FOOTNOTES:

"'(1) The existence of stocks named after plants and animals'—such stocks, it is necessary to add, being scattered through many local tribes; (2) the prevalence of the conception that the members of the stock are of the blood of the eponym animal, or are sprung from a plant of the species chosen as totem; (3) the ascription to the totem of a sacred character which may result in its being regarded as the god of the stock, but at any rate makes it be regarded with veneration, so that, for example, a totem animal is not used as ordinary food. If we can find all these things together in the same tribe, the proof of totemism is complete; but even when this cannot be done, the proof may be morally complete if all the three marks of totemism are found well developed within the same race. In many cases,however, we can hardly expect to find all the marks of totemism in its primitive form; the totem, for example, may have become first an animal god, and then an anthropomorphic god, with animal attributes or associations merely."[404]

Now in the Irish case all three of these conditions are found together in the same tribe, the clan Coneely, and it is impossible to overlook the importance of such a discovery. It proves from survivals in folklore that totemistic people once lived in ancient Ireland, just as the corresponding evidence proved that the ancient Semitic stock possessed the totemic organisation.

We have now examined the most archaic forms of the survival of totemism in Britain. If we pass on to inquire whether we can detect the more scattered and decayed remnants of totem beliefs and customs, we turn to Mr. Frazer as our guide. From Mr. Frazer's review of the beliefs and customs incidental to the totemistic organisation of savage people, it is possible to extract a formula for ascertaining the classification of savage beliefs and practices incidental to totemism. This formula appears to me to properly fall into the following groups:—

(a) Descent from the totem.(b) Restrictions against injuring the totem.(c) Restrictions against using the totem for food.(d) The petting and preservation of totems.(e) The mourning for and burying of totems.(f) Penalties for non-respect of totem.(g) Assistance by the totem to his kin.(h) Assumption of totem marks.(i) Assumption of totem dress.(j) Assumption of totem names.

(a) Descent from the totem.

(b) Restrictions against injuring the totem.

(d) The petting and preservation of totems.

(e) The mourning for and burying of totems.

(f) Penalties for non-respect of totem.

(g) Assistance by the totem to his kin.

(h) Assumption of totem marks.

(i) Assumption of totem dress.

(j) Assumption of totem names.

My suggestion is that if a reasonable proportion of the superstitions and customs attaching to animals and plants, preserved to us as folklore, can be classified under these heads this is exactly what might be expected if the origin of such superstitions and customs is to be sought for in a primitive system of totemism which prevailed amongst the people once occupying these islands. The clan Coneely and the Ossory wolves are proofs that such a system existed, and if such perfect survivals have been able to descend to modern times, in spite of the influences of civilisation, there is noprimâ faciereason why the beliefs and customs incidental to such a system should not have survived, even though they are no longer to be identified with special clans. When once a primitive belief or custom becomes separated from its original surroundings, it would be liable to change. Thus, when the wolf totem of Ossory passes into a local cultus, we meet with the belief that human beings may be transformed into animal forms, as the derivative from the totem belief in descent from the wolf. Fortunately, the process by which this change took place is discernible in the Ossory example; but it will not be so in other examples, and we may therefore assume that the Ossory example represents the transitional form and apply it as a key to the origin of similar beliefs elsewhere.

Again, if we endeavour to discover how the associated totem-beliefs of the clan Coneely would appear in folklore supposing they had been scattered by the influences of civilisation, we can see that at the variousplaces where members of the clan had resided for some time there would be preserved fragments of the once perfect totem-belief. Thus, one place would retain traditions about a fabulous animal who could change into human form; another place would preserve beliefs about its being unlucky to kill a seal (or some other animal specially connected with the locality); another place would preserve a superstitious regard for the seal (or some other local animal) as an augury; and thus the process of transference of beliefs into folklore, from one form into other related forms, from one particular object connected with the clan to several objects connected with the localities, would go on from time to time, until the difficulty of tracing the original of the scattered beliefs and customs would be well-nigh insurmountable without some key. But having once proved the existence of such examples as the clan Coneely and the Ossory wolves, this difficulty, though still great, is very much lessened. Our method would be as follows. We first of all postulate that totem peoples did actually exist in ancient Britain, or whence such extraordinary survivals? We next examine and classify the beliefs and customs which are incidental to totemism in savage society, and having set these forth by the aid of Mr. Frazer's admirable study on the subject, we ascertain what parallels to these beliefs and customs may be found in the folklore of Britain. And then our position seems to be very clearly defined. We prove that in folklore certain customs and superstitions are identical, or nearly so, with the beliefs and customs of totemism among savage tribes, and we conclude that this identity in form proves an identity in origin, andtherefore that this section of folklore originated from the totemistic people of early Britain.

I shall not take up all these points on the present occasion, especially as they have in all essentials appeared in the study to which I have referred; but as an example of the scattering of totem beliefs I will refer to the well-known passage in Cæsar (lib. v. cap. xii.), from which we learn that certain people in Britain were forbidden to eat the hare, the cock, or the goose, and see whether this does not receive its only explanation by reference to the totemic restriction against using the totem for food. Mr. Elton, with this passage in his mind, notices that "there were certain restrictions among the Britons and ancient Irish, by which particular nations or tribes were forbidden to kill or eat certain kinds of animals;" and he goes on to suggest that "it seems reasonable to connect the rule of abstaining from certain kinds of food with the superstitious belief that the tribes were descended from the animals from which their names and crests or badges were derived."[405]

Let us see whether this reasonable conjecture holds good. The most famous example is that of Cuchulainn, the celebrated Irish chieftain, whose name means the hound of Culain. It is said that he might not eat of the flesh of the dog, and he came by his death after transgressing this totemistic taboo. The words of the manuscript known as the Book of Leinster are singularly significant in their illustration of this view. "And one of the things that Cúchulainn was bound not to do was going to a cooking hearth andconsuming the food [i.e.the dog]; and another of the things that he must not do was eating his namesake's flesh."[406]Diarmaid, whose name seems to be continued in the current popular Irish name for pig (Darby), was intimately associated with that animal, and his life depended on the life of the boar.[407]These examples are so much to the point that we may examine the cases mentioned by Cæsar from the same standard.

Mr. Frazer points out that even among existing totem-tribes the respect for the totem has lessened or disappeared, and among the results of this he notes instances where, if any one kills his totem, he apologises to the animal. Under such an interpretation as this, we may surely classify a "memorandum" made by Bishop White-Kennett about the hare, the first of the British totems mentioned by Cæsar: "When one keepes a hare alive and feedeth him till he have occasion to eat him, if he telles before he kills him that he will doe so, the hare will thereupon be found dead, having killed himself."[408]But respect for the hare, in accordance with totem ideas, was carried further than this at Biddenham, where, on the 22nd September, a little procession of villagers carried a white rabbit [a substitute for hare] decorated with scarlet ribbons through the village, singing a hymn in honour of St. Agatha. All the young unmarried women who chanced to meet the procession extended the first twofingers of the left hand pointing towards the rabbit, at the same time repeating the following doggerel:—

Gustin, Gustin, lacks a bier,Maidens, maidens, bury him here.[409]

This points to a very ancient custom, not yet fully explained, but which clearly had for its object the reverential burying of a rabbit or hare. It is characteristic of the totem animal that it serves as an omen to its clansmen, and we find that the hare is an omen in Britain. Boudicca is said to have drawn an augury from a hare, taken from her bosom, and which when released pursued a course that was deemed fortunate for her attack upon the Roman army;[410]and in modern south Northamptonshire the running of a hare along the street or mainway of a village portends fire to some house in the immediate vicinity.[411]In 1648 Sir Thomas Browne tells us that in his time there were few above three-score years that were not perplexed when a hare crossed their path.[412]In Wilts and in Scotland it was unlucky to meet a hare, but the evil influence did not extend after the next meal had been taken.[413]Then, too, the prohibition against naming the totem object is found in north-east Scotland attached to the hare, whose name may not be pronounced at sea, and Mr. Gregor adds the significant fact that some animal names and certain family nameswere never pronounced by the inhabitants of some of the villages, each village having an aversion to one or more of the words.[414]A classification of the beliefs and customs connected with the hare takes us, indeed, to almost every phase of totemistic belief, and it is impossible to reject such a mass of cumulative evidence.

Of the second of the British food taboos mentioned by Cæsar we have the most perfect illustration in the instance of the Irish chieftain, Conaire, who, descended from a fowl, was interdicted from eating its flesh.[415]

Turning next to the goose, we find that at Great Crosby, in Lancashire, there is held an annual festival which is called the "Goose Fair," and although it is accompanied by great feasting, the singular fact remains that the goose itself, in whose honour the feast seems to have been held, is considered too sacred to eat, and is never touched by the villagers.[416]In Scotland also the goose was never eaten, being too sacred for food.[417]

Thus the hare, the fowl, and the goose have retained their sacred character in a special manner in various parts of the country, and I may add a further note of more general significance. In Scotland there exists a prejudice against eating hares and cocks and hens.[418]In the south-western parts of England the peasant would not eat hares, rabbits, wild-fowl, or poultry, and when asked whence this dislike proceeds, heasserts that it was derived from his father[419]—the traditional sanction which is so essential to folklore.[420]

The ideas surrounding these three special animals might be easily extended to others, but I will only observe that Mr. Elton, noting both the classical and modern accounts of certain districts in Scotland and Ireland where fish, though abundant, is tabooed as food, quotes with approval a modern suggestion that this abstinence was a religious observance.[421]That fish are carved on numerous stones is a curious commentary on this assertion, while another point to be noted is that the inhabitants of the various islands have each their peculiar notions as to what fish are good for food. Some will eat skate, some dog-fish, some eat limpets and razor-fish, and as a matter of course, says Miss Gordon Cumming, those who do not, despise those who do.[422]A prejudice also existed against white cows in Scotland, and Dalyell ventures upon the acute supposition that this was on account of the unlawfulness of consuming the product of a consecrated animal.[423]These are not stray notes of inexperienced observers, and with two centuries between them it must be that they contain the essence of the people's conception—a conception which leads us back to totemism for its explanation.

I do not think we could get closer to totemic beliefs and ideas than this, nor could we have a better example of the necessity of examining early historical data by anthropological tests and by folklore parallels. Cæsar's words are unimportant by themselves. They convey nothing of any significance to the modern reader—a mere dietetic peculiarity which means nothing and counts for nothing. And yet it might be considered certain that Cæsar knew that the details he recorded were of importance in the historical sense. He did not indicate what the importance was, probably because he was not aware of it; but because he was conscious that among the influences which counted with these people were the food taboos, he rightly recorded the facts. They have remained unconsidered trifles until now, when anthropology has brought them within the range of scientific observation, and they are now to be reckoned with as part of the material which tells of the culture conditions of a section of the early British peoples.

I must here interpose a remark with reference to this grouping of the evidence. Apart from the significance of the superstitions as they are recorded in their bare condition among the peasantry, there is the additional fact to note that the superstition against eating or killing certain animals or birds, or against looking at them or naming them, etc., is not universal. It obtains in one place and not in another. If the injunction not to kill, injure, or eat a certain animal were simply the reflection of a universal practice, such a practice might originate in some attribute of the animal itself which characteristically would produce or tend toproduce superstition. But the spread of this class of superstition in certain districts, and not in others, is indicative of an ancient origin, and it is exactly what might be expected to have been produced from totem-peoples. Unfortunately, neither the negative evidence of superstitious beliefs nor the local distribution of superstitious beliefs has ever been considered worthy of attention. But some little evidence is incidentally forthcoming, and I would submit that this may be taken as indicative of what might be obtained more fully by further research into this neglected aspect of folklore. I drew Miss Burne's attention to this subject, and she has noted some particulars in her valuableShropshire Folklore.[424]But for the most part this portion of our evidence wants picking out by a long and tedious process from the mass of badly recorded facts about popular superstitions. I do not believe in the generally stated opinion that certain superstitions are universally believed or practised. It is difficult to prove a negative, and such evidence is not absolutely scientific, but when it comes in direct antithesis to positive, there does not seem any harm in accepting it. Every class of superstition wants tracing out geographically, and local variants want careful noting. I cannot doubt if this were properly done that many so-called universal superstitions would be found to be distinctly local. In the meantime, it is not with universal superstitions that we have to deal. It is primarily with those local variants which show us side by side the differences of belief. It isthus that we can afford evidence of that intermixture of totem-objects which is to be expected from the known facts of totem-beliefs and customs. Indeed, Mr. McLennan has laid it down that "we might expect that while here and there perhaps a tribe might appear with a single animal god, as a general rule tribes and nations should have as many animal and vegetable gods as there were distinct stocks in the population ... we should not expect to find the same animal dominant in all quarters, or worshipped even everywhere within the same nation."[425]

It is important that we should thoroughly understand what these survivals of totemism in the British isles really mean. On the extreme west coast of Ireland, farthest away from the centres of civilisation, there are found these unique examples of a savage institution. The argument that they might have been transplanted thither by travellers from the far west, where totemism has developed to its highest form, cannot seriously be advanced. The argument that they might be the accidental form into which some merely superstitious fancies of ignorant peasants happened to have ultimately shaped themselves, is met by the mathematical demonstration that the ratio of chance against such a development would be well-nigh incalculable. The remaining argument is that they indicate the last outpost, or perhaps one of the last outposts, of a primitive savage organisation which once existed throughout these lands. This is the view that appears to me to be the only possible one to meet all the conditions of the case; one proof insupport of this view being the discovery of evidence in other parts of the country which shows that totemism has left its stamp in more or less perfect form upon the traditional beliefs and practices of the nation. Though we are not able to identify further complete examples of the same type as the seal clan of Western Ireland, or the wolf people of Ossory, we should be able, if the explanation I have advanced of their origin be the correct one, to produce examples of the varying forms which such an institution as totemism must have assumed when it had been broken up by the advance of civilising influences. If the seal clan, or the wolf clan, is in truth the last outpost of a savage organisation, there will be in the lands less remote from the centres of civilisation some evidences of the break-up of savagery as it has been driven westward. Somewhere in tradition, somewhere in local observances of beliefs or superstition, there must still be echoes, more or less faint, but still echoes, from totemism. Having discovered these undoubted examples of totemism, the argument shifts its ground. We can no longer say that the theory of totemism may possibly explain some of the customs and traditions of the people. We are, by the logic of the position, compelled to say that custom and tradition must have preserved many relics of totemism, and that so far from seeking to explain custom and tradition by the theory of totemism, we must seek to explain the survival of totemism by custom and tradition. I lay stress on this view of the case because it is hard to combat the views of those who look upon "mere superstition" as no explanation of primitive originals. Tous of the present day the beliefs of the peasantry are no doubt properly definable as "mere superstition." But when we examine it as folklore we are seeking for its origin, not for its modern aspect; we are asking how "mere superstition" first arose, and in what forms, not how it exists; we are pushing back the inquiry from to-day when it exists side by side with a philosophical and moral religion to the time when it existed as the sole substitute for philosophy and morals. Even if it is "mere superstition" it has a dateless history. It is not conceivable that it suddenly arose at a particular period before which "mere superstition" did not exist, and all, both peasant and chief, were philosophical and moral. It is not conceivable that the mere superstition of to-day has replaced bodily the mere superstition of other ages. Every succeeding age of progress has influenced it, no doubt, but not eradicated it, and hence the mere superstition of to-day has just such an unbroken continuity of history as language or institutions. That we are able to pick out from among its items undoubted forms of totemism, and that we may add to these complete examples a classified grouping of customs and beliefs in survival parallel to the customs and beliefs of savage totemism, affords proof that at least we may carry back that history to the era of totemism, at whatever point that era may cross the line of, or come into contact with, political history.

This is the definite conclusion to be drawn from the anthropological interpretation of the presence of totemic beliefs among the survivals of folklore. The study of the anthropological conditions has occupieda wide range of thought and inquiry, but it leads us back to a safe basis for research, for it brings definitely within touch of that realm of man which lies outside the civilisation wherein folklore is embedded, the peoples who have made, and the peoples who are dominated by, that civilisation. The savage of Britain cannot with this evidence before us be considered as the mere product of the literature of Greece and Rome. He is part and parcel of the savagery of the human race. Anthropology has shown us that savagery reached the land we now call Britain as part of the general movement of people which has caused the whole earth to become a dwelling-place for man, and now that we know this we must appeal to anthropology whenever we find that the problems of folklore take us out of the culture period of a civilisation known to history.[426]

I append a synopsis of the culture-structure of the Semangs of the Malay Peninsula (references are to Skeat and Blagden'sPagan Races of the Malay Peninsulawhere not otherwise specified), in order that the position claimed for the one section of totemic belief may be tested by the remaining characteristics of Semang culture. I claim that there is nothing that remains which is inconsistent with the interpretation given of the totemic items.

Physical:—

(a). Live exclusively in the forest surrounded by hostile fauna (i. 13).

(b). Food consists of such wild vegetable food as may happen to fall from time to time in season (i. 109, 341, 525), together with small mammals and birds (i. 112), fish (i. 113).

(c). As soon as they have exhausted the sources of food in one neighbourhood they move on to the next (i. 109).

(d). Fire obtained by friction (i. 111, 113), but meat is eaten raw (i. 112).

(e). Nudity is alleged (Journ. Indian Archipelago, i. 252; ii. 258); no satisfactory proof (i. 137); do not use skins of animals nor feathers of birds (i. 138); a girdle of fungus string (i. 138, 142, 380); fringe of leaves suspended from a string (i. 139, 142); necklaces and ligatures of jungle fibre (i. 144, 145); women wear a comb made of bamboo as a charm against diseases (i. 149).

(f). Habitations are rock shelters (i. 173), tree shelters afforded by branches of trees improved by construction of a weather screen (i. 174); ground screen of palm leaves (i. 175).

(g). Hunt successfully the largest animals, escaping easily up the trees (i. 202-204).

(h). Knives made of bamboo, flakes and chips of stone, knives of bone (i. 249, 269); bow and arrow (i. 251, 255); not sufficiently advanced to have produced neolithic implements (i. 268); wooden spear (i. 270).

(i). Ignorant of pottery, vessels made from big stems of bamboo (i. 383).

Social:—

(j). Chief of the group is the principal medicine man, but is on an equal footing with his men, no caste and property is in common (i. 497, 499).

(k). Marriage rights are secured by the presentation of a jungle knife to the bride's parents and a girdle to the bride, and the bride never lets the girdle part from her for fear of its being used to her prejudice in some magic ceremony; adultery is punishable by death (ii. 58, 59) [but this information was not obtained from the most primitive of the Semang people].

(l). Semang women are common to all men (Newbold,Political and Stat. Acc. of Settlements in Straits of Malacca, ii. 379). Great ante-nuptial freedom (ii. 56, 218); "Of the Semang I have not had an opportunity of personally judging" (ii. 377, Newbold).

Tree hut, Ulu Batu, about twelve miles from Kuala Lumpur, Selangor (from Skeat and Blagden's "Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula")TREE HUT, ULU BATU, ABOUT 12 MILES FROM KUALA LUMPUR, SELANGOR

(m). Eat dead kindred except head (Newbold, ii. 379); burial takes place in the ground, and the older practicewas exposure in trees; the Semang have no dread of ghosts of the deceased (ii. 89, 91).

(n). No sacred shrines or places (ii. 197).

(o). Avoidance of mother-in-law (ii. 204).

(p). Myth of the ringdove informing the children of the first woman that they had married within prohibited degrees of consanguinity, and advising them to separate and marry "other people" (ii. 218).

(q). Myth as to ignorance of cause of birth being dispelled by the cocoanut monkey informing the first man and woman (ii. 218).

(r). The Semang are almost ineradicably nomadic, have no fixed habitation, and rove about like the beasts of the forest (i. 172; ii. 470).

(s). Women and girls are not allowed to eat until the men and boys have finished their repast (i. 116); the men do most of the hunting and trapping, and the women take a large share in the collecting of roots and fruits; all the cooking is performed by the women and girls (i. 375).

(t). They are split up into a large number of dialects, each of which is confined to a relatively small area, and it often happens that a little [clan] or even a single family uses a form of speech which is differentiated from other dialects to be practically unintelligible to all except the members of the little community itself (ii. 379).

(u). Natural segregation of the [tribes] into small [clans] to some extent cut off from one another and surrounded by settled Malay communities (ii. 379).

(v). The most thoroughly wild and uncivilised members of our race, regarded by the Malays as little better than brute beasts, with no recorded history (ii. 384).

(w). Nomadic life of the Semang leads them over a considerable tract of country (ii. 388).

Psychical:—

(x). Decorative patterns on quivers representing natural objects, and possessing magical virtue to bring down various species of monkeys and apes and other small mammals (i. 417), and as charms for the men (i. 423).

(y). Decorative pattern on magic comb worn by women to serve as a charm against venomous reptiles and insects, similar design for similar reason sometimes painted on the breast (i. 41, 420-436).

(z). Child's name is taken from some tree which stands near the prospective birthplace of the child. As soon as the child is born this name is shouted aloud by thesage femme, who then hands over the child to another woman, who buries the afterbirth underneath the birth-tree or name-tree of the child. As soon as this is done the father cuts a series of notches in the tree, starting from the ground and terminating at the height of the breast. The cutting of these notches is intended to signalise the arrival on earth of a new human being, since it thus shows that Kari registers the souls that he has sent forth by notching the tree against which he leans. Trees thus "blazed" are never felled. The child must not in later life injure any tree which belongs to the species of his tree; forhim all such trees are taboo, and he must not even eat their fruit, the only exception being when an expectant mother revisits her birth-tree. Every tree of its species is regarded as identical with the birth-tree (ii. 3, 4). When an East Semang dies his birth-tree dies too (ii. 5).

(aa). The child's soul is conveyed in a bird, which always inhabits a tree of the species to which the birth-tree belongs. It flies from one tree of the species to another, following the as yet unborn body. The souls of first-born children are always young birds newly hatched, the offspring of the bird which contained the soul of the mother. If the mother does not eat the soul-bird during her accouchement the child will be stillborn or will die shortly after birth (ii. 4, 192, 194, 216). She keeps the soul-bird within the birth-bamboo, and does not eat it all at once, but piecemeal (ii. 6). All human souls grow upon a soul-tree in the other world, whence they are fetched by a bird which was killed and eaten by the expectant mother (ii. 194).

(bb). Semang religion, in spite of its recognition of a thunder-god (Kari) and certain minor deities (so called), has very little indeed in the way of ceremonial, and appears to consist mainly of mythology and legend. It shows remarkably few traces of demon worship, very little fear of ghosts of the deceased, and still less of any sort of animistic beliefs (ii. 174). [As the Kari is the deity common to the Semang and the people higher in culture than the Semang, it is difficult to trace out the primitive idea. The myths also show a common impress, "which isprobably mainly due to the same savage Malay element" (ii. 183).]

(cc). During a storm of thunder and lightning the Semang draw a few drops of blood from the region of the shin bone, mix it with a little water in a bamboo receptacle, and throw it up to the angry skies (ii. 204).

(dd). Pretend entire ignorance of a supreme being, but on pressure confessed to a very powerful yet benevolent being, the maker of the world (ii. 209).

FOOTNOTES:[284]Beddoe,Races of Britain, cap. ii., andJourn. Anthrop. Inst., xxxv. 236-7; Boyd-Dawkins,Early Man in Britain, cap. vii. viii. and ix.; Ripley,Races of Europe, cap. xii.[285]Rhys,Celtic Britain, 271; Rhys,Celtic Heathendom,passim; Rhys and Jones,Welsh People, cap. i. and Appendix B on "Pre-Aryan Syntax in Insular Celtic," by Professor Morris Jones.[286]Barrows, mounds, tumuli, stone circles, monoliths are generally admitted to belong to the Stone Age people before the Celts arrived, and when they are adequately investigated, as Mr. Arthur Evans has investigated Stonehenge (Archæological Review, vol. ii. pp. 312-330), and the Rollright Stones (Folklore, vol. vi. pp. 5-51), the evidence of a prehistoric origin is unquestioned.[287]I have worked out the evidence for this in theArchæological Review, vol. iii. pp. 217-242, 350-375, and though I do not endorse all I have written there, the main points are still, I think, good.[288]Wallace,Darwinism, cap. xv.[289]Spencer and Gillen,Central Tribes of Australia, 12, 272, 324, 368, 420.[290]Descent of Man, i. cap. vii. 176.[291]Cf.Topinard'sAnthropology, part iii., "On the Origin of Man," pp. 515-535, for the details of the various authorities ranged on the sides of monogenists and polygenists.[292]Keane,Man, Past and Present, discusses the important evidence obtained by Dr. Dubois from Java, and Dr. Noetling from Upper Burma, pp. 5-8. It is only fair to that brilliant scholar, Dr. Latham, to point out that without the evidence before him to prove the point, he came to the same conclusion that the original home of man was "somewhere in intra-tropical Asia, and that it was the single locality of a single pair."—Latham,Man and his Migrations, 248.[293]The most recent example of this is Mr. Thomas's extraordinary treatment of the evidence of migration in Australia. It produces in his mind "novel conditions," but has effects which he cannot neglect, but which he strangely misinterprets. N. W. Thomas,Kinship Organisations in Australia, 27-28.[294]Spencer,Principles of Sociology, i. 18.[295]Lord Avebury,Prehistoric Times, 586.[296]Man, Past and Present, pp. 1, 8.[297]Latham,Man and his Migrations, 155-6.[298]The ethnographic movement is a very definite fact in anthropological evidence, though it has been little noted. Thus "the Coles are evidently a good pioneering race, fond of new clearings and the luxuriant and easily raised crops of the virgin soil, and have constitutions that thrive on malaria, so it is perhaps in the best interest of humanity and cause of civilisation that they be kept moving by continued Aryan propulsion. Ever armed with bow, arrows, and pole-axe, they are prepared to do battle with the beasts of the forest, holding even the king of the forest, the 'Bun Rajah,' that is, the tiger, in little fear."—Col. Dalton inJourn. Asiatic Soc., Bengal, xxxiv. 9.[299]Traditions of great migrations exist among most primitive races. Some of these contain unexpected corroboration from actual discoveries. Thus the natives of New Zealand had a tradition that their ancestors, when they arrived in their canoes some four centuries ago, buried some sacred things under a large tree. It is said that the tree was blown down in recent times and that the sacred things were discovered. Taplin records "a good specimen of the kind of migration which has taken place among the aborigines all over the continent" (The Narrinyeri, p. 4); and similar evidence could be produced in almost every direction. Mr. Mathew inEaglehawk and Crowdeals with "the argument from mythology and tradition" as to the origin of the Australians in a very suggestive fashion (pp. 14-22). Stanley has preserved an African native tradition of local groups spreading out from the parent home(Through the Dark Continent, i. 346).[300]I am aware this is disputed by O. Peschel—Races of Man, 137et seq.—but I think the evidence is sufficient; and it must be remembered that there is direct evidence of the most backward races not using the fire they possess for cooking, but always eating their animal food raw, as, for instance, the Semang people of the Malay Peninsula. (See Skeat and Blagden,Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula, i. 112.) The Andaman Islanders could not make fire, though they possessed and kept it alive. This shows that they must have borrowed it and did not previously possess it.—Quatrefages,The Pygmies, 108. Tylor,Early History of Mankind, cap. ix., should be consulted.[301]The term political is, I confess, a little awkward, owing to its specially modern use, but it is the only term which, in its early sense, expresses the stage of social development represented by a polity as distinct from a mere localisation.[302]It was one of the first efforts of the science of language to endeavour to trace out the original home of the so-called Aryas and their subsequent migrations. "Emigration," said Bunsen, "is the great agent in forming nations and languages" (Philosophy of Hist., i. 56); and Niebuhr, who has traced out most of the migrations of the Greek tribes, observes that "this migration of nations was formerly not mentioned anywhere" (Anc. Hist., ii. 212). Quite recently, Professor Flinders Petrie has worked at the question of European migrations in the Huxley lecture of 1907 (Journ. Anthrop. Inst., xxxvi. 189-232), his valuable maps showing "the movements of twenty of the principal peoples that entered Europe during the centuries of great movements that are best known to us" (204). In the meantime, the folklorist has much to do in this direction, and up to the present he has almost entirely ignored or misread the evidence. I do not know whether Mr. Nutt would still adhere to his conclusion that the myth embodied in the Celtic expulsion-and-return formula is undoubtedly solar (Folklore Record, iv. 42), but a restatement of Mr. Nutt's careful and elaborate analysis would lead me to trace the myth to the migration period of Aryan history, just as I agree with von Ihering that thever sacrumof the Romans is a rite continued from the migration period to express in religious formulæ, and on emergency to again carry out, the ancient practice of sending forth from an overstocked centre sufficient of the tribesmen and tribeswomen to leave those who remained economically well-conditioned (The Evolution of the Aryan, 249-290). Pheidon's law at Corinth, alluded to by Aristotle (Pol., ii. cap. vi.), could only be carried out by a sending out of the surplus. See also Aristotle,Pol., ii. cap. xii.; and Newman's note to the first reference, quoting similar laws elsewhere. Both the "junior-right" traditions and customs take us back to the same conditions. The occupation of fresh territories is an observable feature of the Russian mir (Wallace,Russia, i. 255; LaveleyePrimitive Property, 34), and Mr. Chadwick has recently called attention to the corresponding Scandinavian evidence (Origin of the English Nation, 334).[303]Mr. J. R. Logan long ago pointed out that "the further we go back, we find ethnic characteristics more uniform," and further concluded that certain facts observed by himself "lead to the inference that the Archaic world was connected."—Journ. Indian Archipelago, iv. 290, 291.[304]Descent of Man, pp. 590, 591.[305]Studies in Ancient History, i. 84.[306]History of Human Marriage, cap. ii.[307]Ancient Society, p. 10.[308]Secret of the Totem, p. 32.[309]N. W. Thomas,Kinship Organisation in Australia, 4.[310]Folklore, xii. 232.[311]Both Dr. Haddon and myself made the same point on a criticism of Mr. Fraser'sGolden Bough, mine being from the Aricia rites, and Dr. Haddon's from the savage parallels thereto. SeeFolklore, xii. 223, 224, 232.[312]Sproat'sScenes and Studies of Savage Life, 19. The use of the term "tribe" in this quotation is, of course, descriptive only. There is no tribal constitution among the Ahts, and "group" would have been the preferable term.[313]Dr. W. H. Rivers' recently published work on the Todas is the best authority.[314]Rivers,op. cit., 432, 455.[315]Rivers,op. cit., cap. xxi. 504, 517.[316]Rivers,op. cit., 452-456.[317]Latham,Descriptive Ethnology, ii, 137.[318]Bucher,Industrial Evolution, 56.[319]Rev. George Taplin,The Narrinyeri; South Australian Aborigines, 40.Cf.Howitt,Native Tribes of South-east Australia, 710-720; Grierson,The Silent Trade, 22.[320]Cf.Skeat and Blagden,Pagan Tribes of Malay Peninsula, i, 10.[321]Graham,Bheel Tribes of Khandesh, 3.[322]Herodotos, iv. 180.[323]Journ. Asiatic Soc., Bengal, xiii. 625.[324]Major Gurdon,The Khasis, 76, 82.[325]N. W. Thomas,Kinship Organisations in Australia, 124.[326]Fustel de Coulange'sCité Antique, cap. xiv. and xv., is, however, the most exaggerated example of this point of view.[327]Lang,Social Origins, 1. The latest exponent of anthropological principles affirms that "the family which exists in the lower stages of culture, though it is overshadowed by the other social phenomena, has persisted through all the manifold revolutions of society."—N. W. Thomas,Kinship Organisations in Australia, 1.[328]Jevons'Introd. to Hist. of Religion, 195.[329]See also Prof. Geikie inScottish Geographical Mag.(Sept. 1897).[330]Early Hist. of Mankind, 303; MacCulloch,Childhood of Fiction, 396; Gould,Mythical Monsters.[331]Mr. Westermarck has collected excellent evidence as to the economic influences upon savage society (Hist. of Human Marriage, 39-49), and we may quite properly assume the same conditions for earliest man.[332]A very good summary of the pygmy peoples in all parts of the world is given by Mr. W. A. Reed in his usefulNegritos of Zambales, 13-22.Cf.Keane,Man, Past and Present, 118-121; Keane,Ethnology, 246-248; and Sir W. H. Flower,Essays on Museums, cap. xix.[333]Latham,Man and his Migrations, 55, 56. Dr. Beke was a most cautious observer, and I have consulted all his contributions to theJournal of the Geographical Society(vol. xiii.) and have found no sign of his retraction of the evidence. His correspondence in theLiterary Gazetteof 1843, p. 852, discusses the question of the Dokos being pygmies, but he adheres to his information as to the absence of social structure being correct.[334]Lib. ii. 32, 8;cf.Quatrefages,The Pygmies, cap. 1, "The Pygmies of the Ancients."[335]Lieut.-Col. Sutherland,Memoir respecting the Kaffirs, Hottentots, and Bosjemans, i. 67 (Cape Town, 1846).[336]Burrows,The Land of Pygmies, 182.[337]Mr. A. B. Lloyd's volumeIn Dwarfland and Cannibal Country, p. 96, is the most recent evidence.[338]It is worth noting here that the Chinese traditions of the pygmies are exceedingly suggestive and curious. See Moseley,Notes by a Naturalist, 369.[339]Skeat and Blagden,Malay Peninsula, ii. 443.[340]Journ. Indian Archipelago, iv. 425-427;cf.Journ. Anthrop. Inst., xvi. 228; Wallace,Malay Archipelago, 452.[341]Clifford,In Court and Kampong, 171-181.[342]Skeat and Blagden,Pagan Races of Malay Peninsula, i. 13.[343]Op. cit., i. 53-4, 139, 169, 172, 341.[344]Op. cit., i. 170.[345]Op. cit., i. 243-248, 268.[346]Op. cit., i. 494; ii. 56, 218.[347]Op. cit., ii. 3. CompareJourn. Indian Archipelago, iv. 427, "they are called after particular trees, that is, if a child is born under or near a cocoanut or durian, or any particular tree in the forest, it is named accordingly," and John Anderson,Considerations relative to Malayan Peninsula, 1824, p. xli.[348]Op. cit., ii. 4, 192, 194.[349]Op. cit., ii. 174, 209.[350]Archæological Review, i. 13, from an official report published in a Government Blue Book.[351]Brinton,The American Race; Curtin,Creation Myths of Primitive America.[352]Darwin,Journal of Researches, 228.[353]Anthropological Inst., vii. 502-510.[354]Quatrefages,The Pygmies, 24, 48, 69.[355]There is ample evidence of this characteristic. Thus, of the Australians of Port Lincoln district, it is said that "the habit of constantly changing their place of rest is so great that they cannot overcome it even if staying where all their wants can be abundantly supplied."—Trans. Roy. Soc., Victoria, v. 178.[356]Fortnightly Review, lxxviii. 455.[357]Secret of the Totem, 125, 140.[358]British Association Report, 1902, p. 745.Cf.Spencer and Gillen,Northern Tribes of Central Australia, 160.[359]Lang,Secret of the Totem, 140, quoting Grey,Vocabulary of the Dialects of South-west Australia.[360]Spencer and Gillen,Tribes of Central Australia, 119.[361]The reader should consult Mason'sWomen's Share in Primitive Culture, and Bucher'sIndustrial Evolution, for evidence on this point.[362]Livingstone,South Africa, 462.[363]Sleeman,Rambles of an Indian Official, i. 43. "Banotsarg is the name given to the marriage ceremony performed in honour of a newly planted orchard, without which preliminary observance it is not proper to partake of its fruit. A man holding the Salagram personates the bridegroom, and another holding the sacred Tulsi personates the bride. After burning a hom or sacrificial fire, the officiating Brahmin puts the usual questions to the couple about to be united. The bride then perambulates a small spot marked out in the centre of the orchard. Proceeding from the south towards the west, she makes the circuit three times, followed at a short distance by the bridegroom holding in his hand a strip of her chadar of garment. After this, the bridegroom takes precedence, making his three circuits, and followed in like manner by his bride. The ceremony concludes with the usual offerings" (Elliot,Folklore of North-west Provinces of India, i. 234).[364]Myths explaining the domestication of animals belong to this stage of culture. The dog is a sacred animal among the Khasis, with certain totemic associations, and there is a very realistic and humanising myth relating how the dog came to be regarded as the friend of man (Gurdon,The Khasis, 51, 172-3). The Kyeng creation legend includes a good example of animal friendship with man (Lewin,Wild Races of South-east India, 238-9). The American creation myths afford remarkable testimony to this view of the case. "Game and fish of all sorts were under direct divine supervision ... maize or Indian corn is a transformed god who gave himself to be eaten to save men from hunger and death" (Curtin,Creation Myths of Primitive America, pp. xxvi, xxxviii). The Narrinyeri Australians "do not appear to have any story of the origin of the world, but nearly all animals they suppose anciently to have been men who performed great prodigies, and at last transformed themselves into different kinds of animals and stones" (Taplin,The Narrinyeri, 59).[365]Legend of Perseus, i. cap. vi.[366]Secret of the Totem, 29.[367]Mitchell,Australian Expeditions, i. 307;cf.Fison and Howitt,Kamilaroi and Kurnai, 200, 224; Taplin,The Narrinyeri, 10.[368]Curr,Australian Race, i. p. 193;cf.Smyth,Aborigines of Victoria, ii. p. 316.[369]Fison and Howitt,Kamilaroi and Kurnai, 66, 285, 289.[370]Fison and Howitt,op. cit., 68, 73.[371]Lang,Secret of the Totem, 64.[372]Spencer and Gillen,Central Tribes, 7.[373]Spencer and Gillen,Central Tribes, 120, 124, 133.[374]Globus, xci, a very important criticism of Spencer and Gillen's work.[375]Spencer and Gillen,op. cit., 139, 154.[376]Spencer and Gillen,Northern Tribes, 144.[377]Globus, xci, gives important evidence of traces of female descent among the Arunta.[378]There is conflict of testimony on this point. Spencer and Gillen deny that the Arunta recognise the fact of paternity in any way (seeNorthern Tribes, pp. xiii, 145, 330), and yet talk of the "actual father" in ceremonial functions (p. 361).[379]Skeat and Blagden,Malay Peninsula, ii. 218.[380]Newbold,Political and State Acc. of Malacca, ii.; Skeat and Blagden,op. cit., ii. 56.[381]Messrs. Spencer and Gillen,Central Tribes, 36, give a useful note on this point.[382]In this they are exactly paralleled by the Khasi people of Assam, among whom we find a limited sort of male chiefship by succession through females, and an absolute succession to property by females by succession through females (Gurdon,The Khasis, 68, 88). Descent from the female is absolute in both cases, and all we get is male ascendancy.[383]Secret of the Totem, 73.[384]Op. cit., 79.[385]Lang,Secret of the Totem, 148.[386]Central Tribes, 72. Mrs. Langloh Parker's information as to the origin of the Euahlayi two-class division having arisen from an amalgamation of two distinct tribes, points to the same facts.—Euahlayi Tribe, 12.[387]Spencer and Gillen,Tribes of Central Australia, 96, 99, 106.[388]Lang's Introd. to Bolland'sAristotle's Politics(1877), p. 104; Grant Allen'sAnglo-Saxon Britain(1888), pp. 79-83.[389]Topography of Ireland, lib. ii. cap. 19.[390]Hist. of Ireland, ii. 361.[391]Irish Nennius, p. 205; Lang,Custom and Myth, p. 265;Revue Celtique, ii. 202.[392]View of the State of Ireland, p. 99.[393]Moryson,Hist. of Ireland, ii. 367.[394]Aubrey,Remaines of Gentilisme, 204.[395]Camden,Britannia, iii. 455; iv. 459.[396]The significance of the word "gossip" is worth noting. Halliwell says it "signified arelationor sponsor in baptism, all of whom were to each other and to the parentsGod-sibs, that is,sib, or related by means of religion." This meaning does not seem to have died out in the days of Spenser, and his use of the word to describe the relationship of the men of Ossory to wolves is very significant. For the history of this important word see Hearn'sAryan Household, 290.[397]Otway,Sketches in Erris, 383-4.[398]Folklore Record, iv. 98.[399]Ulster Journ. Arch., ii. 161, 162. They have also another primitive trait. Their trade emblems are carved on their tombstones.Roy. Irish Acad., vii. 260.[400]This I gather fromUlster Journ. Arch., ii. 164, where it is stated that the hare is unpropitious.[401]Folklore Journal, ii. 259.[402]Folklore Journal, ii. 259;Folklore Record, iv. 104. Miss Ffennell kindly informed me at the meeting of the Folklore Society where I read a paper on the subject, that she had frequently heard the islanders of Achill, off the coast of Ireland, state their belief that they were descended from seals.[403]Published by theIrish Archæological Society, p. 27; there is a Seal Island off the coast of Donegal (Joyce,Irish Place-Names, ii. 282); and some Shetland legends of the seal will be found inSoc. Antiq. Scot., i. 86-89. Seals are eaten for food in the island of Harris (see Martin,Western Islands, 36), and one called the Virgin Mary's Seal is offered to the minister (Reeves,Adamnan Vita. Columb., 78, noteg). The attitude of the Irish to seals is shown by the two following notes:— "At Erris, in Ireland, seals are considered to be human beings under enchantment, and they consider it unlucky to have anything to do with seals, and to have one live near their dwelling is considered as productive of evil to life and property. A story current, in 1841, describes how a young fisherman came in a fog upon an island whereon lived these enchanted men in their human form, but when they quitted it they turned to seals again" (Otway,Sketches of Erris, 398, 403). Off Downpatrick Head they used to take seals, but have given up the practice, because once two young fellows had urged their curraghs into a cave where the seals were known to breed, and they were killing them right and left when, in the farthest end of the cave and sitting up on its bent tail in a corner, there sat an old seal. One of the boys was just making ready to strike him, when the seal cried out, "Och, boys! och, ma bouchals, spare your old grandfather, Darby O'Dowd." He then proceeded to tell the boys his story. "It's true I was dead and dacently buried, but here I am for my sins turned into a sale as other sinners are and will be, and if you put an end to me and skin me maybe it's worser I'll be, and go into a shark or a porpoise. Lave your ould forefather where he is, to live out his time as a sale. Maybe for your own sakes you will ever hereafter leave off following and parsecuting and murthering sales who may be nearer to yourselves nor you think." The story is universally believed, and on the strength of it the people have given up seal hunting (Otway,Sketches of Erris, 230).[404]Kinship and Marriage in Arabia, 188.Cf.Mr. Jacobs' articles inArchæological Review, "Are there totem clans in the Old Testament?" vol. iii. pp. 145-164.[405]Origins of English History, 297.[406]Proc. Roy. Irish Acad., x. 436; Lang'sCustom and Myth, 265; Elton'sOrigins of English History, 299-300;Revue Celtique, i. 50; iii. 176.[407]Rev. Celtique, vi. 232.[408]Aubrey'sRemaines of Gentilisme, 102.[409]Folklore Record, i. 243.[410]Xiphilinus inMon. Hist. Brit., p. lvii.[411]Choice Notes, Folklore, p. 16.[412]Vulgar Errors, p. 320.[413]Aubrey,Gentilisme and Judaisme, 109; Napier,Folklore of West of Scotland, 26. Consult Mr. Billson's valuable paper on "The Easter Hare" inFolklore, iii. 441-466.[414]Gregor,Folklore of North-East Scotland, 129, 199.[415]O'Curry,Manners of the Anc. Irish, i. p. ccclxx.[416]Notes and Queries, 3rdser.iv. 82, 158; Dyer'sPopular Customs, 384.[417]Gordon Cumming,Hebrides, 369.[418]Gordon Cumming,Hebrides, 369.[419]Gentleman's Magazine Library, Pop. Sup., 216.[420]It will be useful to refer to Mr. Thrupp's paper on "British Superstition as to Hares, Geese, and Poultry" inTrans. Ethnological Society of London, new ser. vol. v. pp. 162-167.[421]Origins of English History, 170.[422]Gordon Cumming,Hebrides, 365.[423]Dalyell'sDarker Superstitions of Scotland, 431. It should be noted that Dalyell wrote before the age of scientific folklore, and therefore his observations are founded more upon conjectures derived from the practices and beliefs themselves than from any theory as to origins.[424]White horse, p. 208; black cat, p. 211, note 3; two magpies, p. 224; crickets, p. 238; hawthorn, p. 244.[425]Fortnightly Review, xii. 562.[426]It is just possible that the value of investigating Australian totemism may prove to have a still more direct bearing upon British folklore, for Huxley's opinion as to the Australoid race is not entirely to be neglected. He argued that "The Australoid race are dark complexion, ranging through various shades of light and dark chocolate colour; dark or black eyes; the hair of the scalp black and soft, silky and wavy; the skull dolichocephalic. The great continent of Australia is the headquarters of the Australoid race.... The Dekkan, which is so remarkably isolated on the north by the valleys of the Ganges and Indus, beyond these by the Himalaya Mountains, and on the east and west by the sea, was originally inhabited, and is still largely peopled by men who completely come under the definition of the Australoid race given above. In Abyssinia and Egypt there is a smooth-haired, dark-complexioned, long-headed stock which I am strongly inclined to regard as a westward extension of the Australoid race. I would venture to suggest that the dark whites who stretch from Northern Hindostan through Western Asia, skirt both shores of the Mediterranean, and extend through Western Europe to Ireland, may have had their origin in a prolongation of the Australoid race, which has become modified by selection or intermixture" (Huxley inPrehistoric Congress, 1868, pp. 92-94). This point of view is confirmed by Mr. Mathew's conclusions,Eaglehawk and Crow, cap. iii.

[284]Beddoe,Races of Britain, cap. ii., andJourn. Anthrop. Inst., xxxv. 236-7; Boyd-Dawkins,Early Man in Britain, cap. vii. viii. and ix.; Ripley,Races of Europe, cap. xii.

[285]Rhys,Celtic Britain, 271; Rhys,Celtic Heathendom,passim; Rhys and Jones,Welsh People, cap. i. and Appendix B on "Pre-Aryan Syntax in Insular Celtic," by Professor Morris Jones.

[286]Barrows, mounds, tumuli, stone circles, monoliths are generally admitted to belong to the Stone Age people before the Celts arrived, and when they are adequately investigated, as Mr. Arthur Evans has investigated Stonehenge (Archæological Review, vol. ii. pp. 312-330), and the Rollright Stones (Folklore, vol. vi. pp. 5-51), the evidence of a prehistoric origin is unquestioned.

[287]I have worked out the evidence for this in theArchæological Review, vol. iii. pp. 217-242, 350-375, and though I do not endorse all I have written there, the main points are still, I think, good.

[288]Wallace,Darwinism, cap. xv.

[289]Spencer and Gillen,Central Tribes of Australia, 12, 272, 324, 368, 420.

[290]Descent of Man, i. cap. vii. 176.

[291]Cf.Topinard'sAnthropology, part iii., "On the Origin of Man," pp. 515-535, for the details of the various authorities ranged on the sides of monogenists and polygenists.

[292]Keane,Man, Past and Present, discusses the important evidence obtained by Dr. Dubois from Java, and Dr. Noetling from Upper Burma, pp. 5-8. It is only fair to that brilliant scholar, Dr. Latham, to point out that without the evidence before him to prove the point, he came to the same conclusion that the original home of man was "somewhere in intra-tropical Asia, and that it was the single locality of a single pair."—Latham,Man and his Migrations, 248.

[293]The most recent example of this is Mr. Thomas's extraordinary treatment of the evidence of migration in Australia. It produces in his mind "novel conditions," but has effects which he cannot neglect, but which he strangely misinterprets. N. W. Thomas,Kinship Organisations in Australia, 27-28.

[294]Spencer,Principles of Sociology, i. 18.

[295]Lord Avebury,Prehistoric Times, 586.

[296]Man, Past and Present, pp. 1, 8.

[297]Latham,Man and his Migrations, 155-6.

[298]The ethnographic movement is a very definite fact in anthropological evidence, though it has been little noted. Thus "the Coles are evidently a good pioneering race, fond of new clearings and the luxuriant and easily raised crops of the virgin soil, and have constitutions that thrive on malaria, so it is perhaps in the best interest of humanity and cause of civilisation that they be kept moving by continued Aryan propulsion. Ever armed with bow, arrows, and pole-axe, they are prepared to do battle with the beasts of the forest, holding even the king of the forest, the 'Bun Rajah,' that is, the tiger, in little fear."—Col. Dalton inJourn. Asiatic Soc., Bengal, xxxiv. 9.

[299]Traditions of great migrations exist among most primitive races. Some of these contain unexpected corroboration from actual discoveries. Thus the natives of New Zealand had a tradition that their ancestors, when they arrived in their canoes some four centuries ago, buried some sacred things under a large tree. It is said that the tree was blown down in recent times and that the sacred things were discovered. Taplin records "a good specimen of the kind of migration which has taken place among the aborigines all over the continent" (The Narrinyeri, p. 4); and similar evidence could be produced in almost every direction. Mr. Mathew inEaglehawk and Crowdeals with "the argument from mythology and tradition" as to the origin of the Australians in a very suggestive fashion (pp. 14-22). Stanley has preserved an African native tradition of local groups spreading out from the parent home(Through the Dark Continent, i. 346).

[300]I am aware this is disputed by O. Peschel—Races of Man, 137et seq.—but I think the evidence is sufficient; and it must be remembered that there is direct evidence of the most backward races not using the fire they possess for cooking, but always eating their animal food raw, as, for instance, the Semang people of the Malay Peninsula. (See Skeat and Blagden,Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula, i. 112.) The Andaman Islanders could not make fire, though they possessed and kept it alive. This shows that they must have borrowed it and did not previously possess it.—Quatrefages,The Pygmies, 108. Tylor,Early History of Mankind, cap. ix., should be consulted.

[301]The term political is, I confess, a little awkward, owing to its specially modern use, but it is the only term which, in its early sense, expresses the stage of social development represented by a polity as distinct from a mere localisation.

[302]It was one of the first efforts of the science of language to endeavour to trace out the original home of the so-called Aryas and their subsequent migrations. "Emigration," said Bunsen, "is the great agent in forming nations and languages" (Philosophy of Hist., i. 56); and Niebuhr, who has traced out most of the migrations of the Greek tribes, observes that "this migration of nations was formerly not mentioned anywhere" (Anc. Hist., ii. 212). Quite recently, Professor Flinders Petrie has worked at the question of European migrations in the Huxley lecture of 1907 (Journ. Anthrop. Inst., xxxvi. 189-232), his valuable maps showing "the movements of twenty of the principal peoples that entered Europe during the centuries of great movements that are best known to us" (204). In the meantime, the folklorist has much to do in this direction, and up to the present he has almost entirely ignored or misread the evidence. I do not know whether Mr. Nutt would still adhere to his conclusion that the myth embodied in the Celtic expulsion-and-return formula is undoubtedly solar (Folklore Record, iv. 42), but a restatement of Mr. Nutt's careful and elaborate analysis would lead me to trace the myth to the migration period of Aryan history, just as I agree with von Ihering that thever sacrumof the Romans is a rite continued from the migration period to express in religious formulæ, and on emergency to again carry out, the ancient practice of sending forth from an overstocked centre sufficient of the tribesmen and tribeswomen to leave those who remained economically well-conditioned (The Evolution of the Aryan, 249-290). Pheidon's law at Corinth, alluded to by Aristotle (Pol., ii. cap. vi.), could only be carried out by a sending out of the surplus. See also Aristotle,Pol., ii. cap. xii.; and Newman's note to the first reference, quoting similar laws elsewhere. Both the "junior-right" traditions and customs take us back to the same conditions. The occupation of fresh territories is an observable feature of the Russian mir (Wallace,Russia, i. 255; LaveleyePrimitive Property, 34), and Mr. Chadwick has recently called attention to the corresponding Scandinavian evidence (Origin of the English Nation, 334).

[303]Mr. J. R. Logan long ago pointed out that "the further we go back, we find ethnic characteristics more uniform," and further concluded that certain facts observed by himself "lead to the inference that the Archaic world was connected."—Journ. Indian Archipelago, iv. 290, 291.

[304]Descent of Man, pp. 590, 591.

[305]Studies in Ancient History, i. 84.

[306]History of Human Marriage, cap. ii.

[307]Ancient Society, p. 10.

[308]Secret of the Totem, p. 32.

[309]N. W. Thomas,Kinship Organisation in Australia, 4.

[310]Folklore, xii. 232.

[311]Both Dr. Haddon and myself made the same point on a criticism of Mr. Fraser'sGolden Bough, mine being from the Aricia rites, and Dr. Haddon's from the savage parallels thereto. SeeFolklore, xii. 223, 224, 232.

[312]Sproat'sScenes and Studies of Savage Life, 19. The use of the term "tribe" in this quotation is, of course, descriptive only. There is no tribal constitution among the Ahts, and "group" would have been the preferable term.

[313]Dr. W. H. Rivers' recently published work on the Todas is the best authority.

[314]Rivers,op. cit., 432, 455.

[315]Rivers,op. cit., cap. xxi. 504, 517.

[316]Rivers,op. cit., 452-456.

[317]Latham,Descriptive Ethnology, ii, 137.

[318]Bucher,Industrial Evolution, 56.

[319]Rev. George Taplin,The Narrinyeri; South Australian Aborigines, 40.Cf.Howitt,Native Tribes of South-east Australia, 710-720; Grierson,The Silent Trade, 22.

[320]Cf.Skeat and Blagden,Pagan Tribes of Malay Peninsula, i, 10.

[321]Graham,Bheel Tribes of Khandesh, 3.

[322]Herodotos, iv. 180.

[323]Journ. Asiatic Soc., Bengal, xiii. 625.

[324]Major Gurdon,The Khasis, 76, 82.

[325]N. W. Thomas,Kinship Organisations in Australia, 124.

[326]Fustel de Coulange'sCité Antique, cap. xiv. and xv., is, however, the most exaggerated example of this point of view.

[327]Lang,Social Origins, 1. The latest exponent of anthropological principles affirms that "the family which exists in the lower stages of culture, though it is overshadowed by the other social phenomena, has persisted through all the manifold revolutions of society."—N. W. Thomas,Kinship Organisations in Australia, 1.

[328]Jevons'Introd. to Hist. of Religion, 195.

[329]See also Prof. Geikie inScottish Geographical Mag.(Sept. 1897).

[330]Early Hist. of Mankind, 303; MacCulloch,Childhood of Fiction, 396; Gould,Mythical Monsters.

[331]Mr. Westermarck has collected excellent evidence as to the economic influences upon savage society (Hist. of Human Marriage, 39-49), and we may quite properly assume the same conditions for earliest man.

[332]A very good summary of the pygmy peoples in all parts of the world is given by Mr. W. A. Reed in his usefulNegritos of Zambales, 13-22.Cf.Keane,Man, Past and Present, 118-121; Keane,Ethnology, 246-248; and Sir W. H. Flower,Essays on Museums, cap. xix.

[333]Latham,Man and his Migrations, 55, 56. Dr. Beke was a most cautious observer, and I have consulted all his contributions to theJournal of the Geographical Society(vol. xiii.) and have found no sign of his retraction of the evidence. His correspondence in theLiterary Gazetteof 1843, p. 852, discusses the question of the Dokos being pygmies, but he adheres to his information as to the absence of social structure being correct.

[334]Lib. ii. 32, 8;cf.Quatrefages,The Pygmies, cap. 1, "The Pygmies of the Ancients."

[335]Lieut.-Col. Sutherland,Memoir respecting the Kaffirs, Hottentots, and Bosjemans, i. 67 (Cape Town, 1846).

[336]Burrows,The Land of Pygmies, 182.

[337]Mr. A. B. Lloyd's volumeIn Dwarfland and Cannibal Country, p. 96, is the most recent evidence.

[338]It is worth noting here that the Chinese traditions of the pygmies are exceedingly suggestive and curious. See Moseley,Notes by a Naturalist, 369.

[339]Skeat and Blagden,Malay Peninsula, ii. 443.

[340]Journ. Indian Archipelago, iv. 425-427;cf.Journ. Anthrop. Inst., xvi. 228; Wallace,Malay Archipelago, 452.

[341]Clifford,In Court and Kampong, 171-181.

[342]Skeat and Blagden,Pagan Races of Malay Peninsula, i. 13.

[343]Op. cit., i. 53-4, 139, 169, 172, 341.

[344]Op. cit., i. 170.

[345]Op. cit., i. 243-248, 268.

[346]Op. cit., i. 494; ii. 56, 218.

[347]Op. cit., ii. 3. CompareJourn. Indian Archipelago, iv. 427, "they are called after particular trees, that is, if a child is born under or near a cocoanut or durian, or any particular tree in the forest, it is named accordingly," and John Anderson,Considerations relative to Malayan Peninsula, 1824, p. xli.

[348]Op. cit., ii. 4, 192, 194.

[349]Op. cit., ii. 174, 209.

[350]Archæological Review, i. 13, from an official report published in a Government Blue Book.

[351]Brinton,The American Race; Curtin,Creation Myths of Primitive America.

[352]Darwin,Journal of Researches, 228.

[353]Anthropological Inst., vii. 502-510.

[354]Quatrefages,The Pygmies, 24, 48, 69.

[355]There is ample evidence of this characteristic. Thus, of the Australians of Port Lincoln district, it is said that "the habit of constantly changing their place of rest is so great that they cannot overcome it even if staying where all their wants can be abundantly supplied."—Trans. Roy. Soc., Victoria, v. 178.

[356]Fortnightly Review, lxxviii. 455.

[357]Secret of the Totem, 125, 140.

[358]British Association Report, 1902, p. 745.Cf.Spencer and Gillen,Northern Tribes of Central Australia, 160.

[359]Lang,Secret of the Totem, 140, quoting Grey,Vocabulary of the Dialects of South-west Australia.

[360]Spencer and Gillen,Tribes of Central Australia, 119.

[361]The reader should consult Mason'sWomen's Share in Primitive Culture, and Bucher'sIndustrial Evolution, for evidence on this point.

[362]Livingstone,South Africa, 462.

[363]Sleeman,Rambles of an Indian Official, i. 43. "Banotsarg is the name given to the marriage ceremony performed in honour of a newly planted orchard, without which preliminary observance it is not proper to partake of its fruit. A man holding the Salagram personates the bridegroom, and another holding the sacred Tulsi personates the bride. After burning a hom or sacrificial fire, the officiating Brahmin puts the usual questions to the couple about to be united. The bride then perambulates a small spot marked out in the centre of the orchard. Proceeding from the south towards the west, she makes the circuit three times, followed at a short distance by the bridegroom holding in his hand a strip of her chadar of garment. After this, the bridegroom takes precedence, making his three circuits, and followed in like manner by his bride. The ceremony concludes with the usual offerings" (Elliot,Folklore of North-west Provinces of India, i. 234).

[364]Myths explaining the domestication of animals belong to this stage of culture. The dog is a sacred animal among the Khasis, with certain totemic associations, and there is a very realistic and humanising myth relating how the dog came to be regarded as the friend of man (Gurdon,The Khasis, 51, 172-3). The Kyeng creation legend includes a good example of animal friendship with man (Lewin,Wild Races of South-east India, 238-9). The American creation myths afford remarkable testimony to this view of the case. "Game and fish of all sorts were under direct divine supervision ... maize or Indian corn is a transformed god who gave himself to be eaten to save men from hunger and death" (Curtin,Creation Myths of Primitive America, pp. xxvi, xxxviii). The Narrinyeri Australians "do not appear to have any story of the origin of the world, but nearly all animals they suppose anciently to have been men who performed great prodigies, and at last transformed themselves into different kinds of animals and stones" (Taplin,The Narrinyeri, 59).

[365]Legend of Perseus, i. cap. vi.

[366]Secret of the Totem, 29.

[367]Mitchell,Australian Expeditions, i. 307;cf.Fison and Howitt,Kamilaroi and Kurnai, 200, 224; Taplin,The Narrinyeri, 10.

[368]Curr,Australian Race, i. p. 193;cf.Smyth,Aborigines of Victoria, ii. p. 316.

[369]Fison and Howitt,Kamilaroi and Kurnai, 66, 285, 289.

[370]Fison and Howitt,op. cit., 68, 73.

[371]Lang,Secret of the Totem, 64.

[372]Spencer and Gillen,Central Tribes, 7.

[373]Spencer and Gillen,Central Tribes, 120, 124, 133.

[374]Globus, xci, a very important criticism of Spencer and Gillen's work.

[375]Spencer and Gillen,op. cit., 139, 154.

[376]Spencer and Gillen,Northern Tribes, 144.

[377]Globus, xci, gives important evidence of traces of female descent among the Arunta.

[378]There is conflict of testimony on this point. Spencer and Gillen deny that the Arunta recognise the fact of paternity in any way (seeNorthern Tribes, pp. xiii, 145, 330), and yet talk of the "actual father" in ceremonial functions (p. 361).

[379]Skeat and Blagden,Malay Peninsula, ii. 218.

[380]Newbold,Political and State Acc. of Malacca, ii.; Skeat and Blagden,op. cit., ii. 56.

[381]Messrs. Spencer and Gillen,Central Tribes, 36, give a useful note on this point.

[382]In this they are exactly paralleled by the Khasi people of Assam, among whom we find a limited sort of male chiefship by succession through females, and an absolute succession to property by females by succession through females (Gurdon,The Khasis, 68, 88). Descent from the female is absolute in both cases, and all we get is male ascendancy.

[383]Secret of the Totem, 73.

[384]Op. cit., 79.

[385]Lang,Secret of the Totem, 148.

[386]Central Tribes, 72. Mrs. Langloh Parker's information as to the origin of the Euahlayi two-class division having arisen from an amalgamation of two distinct tribes, points to the same facts.—Euahlayi Tribe, 12.

[387]Spencer and Gillen,Tribes of Central Australia, 96, 99, 106.

[388]Lang's Introd. to Bolland'sAristotle's Politics(1877), p. 104; Grant Allen'sAnglo-Saxon Britain(1888), pp. 79-83.

[389]Topography of Ireland, lib. ii. cap. 19.

[390]Hist. of Ireland, ii. 361.

[391]Irish Nennius, p. 205; Lang,Custom and Myth, p. 265;Revue Celtique, ii. 202.

[392]View of the State of Ireland, p. 99.

[393]Moryson,Hist. of Ireland, ii. 367.

[394]Aubrey,Remaines of Gentilisme, 204.

[395]Camden,Britannia, iii. 455; iv. 459.

[396]The significance of the word "gossip" is worth noting. Halliwell says it "signified arelationor sponsor in baptism, all of whom were to each other and to the parentsGod-sibs, that is,sib, or related by means of religion." This meaning does not seem to have died out in the days of Spenser, and his use of the word to describe the relationship of the men of Ossory to wolves is very significant. For the history of this important word see Hearn'sAryan Household, 290.

[397]Otway,Sketches in Erris, 383-4.

[398]Folklore Record, iv. 98.

[399]Ulster Journ. Arch., ii. 161, 162. They have also another primitive trait. Their trade emblems are carved on their tombstones.Roy. Irish Acad., vii. 260.

[400]This I gather fromUlster Journ. Arch., ii. 164, where it is stated that the hare is unpropitious.

[401]Folklore Journal, ii. 259.

[402]Folklore Journal, ii. 259;Folklore Record, iv. 104. Miss Ffennell kindly informed me at the meeting of the Folklore Society where I read a paper on the subject, that she had frequently heard the islanders of Achill, off the coast of Ireland, state their belief that they were descended from seals.

[403]Published by theIrish Archæological Society, p. 27; there is a Seal Island off the coast of Donegal (Joyce,Irish Place-Names, ii. 282); and some Shetland legends of the seal will be found inSoc. Antiq. Scot., i. 86-89. Seals are eaten for food in the island of Harris (see Martin,Western Islands, 36), and one called the Virgin Mary's Seal is offered to the minister (Reeves,Adamnan Vita. Columb., 78, noteg). The attitude of the Irish to seals is shown by the two following notes:— "At Erris, in Ireland, seals are considered to be human beings under enchantment, and they consider it unlucky to have anything to do with seals, and to have one live near their dwelling is considered as productive of evil to life and property. A story current, in 1841, describes how a young fisherman came in a fog upon an island whereon lived these enchanted men in their human form, but when they quitted it they turned to seals again" (Otway,Sketches of Erris, 398, 403). Off Downpatrick Head they used to take seals, but have given up the practice, because once two young fellows had urged their curraghs into a cave where the seals were known to breed, and they were killing them right and left when, in the farthest end of the cave and sitting up on its bent tail in a corner, there sat an old seal. One of the boys was just making ready to strike him, when the seal cried out, "Och, boys! och, ma bouchals, spare your old grandfather, Darby O'Dowd." He then proceeded to tell the boys his story. "It's true I was dead and dacently buried, but here I am for my sins turned into a sale as other sinners are and will be, and if you put an end to me and skin me maybe it's worser I'll be, and go into a shark or a porpoise. Lave your ould forefather where he is, to live out his time as a sale. Maybe for your own sakes you will ever hereafter leave off following and parsecuting and murthering sales who may be nearer to yourselves nor you think." The story is universally believed, and on the strength of it the people have given up seal hunting (Otway,Sketches of Erris, 230).

[404]Kinship and Marriage in Arabia, 188.Cf.Mr. Jacobs' articles inArchæological Review, "Are there totem clans in the Old Testament?" vol. iii. pp. 145-164.

[405]Origins of English History, 297.

[406]Proc. Roy. Irish Acad., x. 436; Lang'sCustom and Myth, 265; Elton'sOrigins of English History, 299-300;Revue Celtique, i. 50; iii. 176.

[407]Rev. Celtique, vi. 232.

[408]Aubrey'sRemaines of Gentilisme, 102.

[409]Folklore Record, i. 243.

[410]Xiphilinus inMon. Hist. Brit., p. lvii.

[411]Choice Notes, Folklore, p. 16.

[412]Vulgar Errors, p. 320.

[413]Aubrey,Gentilisme and Judaisme, 109; Napier,Folklore of West of Scotland, 26. Consult Mr. Billson's valuable paper on "The Easter Hare" inFolklore, iii. 441-466.

[414]Gregor,Folklore of North-East Scotland, 129, 199.

[415]O'Curry,Manners of the Anc. Irish, i. p. ccclxx.

[416]Notes and Queries, 3rdser.iv. 82, 158; Dyer'sPopular Customs, 384.

[417]Gordon Cumming,Hebrides, 369.

[418]Gordon Cumming,Hebrides, 369.

[419]Gentleman's Magazine Library, Pop. Sup., 216.

[420]It will be useful to refer to Mr. Thrupp's paper on "British Superstition as to Hares, Geese, and Poultry" inTrans. Ethnological Society of London, new ser. vol. v. pp. 162-167.

[421]Origins of English History, 170.

[422]Gordon Cumming,Hebrides, 365.

[423]Dalyell'sDarker Superstitions of Scotland, 431. It should be noted that Dalyell wrote before the age of scientific folklore, and therefore his observations are founded more upon conjectures derived from the practices and beliefs themselves than from any theory as to origins.

[424]White horse, p. 208; black cat, p. 211, note 3; two magpies, p. 224; crickets, p. 238; hawthorn, p. 244.

[425]Fortnightly Review, xii. 562.

[426]It is just possible that the value of investigating Australian totemism may prove to have a still more direct bearing upon British folklore, for Huxley's opinion as to the Australoid race is not entirely to be neglected. He argued that "The Australoid race are dark complexion, ranging through various shades of light and dark chocolate colour; dark or black eyes; the hair of the scalp black and soft, silky and wavy; the skull dolichocephalic. The great continent of Australia is the headquarters of the Australoid race.... The Dekkan, which is so remarkably isolated on the north by the valleys of the Ganges and Indus, beyond these by the Himalaya Mountains, and on the east and west by the sea, was originally inhabited, and is still largely peopled by men who completely come under the definition of the Australoid race given above. In Abyssinia and Egypt there is a smooth-haired, dark-complexioned, long-headed stock which I am strongly inclined to regard as a westward extension of the Australoid race. I would venture to suggest that the dark whites who stretch from Northern Hindostan through Western Asia, skirt both shores of the Mediterranean, and extend through Western Europe to Ireland, may have had their origin in a prolongation of the Australoid race, which has become modified by selection or intermixture" (Huxley inPrehistoric Congress, 1868, pp. 92-94). This point of view is confirmed by Mr. Mathew's conclusions,Eaglehawk and Crow, cap. iii.

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