Chapter 4

"So am favioche fiorum,Thabhavit gnoc annsa cheann,Do n'fhear nach gleidh maoin da' fein,Ach bheir a chuid go leir d'a chlann.""Here is the fair mallTo give a knock on the skullTo the man who keeps no gear for himself,But gives all to his bairns."

"So am favioche fiorum,Thabhavit gnoc annsa cheann,Do n'fhear nach gleidh maoin da' fein,Ach bheir a chuid go leir d'a chlann."

"Here is the fair mallTo give a knock on the skullTo the man who keeps no gear for himself,But gives all to his bairns."

Wright, in his collection of Latin stories, published by the Percy Society in 1842 (pp. 28-29), gives a variant of this tale under the title of "De divite qui dedit omnia filio suo," and, so far as can be judged by the abstract, the parallel between the two narratives, separated by at least five centuries of time, is remarkably close. The latter part is apparently different, for the Latin version tells how the man pretended that the chest contained a sum of money, part of which was to be applied for the good of his soul, and the rest to dispose of as he pleased. But at the point of deathhis children opened the chest. "Antequam totaliter expiraret, ad cistam currentes nihil invenerunt nisi malleum, in quo Anglicè scriptum est:—

"'Wyht suylc a betel be he smyten,That al the werld hyt mote wyten,That gyfht his sone al his thing,And goht hym self a beggyn.'"

Here, then, is a case whereby to test the problem of the position of folk-tales as historical material. Did the people adopt this tale from literature into tradition and keep it alive for five centuries; or did some early and unconscious folklorist adapt it into literature? The literary version has the flavour of its priestly influence, which does not appear in the traditional version; and I make the preliminary observation that if literature could have so stamped itself upon the memory of the folk as to have preserved all the essentials of such a story as this, it must have been due to some academic influence (of which, however, there is no evidence), and this influence would have preserved a nearer likeness to literary forms than the peasant's tale presents to us. But the objection to this theory is best shown by an analysis of the tale, and by some research into the possible sources of its origin.

The story presents us with the following essential incidents:—

1. The gift of a well-stocked farm by a father to each of his children.

2. The surrender of all property during the owner's lifetime.

3. The living of the old father with each of his children.

4. The attempted killing of the old man.

5. The mallet bearing the inscription.

6. The rhyming formula of the inscription.

Mr. Campbell notes the first and third of these incidents in his original abstract of the story,[87]but of the remaining second, fourth, fifth, and sixth no note has hitherto been taken.

Of the first incident, the gift of a well-stocked farm by a father to each of his children, Mr. Campbell says: "This subdivision of land by tenants is the dress and declaration put on by a class who now tell this tale." But it also represents an ancient system of swarming off from the parent household when society was in a tribal stage. The incident of the tale is exactly reproduced in local custom. In the island of Skye the possessor of a few acres of land cut them up only a few years ago into shreds and patches to afford a separate dwelling for each son and daughter who married.[88]In Kinross, in 1797, the same practice prevailed. "Among the feuars the parents are in many instances disposed to relinquish and give up to their children their landed possessions or the principal part of them, retaining only for themselves some paltry pendicle or patch of ground."[89]In Ireland and in Cornwall much the same evidence is forthcoming, and elsewhere I have taken some pains to show that these local customs are the isolated survivals in late times of early tribal practices.[90]

We next turn to the second essential incident of thetale—the surrender of the estate during the owner's lifetime. This is a well-marked feature of early custom, and Du Chaillu has preserved something like the survival of the ritual observances connected with it in his account of the Scandinavian practice. On a visit to Husum he witnessed the ceremonial which attended the immemorial custom of the farm coming into possession of the eldest son, the father still being alive. The following is Mr. Du Chaillu's description, and the details are important: "The dinner being ready, all the members of the family came in and seated themselves around the board, the father taking, as is customary, the head of the table. All at once, Roar, who was not seated, came to his father and said, 'Father, you are getting old; let me take your place.' 'Oh, no, my son,' was the answer, 'I am not too old to work; it is not yet time: wait awhile.' Then, with an entreating look, Roar said, 'Oh, father, all your children and myself are often sorry to see you look so tired when the day's labour is over: the work of the farm is too much for you; it is time for you to rest and do nothing. Rest in your old age. Oh, let me take your place at the head of the table.' All the faces were now extremely sober, and tears were seen in many eyes. 'Not yet, my son.' 'Oh, yes, father.' Then said the whole family, 'Now it is time for you to rest.' He rose, and Roar took his place, and was then the master. His father, henceforth, would have nothing to do, was to live in a comfortable house, and to receive yearly a stipulated amount of grain or flour, potatoes, milk, cheese, butter, meat, etc."[91]Withoutstopping to analyse this singular ceremony in detail, it is important to note that old age is the assigned cause of resignation by the father of his estate; that the ceremony is evidently based upon traditional forms, the meaning of which is not distinctly comprehended by the present performers; that the father is supported by his successor. As a proof that we have here a survival of very ancient practice, it may be noticed that in Spiti, a part of the Punjab, an exact parallel occurs. There the father retires from the headship of the family when his eldest son is of full age, and has taken unto himself a wife; on each estate there is a kind of dower-house with a plot of land attached, to which the father in these cases retires.[92]In Bavaria and in Würtemberg the same custom obtains,[93]and the sagas of the North also confirm it as an ancient custom.[94]

Of the third incident in the tale, the living of the father with his children, Mr. Campbell says this points to the old Highland cluster of houses and to the farm worked by several families in common,[95]and I think we have here the explanation why the father in Scotland did not have his "dower-house," as he did in Scandinavia and in Spiti.

We next come to the fourth incident, the attempted killing of the old father. Now, from some of the earliest accounts of travels in Britain, we know that the death of the aged by violence was a signal element of the native customs. "They die only when they havelived long enough; for when the aged men have made good cheere and anoynted their bodies with sweet ointments they leape off a certain rocke into the sea." That we have in this episode of the story, remains of customs which once existed in the North, Mr. Elton affords proof, both from saga-history and from the practice of later times, when "the Swedes and Pomeranians killed their old people in the way which was indicated by the passage quoted above."[96]It is the custom of many savage tribes, and the observances made use of are sometimes suggestive of the facts of the tale we are now analysing. Thus, among the Todas of the Nilgiri Hills, they place the old people in large earthen jars with some food, and leave them to perish;[97]while among the Hottentots, Kolben says, "when persons become unable to perform the least office for themselves they are then placed in a solitary hut at a considerable distance, with a small stock of provisions within their reach, where they are left to die of hunger, or be devoured by the wild beasts."[98]

The important bearing of these incidents of barbarous and savage life upon our subject will be seen when we pass on to our fifth incident, namely, the significant use of the mallet. Some curious explanations have been given of this. Mr. Thorns once thought it might be identified with Malleus, the name of the Devil.[99]Nork has attempted with more reason to identify itwith the hammer of Thor.[100]But the real identification is closer than this. Thus, it is connected with the Valhalla practices, already noted, by the fact that if an old Norseman becomes too frail to travel to the cliff, in order to throw himself over, his kinsman would save him the disgrace of dying "like a cow in the straw," and would beat him to death with the family club.[101]Mr. Elton, who quotes this passage, adds in a note that one of the family clubs is still preserved at a farm in East Gothland.[102]Aubrey has preserved an old English "countrie story" of "the holy mawle, which (they fancy) hung behind the church dore, which, when the father was seaventie, the sonne might fetch to knock his father in the head, as effœte, & of no more use."[103]That Aubrey preserved a true tradition is proved by what we learn of similar practices elsewhere. Thus, in fifteenth-century MSS. of prose romances found in English and also in Welsh, Sir Perceval, in his adventures in quest of the Holy Grail, being at one time ill at ease, congratulates himself that he is not like those men of Wales, where sons pull their fathers out of bed and kill them to save the disgrace of their dying in bed.[104]Keysler cites several instances of this savage custom in Prussia, and a Count Schulenberg rescued an old man who was being beaten to death by his sons at a place called Jammerholz, or "Woful Wood;" while a Countess of Nansfield, in the fourteenth century, is said to have saved the life of an oldman on the Lüneberg Heath under similar circumstances.

Our investigation of barbarous and savage customs, which connect themselves with the essential incidents of this Highland tale, has at this point taken us outside the framework of the story. The old father in the tale was not killed by the mallet, but he is said to have used it as a warning to others to stop the practice of giving up their property during lifetime. We have already seen that this practice was an actual custom in early times, appearing in local survivals both in England and Scotland. Therefore the story must have arisen at a time when this practice was undergoing a change. We must note, too, that the whole story leads up to the finding of a mallet with the rhyming inscription written thereon, connecting it with the instrument of death to the aged, but only on certain conditions. If, then, we can find that the rhyming inscription on the mallet has an existence quite apart from the story, and if we can find that mallets bearing such an inscription do actually exist, we may fairly conclude that the story, which, in Scotland, is the vehicle of transmission of the rhyme, is of later origin than the rhyme itself.

First of all, it is to be noted under this head that Wright, in a note to the Latin story we have already quoted, gives from John of Bromyard'sSumma Predicantiumanother English version of the verse—

"Wit this betel the smiethAnd alle the worle thit witeThat thevt the ungunde alle thing,And goht him selve a beggyng,"

which shows, I think, the popularity of the verse in thevernacular. Clearly, then, the Latin version is a translation of this, and notviceversâ. It must have been a rhyming formula in the vernacular, which had a life of its own quite outside its adoption into literature.

This inferential proof of the actual life of the English rhyming formula is confirmed by actual facts in the case of the corresponding German formula. Nork, in the volume I have already quoted, collects evidence from Grimm, Haupt, and others, which proves that sometimes in front of a house, as at Osnabrück, and sometimes at the city gate, as in several of the cities of Silesia and Saxony, there hangs a mallet with this inscription:—

"Wer den kindern gibt das BrodUnd selber dabei leidet NothDen schlagt mit dieser keule todt"—

which Mr. Thoms has Englished thus:—

"Who to his children gives his breadAnd thereby himself suffers need,With this mallet strike him dead."[105]

These rhymes are the same as those in the Scottish tale and its Latin analogue, and that they are preserved on the selfsame instrument which is mentioned in the story as bearing the inscription is proof enough, I think, that the mallets and their rhyming formulæ are far older than the story. They are not mythical, the story is; their history is contained in the facts we have above detailed; the life of the folk-tale commences when the use or formula of the mallet ceases to be part of the social institutions.

To the rhyming formulæ, then, I would trace the rise of the mythic tale told by the Highland peasant in 1862to Mr. J. F. Campbell. The old customs which we have detailed as the true origin of the mallet, and its hideous use in killing the aged and infirm, had died out, but the symbol of them remained. To explain the symbol a myth was created, which kept sufficiently near to the original idea as to retain evidence of its close connection with the descent of property; and thus was launched the dateless, impersonal, unlocalised story which Mr. Campbell has given as a specimen of vagrant traditions, which "must have been invented after agriculture and fixed habitations, after laws of property and inheritance; but it may be as old as the lake-dwellings of Switzerland, or Egyptian civilisation, or Adam, whose sons tilled the earth."[106]I would venture to rewrite the last clause of this dictum of the great master of folk-tales, and I would suggest that the story, whatever its age as a story, tells us of facts in the life of its earliest narrators which do not belong to Teutonic or Celtic history. The Teuton and the Celt, with their traditional reverence for parental authority, at once patriarchal and priestly, would retain, with singular clearness, the memory of traditions, or it may be observations, of an altogether different set of ideas which belonged to the race with which they first came into contact. But whether the story is a mythic interpretation by Celts of pre-Celtic practices, or a pre-Celtic tradition, varied as soon as it became the property of the Celt to suit Celtic ideas, it clearly takes us back to practices very remote, to use Mr. Elton's forcible words, from the reverence for the parents' authority which might have perhaps been expectedfrom descendants of "the Aryan household."[107]These practices lead us back to a period of savagery, of which we have to speak in terms of race distinction if we would get at its root.[108]The importance of such a conclusion cannot be overrated, for it leads directly to the issue which must be raised whenever an investigation of tradition leaves us with materials, which are promptly rejected as fragments of Celtic history because they are too savage, but which need not therefore be rejected as history, because they may be referred further back than Celtic history.

If we proceed by more drastic methods, by the methods of statistics, we shall arrive at much the same conclusion.[109]Taking the first twelve stories in Grimm's great collection, we find that seven of them yield elements which we are entitled to call savage, becausethey are so far removed from the European culture amidst which the folk-tales have lived, and because these elements belong not to the accidentals of the stories but to the essentials. Thus, if we divide the folk-tale into its components, we shall find that it consists of three features:—

1. The story radicals, or essential plot;

2. The story accidentals, or illustrative points;

3. Modern gloss upon the events in the story—

and if we go on to allocate the various incidents of the stories to these three heads, we get the following common results with regard to seven out of the twelve first stories of Grimm's great collection:—

There are thus savage elements in seven out of twelve stories, and the question becomes an important one as to how this is. They are the stories of the nursery, told by mothers to children, stories kept alive by tradition, and the only possible answer to our question is that they contain fragments of the early culture-history of the ancestors, or at all events the predecessors, of those who have preserved them for our use. An occasional savage incident might have been considered a freak of the original narrator, or a borrowing by one of the countless late narrators of these stories brought home from savage countries; but statistics disprove both of these suppositions. It is not accidental but persistent savagery we meet with in the folk-tale. It is also the savagery to be found amongst modern peoples still in the savage stage of culture.

This is proved in a very complete manner by Mr. MacCulloch, whose study provides the material for a statistical survey of story incidents founded on primitive custom and belief.[110]They are the most ancient history to which we have access. That this history is contained in the folk-tales of modern peasantry shows it to have come from that far-off period which saw the earliest condition of these people. It is still history, if it tells us of a life which preceded the written record. It is history of the most valuable description, for it is to be found nowhere else as relating to the remotest period of European civilisation. The modern savageis better off in this respect. He has an outside historian in the traveller and the anthropologist of modern days. The savage who was ancestor to our own people had no such means of becoming known to history, or had but very limited means, and it is only in the deathless tradition that we can trace him out.

These conclusions have been drawn from that great class of tradition preserved by historic peoples in historic times, and yet unmistakably pointing to prehistoric culture. We have been able to show the methods to be adopted for, and the results of, disengaging the myth which has gravitated to the historic person or place from the historic facts which have become part of the legend, and to trace out in the folk-tale facts which belong to a culture far removed from civilised life. There are thus revealed two distinct centres of influence, the traditional centre and the historic centre, and it is obvious that the question must be asked—which is the more important? It seems to me equally obvious that the answer must be given in favour of the historic. History is indebted to tradition for preserving some of the most remote facts of racial or national life, which but for tradition would have been lost, and if we are content to use this tradition as a storehouse from which we may provide ourselves with ancient historical documents, we can trace out therefrom points in the history of any given country wherever the traditions have been preserved.

The folk-tale, in point of fact, equally with the personal and local legend, comes into close contact with history. The periods of history in the folk-tales are different from those in the legends, but together these periods reachfrom prehistoric culture to historic event. We cannot, however, call this extent of time a continuous period, and we cannot point to definite stages within the detached periods. Much more research must be accomplished before it will be possible to claim such results as these. I have indicated some points of difficulty, some methods of treatment which appear to me to be wrong, and to which I shall have again to refer later on; but in the meantime, from the necessarily incomplete evidence which I have been able to produce, it is, I think, abundantly clear that folklore has to be studied from its historical surroundings if we would draw from it all that it is capable of telling.

In the meantime it is well to bear in mind that there is one important department of history which has always been frankly and unhesitatingly accepted as history and yet which has no stronger foundation than tradition, and tradition of the most formal kind. I allude to the early laws of most of the peoples who have become possessed of an historic civilisation. These laws have all been preserved by tradition, are in rhyme or rhythm in order to assist the memory, have become the sacred repository of a school or class of priests, and have finally been reduced to writing by a great lawgiver, who by the act of giving the people written laws has had attributed to him supernatural origin and powers. That history should have accepted from tradition such an important section of its material is worth consideration by itself, apart from its bearingon the present study, and I shall proceed, therefore, to set out some of the chief facts in this connection.

There can be no doubt that in the tribal society of Indo-European peoples the laws and rules which governed the various members of the tribe were deemed to be sacred and were preserved by tradition. The opening clauses of the celebrated Laws of Manu illustrate this position. "The great sages approached Manu, who was seated with a collected mind, and having worshipped him spoke as follows: Deign, divine one, to declare to us precisely and in due order the sacred laws of each of the four chief castes and of the intermediate ones. For thou, O Lord, alone knowest the purport, the rites, and the knowledge of the soul taught in this whole ordinance of the self-existent which is unknowable and unfathomable."[111]They were not only sacred in origin but they dealt with sacred things, and Sir Henry Maine has drawn the broad conclusion that "there is no system of recorded law, literally from China to Peru, which, when it first emerges into notice, is not seen to be entangled with religious ritual and observance."[112]In Greece the lawgivers were supposed to be divinely inspired, Minôs from Jupiter, Lykurgos from the Delphic god, Zaleukos from Pallas.[113]The earliest notions of law are connected with Themis the Goddess of Justice.[114]InRome it is to Romulus himself that is attributed the first positive law, and it is by a college of priests that the laws were preserved.[115]In Scandinavia the laws were in the custody and charge of the temple priests, and the accumulated evidence for the sacred origin and connection of the laws is to be found in the sagas.[116]Among the Celtic peoples it is well known that the laws were preserved and administered by the Brehons, who are compared with the Hindu Brahmins by Sir Henry Maine, "with many of their characteristics altered, and indeed, their whole sacerdotal authority abstracted by the influence of Christianity."[117]In the Isle of Man the laws were deemed sacred and known only to the Deemsters.[118]

In all cases laws were preserved by tradition and not by writing and evidence, and the superior value attached to the traditional record appears everywhere. The oldest record of Hindu law agrees with the best authority that it was not founded on writing but "upon immemorial customs which existed prior to and independent of Brahminism."[119]In Greece the very nature of thethemistesshows that they were judgments dependent upon traditional custom. In Rome it is the subject of definite research that the "greater part of Roman law was founded on themores majorum."[120]In Scandinavia the law speaker was obliged to recite thewhole law within the period to which the tenure of his office was limited.[121]The Celtic laws are based upon customs handed down from remote antiquity,[122]and late down in English law it was admitted as a principle that if oral declarations came into conflict with written instruments the former had the more binding authority.[123]

One of the means by which this sacred tradition was preserved was through the medium of rhythm and verse. Thus, as Sir Henry Maine explains,

"The law book of Manu is in verse, and verse is one of the expedients for lessening the burden which the memory has to bear when writing is unknown or very little used. But there is another expedient which serves the same object. This is Aphorism or Proverb. Even now in our own country much of popular wisdom is preserved either in old rhymes or in old proverbs, and it is well ascertained that during the middle ages much of law, and not a little of medicine, was preserved among professions, not necessarily clerkly, by these two agencies."[124]

In Greece the same word,νόμος, was used for custom and law as for song. Theῥήτρα(declared law) of Sparta and Taras was in verse; the laws of Charondas were sung asσκόλιαat Athens,[125]and Strabo refers to the Mazacenes of Cappadocia as using the laws of Charondas and appointing some person to be their law-singer (νομωδός), who is among them the declarer of the laws.[126]

Sir Francis Palgrave, noticing the same characteristic of Teutonic law, says:—

"It cannot be ascertained that any of the Teutonic nations reduced their customs into writing, until the influence of increasing civilisation rendered it expedient to depart from their primeval usages; but an aid to the recollection was often afforded as amongst the Britons, by poetry or by the condensation of the maxim or principle in proverbial or antithetical sentences like the Cymric triads. The marked alliteration of the Anglo-Saxon laws is to be referred to the same cause, and in the Frisic laws several passages are evidently written in verse. From hence, also, may originate those quaint and pithy rhymes in which the doctrines of the law of the old time are not unfrequently recorded."[127]

Again, the editors of the Brehon Law Tracts point out that early laws are handed down "in a rhythmical form; always in language condensed and antiquated they assume the character of abrupt and sententious proverbs. Collections of such sayings are found scattered throughout the Brehon Law Tracts."[128]The sagascontain many verses which partake of the character of legal formulæ, and in Beowulf there seems to be a definite example. It occurs in the passage describing Beowulf engaged in his fatal combat with the fiery dragon, when his "companions," stricken with terror, deserted him, on which Wiglaf pronounced the following malediction:—

"Now shall the service of treasure,and the gifts of swords,all joy of paternal inheritance,all supportof all your kin depart;every one of your familymust go aboutdeprived of his rightsof citizenship;when far and widethe nobles shall learnyour flight,your dishonourable deed.Death is betterto every warriorthan disgraced life."

Mr. Kemble remarks on this passage, that it is not improbable that the whole denunciation is a judicial formula, such as we know early existed, and in regular rhythmical measure.[129]

These early examples may be followed up by others preserved to modern times. The most significant of these occurs in the Church ceremony of marriage, which preserves in the vernacular the ancient rhythmical formula of the marriage laws, and the antiquity ofthe Church ritual is proved from the fact that it is accompanied and enforced by the old rhythmical verse, which is indicative of early legal or ceremonious usage.

"With this rynge I the wedAnd this gold and silver I the geve,and with my body I the worshipe,and with all my worldely cathel I the endowe."[130]

Sir Francis Palgrave has noticed the subject, and points out that the wife is taken

"to have and to hold[131]from this day forwardfor better, for worse,for richer, for poorer,[132]in sickness and in health,to love and to cherish,till death us do partand thereto I plight thee my troth."

These words are inserted in our service according to the ancient canon of England, and even when the Latin mass was sung by the tonsured priest, the promises which accompany the delivery of the symbolical pledge of union were repeated by the blushing bride in a more intelligible tongue.[133]This is a curious and significant fact, and as we trace out these rhythmical lines farther back in their original vernacular, the more clearlydistinct is their archaic nature. According to the usage of Salisbury the bride answered:—

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