastika,”Archæologia, 1885, p. 293.

[186]H. Colley March, “The Fylfot and the Futhorc Tir,”Trans. Lanc. and Ches. Ant. Soc., 1886.

[187]Loc. cit., pp. 44et seq.

[188]We read in the fifth book of theOdyssey(v. 270) how Odysseus “sate and cunningly guided the craft with the helm, nor did sleep fall upon his eyelids, as he viewed the Pleiads and Boötes, that setteth late, and the Bear, which they likewise call the Wain, which turneth ever in one place, and keepeth watch upon Orion, and alone hath no part in the baths of Ocean.”

[189]The importance of astronomical lore in the cults of ancient civilisations is being more forcibly brought home to us as the remains of antiquity are being more critically and sympathetically investigated. Professor D’Arcy W. Thompson, Junr., has recently published a suggestive paper (“On Bird and Beast in Ancient Symbolism,”Trans. Roy. Soc., Edin., xxxviii., Pt. 1, 1895, p. 179) in which he suggests that many of the Greek representations of animals on monument or coin indicate not the creatures themselves but their stellar namesakes. M. J. Svoronos (“Sur la signification des types monétaires des anciens,”Bull. Correspondance Hellénique, 1894) had simultaneously and independently arrived at a similar conclusion, but D’Arcy Thompson carries the argument a step further, and attempts to show that the associated emblems correspond to the positions relative to one another of the heavenly bodies, in some cases to the configuration of the sky at critical periods of the year, or at the festival seasons of the cities to which the coins belong.“The stellar symbolism that I here advocate is, I maintain, a different thing from the sun-myths, dawn-myths, and so forth, which are now to a large extent deservedly repudiated. We cannot ascribe to the civilised nations of antiquity the puerile conceptions of nature that are congruent with a stage of awakening intelligence and with the crude results of untrained observation. Rather are we dealing with the elaborated gain of ages of scientific knowledge, with the thoughts of a people whose very temples were oriented to particular stars, or to critical points in the journey of the sun; whose representations of Art, on frieze and pediment, in tragedy and epic, were governed by what would at first appear to be a tyrannical convention, which convention, however, so far from hampering their genius, seems, under the influence of a wholesome restraint, to have moulded their art into more beautiful, more poetic, and more sanctified forms.... The dominant priesthood, whose domain was knowledge, holding the keys of treasured learning opened the lock with chary hand, and veiled plain speech in fantastic allegory. In such allegory Egyptian priests spoke to Greek travellers, who came to them as Dervish-pilgrims or Wandelnde Studenten.... At Olympia, in the beginning of each Leap-year cycle, the noblest youth of Greece raced, round the symbolic pillars, their horses emblematic of the Horses of the Sun; thereby glorifying a God whom they thus ignorantly worshipped. Even so, we read in the Second Book of Kings [xvii. 16; xxi. 3, 5; xxiii. 5] how their Phœnician cousins worshipped with like ceremony the same God. And all the while, in the evening and the morning, priests andπρόσπολοιwatched, measured, and compared the rising and setting of sun and stars, in temples that were astronomical observatories, to the glory of a religion whose mystery was astronomic science.”

“The stellar symbolism that I here advocate is, I maintain, a different thing from the sun-myths, dawn-myths, and so forth, which are now to a large extent deservedly repudiated. We cannot ascribe to the civilised nations of antiquity the puerile conceptions of nature that are congruent with a stage of awakening intelligence and with the crude results of untrained observation. Rather are we dealing with the elaborated gain of ages of scientific knowledge, with the thoughts of a people whose very temples were oriented to particular stars, or to critical points in the journey of the sun; whose representations of Art, on frieze and pediment, in tragedy and epic, were governed by what would at first appear to be a tyrannical convention, which convention, however, so far from hampering their genius, seems, under the influence of a wholesome restraint, to have moulded their art into more beautiful, more poetic, and more sanctified forms.... The dominant priesthood, whose domain was knowledge, holding the keys of treasured learning opened the lock with chary hand, and veiled plain speech in fantastic allegory. In such allegory Egyptian priests spoke to Greek travellers, who came to them as Dervish-pilgrims or Wandelnde Studenten.... At Olympia, in the beginning of each Leap-year cycle, the noblest youth of Greece raced, round the symbolic pillars, their horses emblematic of the Horses of the Sun; thereby glorifying a God whom they thus ignorantly worshipped. Even so, we read in the Second Book of Kings [xvii. 16; xxi. 3, 5; xxiii. 5] how their Phœnician cousins worshipped with like ceremony the same God. And all the while, in the evening and the morning, priests andπρόσπολοιwatched, measured, and compared the rising and setting of sun and stars, in temples that were astronomical observatories, to the glory of a religion whose mystery was astronomic science.”

[190]P. Gardner, “Ares as a Sun-god,”Numismatic Chronicle, xx., N.S., 1880, p. 59.

[191]The Grammar of the Lotus, p. 352.

[192]“On the Pottery of Cyprus,” Appendix to General L. P. di Cesnola’sCyprus, 1877, p. 410.

[193]The Industrial Arts of India, 1880, i. p. 107.

[194]Loc. cit., p. 353.

[195]G. Maspero,Histoire ancienne des peuples de l’Orient, 1886, p. 241, quoted by Count G. d’Alviella.

[196]Guillaume Ferrero,Les Lois Psychologiques du Symbolisme, 1895. (Translated from the Italian.) I am indebted to my friend Havelock Ellis for the reference to and loan of this book.

[197]See note on next page.

[198]1 Samuel iv. 3, 7.

[199]Loc. cit., p. 139.

[200]H. Balfour, “The Origin of Decorative Art as illustrated by the Art of Modern Savages,”Midland Naturalist, xiii., 1890;The Evolution of Decorative Art, 1893, p. 24; “Evolution in Decorative Art,”Journ. Soc. Arts, xlii., 1894, p. 458.

[201]“On the Date of British Coins,”Numismatic Chronicle, xiii., 1850, p. 127.

[202]Ancient British Coins, 1864, p. 27.

[203]I venture, however, to question whether this is in reality very operative among savages.

[204]I by no means wish to imply that a homogeneous people implies a pure race; a people composed of several elements, if well mixed up and isolated for a long time, may become fairly homogeneous.

[205]Dr. W. Hein has just published a well illustrated paper on anthropomorphic designs among the Dyaks (Borneo),Ann. k.k. nat. Hofmuseums, Vienna, x., 1895, p. 94.

[206]Journ. Roy. Soc. Antiq. of Ireland, v. (5th ser.), 1895, p. 32; cf. also the quotation from Mr. Arthur Evans, p. 142,ante.

[207]Loc. cit., p. 260.

[208]Cf. pp. 143, 144, 149ante.

[209]Loc. cit., p. 263.

[210]From an essay in Schliemann’sIlios, p. 348.

[211]Zeitschr. für Ethnologie, xxvi., 1894, p. 142.

[212]John M. Kemble,Horæ Ferales, or Studies in the Archæology of the Northern Nations, 1863, p. 80.

[213]Address to the Anthropological Section, British Association, Ipswich Meeting, 1895.

Stages of DevelopmentBack to page 8.

Back to page 8.

Transcriber’s noteAn extra title has been removed. The illustrations have been moved slightly for reader convenience. A, B, and I were missing in Fig. 3, these have been added. An alphabetic jump table has been added to the index. The footnotes were renumbered, and gathered at the end of the book.Errors in punctuation and spacing have been corrected silently. Also the following corrections were made, on page58 “tha” changed to “that” (to differ in many respects from that which is characteristic)63 “Havn” changed to “Haven” (from Angriffs Haven, near Humboldt Bay)179 “XI” changed to “VI” (the Dunnichen Stone (Plate VI., Fig. 9); but the head)and in footnote 160 “tindados” changed to “tindalos” (and the birds are vehicles oftindalos.)Otherwise the original has been preserved, including unusual spelling and inconsistent hyphenation. Additional: some footnotes have more than one anchor. The index has not been checked for errors in alphabetization or page numbers.

Transcriber’s note

An extra title has been removed. The illustrations have been moved slightly for reader convenience. A, B, and I were missing in Fig. 3, these have been added. An alphabetic jump table has been added to the index. The footnotes were renumbered, and gathered at the end of the book.

Errors in punctuation and spacing have been corrected silently. Also the following corrections were made, on page58 “tha” changed to “that” (to differ in many respects from that which is characteristic)63 “Havn” changed to “Haven” (from Angriffs Haven, near Humboldt Bay)179 “XI” changed to “VI” (the Dunnichen Stone (Plate VI., Fig. 9); but the head)and in footnote 160 “tindados” changed to “tindalos” (and the birds are vehicles oftindalos.)

Otherwise the original has been preserved, including unusual spelling and inconsistent hyphenation. Additional: some footnotes have more than one anchor. The index has not been checked for errors in alphabetization or page numbers.

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