FOOTNOTES:

"I have often enquired of your tenants what they themselves thought of their pilgrimage to their wells of Kill Orcht, Tobbar-Brighde, Tobbar-Muire, near Elphin, and Moore, near Castlereagh, where multitudes assemble annually to celebrate what they, in broken English, termed Patterns; and when I pressed a very old man—Owen Hester—to state what possible advantage he expected to derive from the singular custom of frequenting in particular such wells as were contiguous to an old blasted oak, or an upright unhewn stone, and what the meaning was of the yet more singular custom of sticking rags in the branches of such trees and spitting on them, his answer, and the answer of the oldest men, was that their ancestors always did it; that it was a preservative against Geasa-Dravideacht,i.e.the sorceries of Druids; that their cattle was preserved by it from infectious disorders; that the davini maithe,i.e.the fairies, were kept in good humour by it; and so thoroughly persuaded were they of the sanctity of these pagan practices that they would travel bareheaded and barefooted from ten to twenty miles for the purpose of crawling on their knees round these wells and upright stones and oak trees westward as the sun travels, some three times, some six, some nine, and so on, in uneven numbers until their voluntary penances were completely fulfilled. The waters of Logh-Con were deemed so sacred from ancient usage that they would throw into the lake whole rolls of butter as apreservation for the milk of their cows against Geasa-Dravideacht."[450]

Scarcely less important than the effect of the antagonism of the Church in the production of arrested development is the effect of the toleration of the Church for pagan custom and belief. This toleration took the shape either of allowing the continuation of pagan custom and belief as a matter not affecting Christian doctrine or of actual absorption into Church practice and ritual. The story told to the full is a long and interesting one. And it still awaits the telling. Gibbon, in a few sentences, has told us the outline.[451]Other authorities have told us small episodes. I am, of course, not concerned here with anything more than to adduce sufficient evidence to establish the fact that Christian tolerance of paganism has been one of the assistant causes for the long continuance of pagan survivals.

I shall not hesitate to begin by quoting at length a luminous passage from Grimm's great work. In the preface to his second edition he writes as follows:—

"Oftentimes the Church prudently permitted, or could not prevent, that heathen and Christian things should here and there run into one another; the clergy themselves would not always succeed in marking off the bounds of the two religions: their private leanings might let some things pass which they found firmly rooted in the multitude. In the language, together with a stock of newly-imported Greek and Latin terms, there still remained, even for ecclesiastical use, a number of Teutonic words previously employed in heathen services, just as the names of gods stood ineradicable in the days of the week; to such words old customs would stillcling silent and unnoticed and take a new lease of life. The festivals of the people present a tough material: they are so closely bound up with its habits of life that they will put up with foreign additions if only to save a fragment of festivities long loved and tried. In this way Scandinavia, probably the Goths also for a time, and the Anglo-Saxons down to a late period, retained the heathenish Yule as all Teutonic Christians did the sanctity of Easter-tide; and from these two the Yule-boar and Yule-bread, the Easter pancake, Easter-sword, Easter-fire, and Easter-dance could not be separated. As faithfully were perpetuated the name and in many cases the observances of Midsummer. New Christian feasts, especially of saints, seem purposely, as well as accidentally, to have been made to fall on heathen holidays. Churches often rose precisely where a heathen god or his sacred tree had been pulled down, and the people trod their old paths to the accustomed site; sometimes the very walls of the heathen temple became those of the church, and cases occur in which idol images still found a place in a wall of the porch, or were set up outside the door, as at Bamberg Cathedral there lie Slavic heathen figures of animals inscribed with runes. Sacred hills and fountains were rechristened after saints, to whom their sanctity was transferred; sacred woods were handed over to the newly-founded convent or the king, and even under private ownership did not lose their long-accustomed homage. Law usages, particularly the ordeals and oath-takings, but also the beating of bounds, consecrations, image processions, spells and formulas, while retaining their heathen character, were simply clothed in Christian forms. In some customs there was little to change: the heathen practice of sprinkling a newborn babe with water closely resembled Christian baptism; the sign of the hammer, that of the cross; and the erection of tree crosses the irmensûls and world trees of paganism."[452]

This passage, written in 1844, has been abundantly illustrated by the research of specialists since that date, and, of course, Mr. Frazer's monumental work will occur to every reader. But, after all, the chief authority for the action of the Church towards paganism in this country is the famous letter of Pope Gregory to the Abbot Mellitus inA.D.601, as preserved by the historian Beda. It is worth while quoting this once again, for it is an English historical document of priceless value. "We have been much concerned," writes the good St. Gregory,

"since the departure of our congregation that is with you, because we have received no account of the success of your journey. When, therefore, Almighty God shall bring you to the most reverend Bishop Augustine our brother, tell him what I have, upon mature deliberation on the affair of the English, determined upon, namely, that the temples of the idols [fana idolorum] in that nation [gente] ought not to be destroyed; but let the idols that are in them be destroyed; let holy water be made and sprinkled upon the said temples, let altars be erected and relics placed. For if these temples be well built, it is requisite that they be converted from the worship of devils [dæmonum] to the worship of the true God; that the nation seeing that their temples are not destroyed may remove error from their hearts, and knowing and adoring the true God may the more familiarly resort to the places to which they have been accustomed. And because they have been used to slaughter many oxen in the sacrifices to devils some solemnity must be exchanged for them on this account, so that on the day of the dedication, or the nativities of the holy martyrs whose relics are there deposited, they may build themselves huts of the boughs of trees, about those churches which have been turned to that use from temples and celebrate the solemnity with religious feasting and nomore offer beasts to the devil [diabolo], but kill cattle to the praise of God in their eating, and return thanks to the giver of all things for their sustenance."[453]

The church of St. Pancras at Canterbury is claimed to be one of the temples so preserved,[454]and there have survived down to our own times examples of the animal sacrifice which in early Christian days may well have been preserved by this famous edict.[455]But beyond these illustrations of the two stated objects of Pope Gregory's letter there are innumerable additional results from such a policy,[456]results which prove that British pagandom was not stamped out by edict or by sword, but was rather gradually borne down before the strength of the new religion—borne down and pushed into the background out of sight of the Church and the State, relegated to the cottage homes, the cattle-sheds and the cornfields, the countryside and the denizens thereof.[457]

This is where we must search for it, and I think this important element in our studies will be better understood if we turn for one moment to the results of Christian contact with earlier belief in the one country where Christianity has set up its strongest political force, namely, Italy. Dr. Middleton wrote a series of remarkable letters which tell us much on this point, but before referring to this, I wish first to quote a hitherto buried record by an impartial observer[458]in the year 1704. It is a letter written from Venice to Sir Thomas Frankland, describing the travels and observations of a journey into Italy. The traveller writes:—

"I cannot leave Itally without making some general observations upon the country in general, and first as to their religion; it differs in name only now from what it was in the time of the ancient heathen Romans. I know this will sound very oddly with some sort of people, but compare them together and then let any reasonable man judge of the difference. The heathen Itallians had their gods for peaceand for war, for plenty and poverty, for health and sickness, riches and poverty, to whom they addressed themselves and their wants; and the Christian Itallians have their patron saints for each of these things, to whom they also address according to their wants. The heathen sacrificed bulls and other beasts, and the Christian ones after the same manner a piece of bread, which a picture in the garden of Aldobrandina at Rome, painted in the time of Titus Vespasian, shews by the altar and the priests' vestments to have been the same as used now. The Pantheon at Rome was dedicated by the ancients to all the gods, and by the moderns to all the saints; the temple of Castor and Pollux at Rome is now dedicated to Cosmo and Damian, also twin brothers. The respect they pay to the Virgin Mary is far greater than what they pay to the Son, and whatever English Roman Catholics may be made to believe by their priests or impose upon us, it is certain that the devotion to the Madonnas in Itally is something more than a bare representation of the Virgin Mary when they desire her intercession. Miracles they pretend not only to be wrought by the Madonnas themselves, but there is far greater respect paid to a Madonna in one place than another, whereas if this statue were only a bare representation of the Virgin to keep them in mind of her, the respect would be equal. I visited all the famous ones, and it would fill a volume to tell you the fopperies that's said of them. That of Loretto, being what they say is the very house where the Virgin lived, is not to be described, the riches are so great, nor the devotion that's paid to the statue.... The Lady of Saronna is another famous one and very rich; she is much handsomer than she of Loretto and a whole church-full of the legend of the miracles she hath wrought. She is in great reputation, and it's thought will at last outtop the Lady of Loretto; there is another near Leghorne that I also visited calledLa Madonna della Silva Nera, to whom all Itallian ships that enter that port make a present of thanks for their happy voyage, andsalute her with their cannon, and most ships going out give her something for her protection during their voyage. I could tire you with she at the Annunciata at Florence, she within a mile of Bollognia, for whom the magistracy have piazza'd the road all the way from her station to the city, that she may not be encumbered with sun or rain when she makes them a visit, and hundreds more that would fill a volume of fopperies that I had the curiosity to see, but it would be imposing too much upon your patience."[459]

This only confirms Dr. Middleton's conclusions, which received the approval of Gibbon, and those of later writers. "As I descended from the Alps," writes the Rev. W. H. Blunt in 1823,

"I was admonished of my entrance into Italy by a little chapel to the Madonna, built upon a rock by the roadside, and from that time till I repassed this chain of mountains I received almost hourly proof that I was wandering amongst the descendants of that people which is described by Cicero to have been the most religious of mankind. Though the mixture of religion with all the common events of life is anything but an error, yet I could not avoid regretting that, like their heathen ancestors, the modern Italians had supplied the place of our great master mover by a countless host of inferior agents."[460]

Mr. Blunt goes on to give interesting details of the close connection between the modern religious festival, ceremony, or service, and those of classical times, and the conclusion is obvious. In modern days Dr. Mommsen has lent the sanction of his great authority to the identification of the birthday of Christ withthat of Mithra,[461]and Mr. Leland has given such numerous identifications not only of the cults of pagan and Christian Italy, but of the god-names of ancient Rome with the saint-names or witch-names of modern times,[462]that it seems impossible to deny a place for this evidence. "It was," says Gibbon,

"the universal sentiment both of the Church and of heretics that the dæmons were the authors, the patrons, and the objects of idolatry; those rebellious spirits who had been degraded from the rank of angels were still permitted to roam upon earth, to torment the bodies and to seduce the minds of sinful men. It was confessed, or at least it was imagined, that they had distributed among themselves the most important characters of Polytheism, one dæmon assuming the name of Jupiter, another of Æsculapius, a third of Venus, and a fourth perhaps of Apollo."[463]

This, then, is recognition and adoption of pagan beliefs, not the uprooting of them. If the Roman Jupiter was a Christian dæmon, his existence at all events was recognised. But even this negative way of adopting the old beliefs gave way as the Church spread further. The tribe of dæmons soon included the popular fairy, elf, and goblin. And then came the positive adoption of pagan customs. Gibbon describes how the early Christians refused to decorate their doors with garlands and lamps, and to take part in the ceremonial of lifting the bride over the threshold of the house.[464]Both these customs have survived in popular folklore, inspite of the recorded action of the early Church, and it would be curious to ascertain whether they have survived by the help of the Church. We cannot answer that question of historical evidence just now, but it is a question which, in its wider aspect, as including many other items of folklore, ought to be examined into. There is no doubt, however, that by analogy it can be answered, because we have ample evidence, if the writings of reformers may be taken as historical facts and not polemical imaginations, that many very important customs, among the richest as well as the poorest treasures of folklore, have been, so to speak, Christianised by the Church, and that the Church has taken part in and adopted non-Christian customs, the survivors of olden-time life in Europe.[465]

Now it is clear from these considerations, and from the vast mass of information which is gradually being accumulated on the subject, that not only the arresting force of Christianity but also its toleration has assisted in the preservation of pre-Christian belief and custom. But the preservation has been in fragments only. The system which supported the older faith and might, if it had been allowed a natural growth, have produced a newer religion of its own, was completely shattered.It left no preservative force except that of tradition, the traditional instinct to do what has always been done, to believe what has always been believed. Pre-Christian belief and custom has thus become isolated beliefs and customs in survival. It has been broken up into innumerable fragments of unequal character, and containing unequal elements. It has been forced back into secret action wherever Christianity was wholly antagonistic, and hence primitive public worship has tended to become local worship, or household worship, or even personal worship, while all such worship which is not the authorised Church worship has tended to become superstition. Where Christianity was not wholly antagonistic, it absorbed rites, customs, and even beliefs, and these primitive survivals have taken their place in the evolution of Christian doctrine, and thus become lost to the students of Celtic and Teutonic antiquities. But even so, there are discoverable points where the dividing line between non-Christian and Christian belief has not been obliterated by the process of absorption. In all cases it is the duty of the student to note the stage of arrested development in the primitive rite, custom, or belief, whether it be caused by antagonism or by absorption. It is at this point, indeed, that the history of the survival begins. It is here that we have to turn from the polity, the religion, or cultus of a people to the belief, practices, or superstition of that portion of our nation which has not shared its progress from tribesmen to citizens, from paganism to Christianity, from vain imaginings to science and philosophy. It is from this point we have to turn from the dignity of courts, the doingsof armies, and the results of commerce, to the doings, sayings, and ideas of the peasantry who cannot read, and who have depended upon tradition for all, or almost all, they know outside the formalities of law and Church.

FOOTNOTES:[444]Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire(Bury), iii. 214-15.[445]Royal Irish Academy, viii. 258;Brit. Arch. Assoc.(Gloucester volume), 62.[446]"The Story of the Ere Dwellers," Morris,Saga Library, ii. 8.[447]Camden,Britannia, s.v. "Ireland."[448]Henderson,Folklore of Northern Counties, 16.[449]Glas,Canary Islands, 148.[450]Betham,Gael and Cymbri, pp. 236-8.[451]Decline and Fall, iii. p. 214 (edit. Bury).[452]Grimm,Teutonic Mythology, by Stallybrass, iii. pp. 35, 36. A passage from Hakon's Saga, quoted by Du Chaillu in hisViking Age, i. p. 464, shows that the northern peoples adopted the same measures.[453]Beda, lib. i. cap. 30; and consult Mr. Plummer's learned notes on this (vol. ii. 57-61).[454]Stanley,Memorials of Canterbury, 37-38.[455]Cf.myEthnology in Folklore, 30-36, 136-140. Compare St. Patrick's dedication of pagan sacred stones to Christian purposes.—Tripartite Life of St. Patrick, i. 107.[456]Thus Henry of Huntingdon records that Redwald, King of the East Angles, after his conversion to Christianity, "set up altars to Christ and the devil in the same chapel" (lib. iii.).[457]Cf.Kemble,Saxons in England, i. 330-335. Dr. Hearn writes: "Even as the good Pope Gregory the Great permitted the newly converted English to retain their old temples and accustomed rites, attaching, however, to them another purpose and a new meaning, so his successors found means to utilize the simple beliefs of early animism. Long and vainly the Church struggled against this irresistible sentiment. Fifteen centuries ago it was charged against the Christians of that day that they appeased the shades of the dead with feasts like the Gentiles. In the Penitentials we find the prohibition of burning grains where a man had died. In theIndiculus superstitionum et Paganiarumamong the Saxons complaint is made of the too ready canonisation of the dead; and the Church seems to have been much troubled to keep within reasonable bounds this tendency to indiscriminate apotheosis. At length a compromise was effected, and the Feast of All Souls converted to pious uses that wealth of sentiment which previously was lavished on the dead" (The Aryan Household, p. 60). And, to close this short note upon an important subject, Mr. Metcalfe, speaking of the old poetic literature of the pagan English, says: "It was kidnapped, and its features so altered and disguised as not to be recognisable. It was supplanted by Christian poetical legends and Bible lays produced in rivalry of the popular lays of their heathen predecessors. Finding that the people would listen to nothing but these old lays, the missionaries affected their spirit and language, and borrowed the words and phrases of heathenism" (Metcalfe'sEnglishman and Scandinavian, p. 155).[458]For some reason not apparent in the document itself, Mrs. S. C. Lomas, the editor of this report, says this interesting letter gives "a curious and evidently prejudiced description of the religious houses and observances." See preface toHist. MSS. Com. Report on the MSS. of Chequers Court, Bucks, p. x.[459]Hist. MSS. Com., Chequers Court Papers, pp. 171-2.[460]Vestiges of Ancient Manners and Customs in Italy, p. 1.[461]Corpus insc. Lat., i. 409; andcf.Cumont'sMysteries of Mithra(1903).[462]Leland,Etruscan Roman Remains(1892).[463]Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire(Bury), ii. 15.[464]Decline and Fall, ii. 17.[465]Evidence is scattered far and wide in most of the reliable studies in folklore. Two special books may be mentioned. A great storehouse of examples is to be found inThe Popish Kingdoms, by Thomas Naogeorgus, Englyshed by Barnabe Googe, 1570, a new edition of which was published by Mr. R. C. Hope in 1880; and Mr. H. M. Bower has exhaustively examined one important Italian ceremony in hisThe Elevation and Procession of the Ceri at Gubbio, published by the Folklore Society in 1897.

[444]Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire(Bury), iii. 214-15.

[445]Royal Irish Academy, viii. 258;Brit. Arch. Assoc.(Gloucester volume), 62.

[446]"The Story of the Ere Dwellers," Morris,Saga Library, ii. 8.

[447]Camden,Britannia, s.v. "Ireland."

[448]Henderson,Folklore of Northern Counties, 16.

[449]Glas,Canary Islands, 148.

[450]Betham,Gael and Cymbri, pp. 236-8.

[451]Decline and Fall, iii. p. 214 (edit. Bury).

[452]Grimm,Teutonic Mythology, by Stallybrass, iii. pp. 35, 36. A passage from Hakon's Saga, quoted by Du Chaillu in hisViking Age, i. p. 464, shows that the northern peoples adopted the same measures.

[453]Beda, lib. i. cap. 30; and consult Mr. Plummer's learned notes on this (vol. ii. 57-61).

[454]Stanley,Memorials of Canterbury, 37-38.

[455]Cf.myEthnology in Folklore, 30-36, 136-140. Compare St. Patrick's dedication of pagan sacred stones to Christian purposes.—Tripartite Life of St. Patrick, i. 107.

[456]Thus Henry of Huntingdon records that Redwald, King of the East Angles, after his conversion to Christianity, "set up altars to Christ and the devil in the same chapel" (lib. iii.).

[457]Cf.Kemble,Saxons in England, i. 330-335. Dr. Hearn writes: "Even as the good Pope Gregory the Great permitted the newly converted English to retain their old temples and accustomed rites, attaching, however, to them another purpose and a new meaning, so his successors found means to utilize the simple beliefs of early animism. Long and vainly the Church struggled against this irresistible sentiment. Fifteen centuries ago it was charged against the Christians of that day that they appeased the shades of the dead with feasts like the Gentiles. In the Penitentials we find the prohibition of burning grains where a man had died. In theIndiculus superstitionum et Paganiarumamong the Saxons complaint is made of the too ready canonisation of the dead; and the Church seems to have been much troubled to keep within reasonable bounds this tendency to indiscriminate apotheosis. At length a compromise was effected, and the Feast of All Souls converted to pious uses that wealth of sentiment which previously was lavished on the dead" (The Aryan Household, p. 60). And, to close this short note upon an important subject, Mr. Metcalfe, speaking of the old poetic literature of the pagan English, says: "It was kidnapped, and its features so altered and disguised as not to be recognisable. It was supplanted by Christian poetical legends and Bible lays produced in rivalry of the popular lays of their heathen predecessors. Finding that the people would listen to nothing but these old lays, the missionaries affected their spirit and language, and borrowed the words and phrases of heathenism" (Metcalfe'sEnglishman and Scandinavian, p. 155).

[458]For some reason not apparent in the document itself, Mrs. S. C. Lomas, the editor of this report, says this interesting letter gives "a curious and evidently prejudiced description of the religious houses and observances." See preface toHist. MSS. Com. Report on the MSS. of Chequers Court, Bucks, p. x.

[459]Hist. MSS. Com., Chequers Court Papers, pp. 171-2.

[460]Vestiges of Ancient Manners and Customs in Italy, p. 1.

[461]Corpus insc. Lat., i. 409; andcf.Cumont'sMysteries of Mithra(1903).

[462]Leland,Etruscan Roman Remains(1892).

[463]Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire(Bury), ii. 15.

[464]Decline and Fall, ii. 17.

[465]Evidence is scattered far and wide in most of the reliable studies in folklore. Two special books may be mentioned. A great storehouse of examples is to be found inThe Popish Kingdoms, by Thomas Naogeorgus, Englyshed by Barnabe Googe, 1570, a new edition of which was published by Mr. R. C. Hope in 1880; and Mr. H. M. Bower has exhaustively examined one important Italian ceremony in hisThe Elevation and Procession of the Ceri at Gubbio, published by the Folklore Society in 1897.

Already I have had to point out that an appeal to ethnological evidence is the means of avoiding the wholesale rejection of custom and belief recorded of early Britain, because it has been rejected as appertaining to the historic Celt. I will now proceed with the definite proposition that the survivals in folklore may be allocated and explained by their ethnological bearing.

Some years ago I advanced this proposition in my little book entitledEthnology in Folklore. Only haltingly have my conclusions been accepted, but I nowhere find them disproved,[466]while here and there I find good authorities appealing to the ethnological element in folklore to help them in their views. Mr. MacCulloch, for instance, prefers to go for the basis of the Osiris and Dionysius myths to an earlier custom than that favoured by Mr. Frazer and Mr. Grant Allen, namely, to the practices of the neolithic folk, in Egypt and over a wide tract of country which includes Britain, ofdismembering the dead body previous to its burial.[467]Mr. Lang, Mr. Frazer, Mr. Hartland, and others are strangely reticent on this subject. That Mr. Lang should be content to trace a story from the Vedas, in which Urvasi tells Pururavas that he must never let her see him naked, to "a traditional Aryan law of nuptial etiquette,"[468]seems to be using the heaviest machinery for the smallest purposes, while for other and greater purposes he fails to find in ethnological distinctions, explanations which escape his research.[469]That Mr. Frazer should have been able to examine in so remarkable a manner the agricultural rites of European peoples, and only to have touched upon their ethnological bearings in one or two isolated cases, seems to me to be neglecting one of the obvious means of arriving at the solution of the problem he starts out to solve.[470]

I do not want to discount these fragmentary appeals to the ethnological element in folklore. I accept them as evidence that the appeal has to be made. I would only urge that it may be done on more thorough lines, after due consideration of all the elements of the proposition and of all that it means to the study of folklore. We cannot surrender to the palæontologist all that folklore contains in tradition and in custom as to pygmy peoples, or to the Egyptologist all that it contains as to dismemberment burial rites, without at thesame time realising that if it is correct to refer these two groups of folklore respectively to the earliest ages of man's existence as man and to the neolithic stage of culture, they must be withdrawn from all other classification. We cannot use the same items of folklore in two totally different ways. The results of withdrawal are as important as the results of allocation, and the necessity for the correct docketing of all groups of folklore is thus at once illustrated.

The first point in the argument for ethnological data being discoverable in folklore is that a survey of the survivals of custom, belief, and rites in any given country shows one marked feature, which results in a dividing line being drawn as between two distinct classes. This feature is the antagonism which is discoverable in these classes. On one side of the dividing line is a set of customs, beliefs, and rites which may be grouped together because they are consistent with each other, and on the other side is another set of customs, beliefs, and rites which may be grouped together on the same ground. But between these two sets of survivals there is no agreement. They are the negations of each other. They show absolutely different conceptions of all the phases of life and thought which they represent, and it is impossible to consider that they have both come from the same culture source. I have applied the test of ethnology to such cases in Britain, and this appears to answer the difficulty which their antagonism presents. It appears too to be the only answer.

The subjects which show this antagonism are all of vital importance. They include friendly and inimicalrelations with the dead; marriage as a sacred tribal rite and marriage as a rule of polyandrous society; birth ceremonies which tell of admittance into a sacred circle of kinsmen, and birth ceremonies which breathe of revenge and hostility; the reverential treatment of the aged folk and the killing of them off; the preservation of human life as part of the tribal blood, and human sacrifice as a certain cure for all personal evils; the worship of waters as a strongly localised cult, preserved because it is local by whatsoever race or people are in occupation and in successive occupation of the locality; totemic beliefs connected with animals and plants contrasted with ideas entirely unconnected with totemism—all this, and much more which has yet to be collected and classified, reveals two distinct streams of thought which cannot by any process be taken back to one original source.

This fact of definite antagonism between different sets of surviving beliefs existing together in one country leads to several very important conclusions. This is the case with the Irish Sids. These beings are said to be scattered over Ireland, and around them assembled for worship the family or clan of the deified patron. While there were thus a number of topical deities, each in a particular spot where he was to be invoked, the deities themselves with the rest of their non-deified but blessed brother spirits had as their special abode "Lands of the Living," the happy island or islands somewhere far away in the ocean. Now this Sid worship, we are told by Irish scholars, "had nothing to do with Druidism—in fact, was quite opposed to it," the Sids and the Druids being"frequently found at variance with each other in respect to mortals."[471]

This is the commencing point of the evidence which proves Druidism to have belonged to the pre-Celtic people, though finding an adopted home among them. This is so important a subject and has been so strangely and inconsistently dealt with by most authorities that it will be well to indicate where we have to search for the non-Celtic, and therefore pre-Celtic, origin of Druidism. The Druidism revealed by classical authorities is, for the most part, the Druidism of continental peoples and not of Britain, and I hesitate to accept off-hand that it is proper to transfer the continental system to Britain and say that the two systems were one and the same. There is certainly no evidence from the British side which would justify such a course, and I think there is sufficient argument against it to suspend judgment until the whole subject is before us. If Professor Rhys is right in concluding that Druidism is at its roots a non-Celtic religion,[472]we must add to this that it was undoubtedly a non-Teutonic religion. Celts and Teutons were sufficiently near in all the elements of their civilisation for this want of parallel in their relationship to Druidism to be an additional argument against the Celts having originated this cult. And then the explanation of the differences between continental and British Druidism becomes comparatively easy to understand. The continental Celts, mixingmore thoroughly with the pre-Celtic aborigines than did the British Celts, would have absorbed more of the pre-Celtic religion than the British Celts, and hence all the details which classical authorities have left us of continental Druidism appear as part of the Celtic religion, while in Britain these details are for the most part absent. But this is not all. There are certain rites in Britain noted by the early authorities which are not attached to any particular cult. They are not Druidic; they are not Celtic. They are, as a matter of fact, special examples of rites practised in only one locality, and accordingly referred to as something extraordinary and not general. From this it is clearly correct to argue that the British Celts had in their midst a cult which, if they did not destroy, they certainly did not absorb, and that therefore this cult being non-Celtic must have been pre-Celtic.

I do not wish to argue this point out further than is necessary to explain the position which, it appears to me, Druidism occupies, and I will therefore only add a note as to the authorities for the statements I have advanced. The differences between continental and British Druidism are definite and pronounced,[473]themixture of the continental Celts with the Iberic people, which they displaced, is attested, by ancient authority and modern anthropology,[474]while the only evidence of such a mixture in Britain is the prominently recorded instance of the Picts intermarrying with the Gael,[475]and this has to be set against the close distinction between tribesmen and non-tribesmen, which is such a remarkable feature of Celtic law;[476]the existence of local cults in early Britain having all the characteristics of a ruder and more savage origin, and not identified with Celticism, is a point derived from our early authorities.[477]These are the main facts of the case,and the subject has to be worked out in considerable detail before it can be settled.

There is one other primary subject which bears upon the question of race distinctions in folklore. With the fact of conquest to reckon with, the relationship of the conqueror to the conquered is a matter to consider. In the European tribal system it was a definite relationship, so definite that the conquered, as we have seen, formed an essential part of the tribal organisation—the kinless slaves beneath the tribal kindred. There was a place for the kinless in the tribal economy and in the tribal laws. There was also a place for them in the tribal system of belief, and the mythic influence of the conquered is a subject that needs very careful consideration.

It is an influence which appears in all parts of the world. Thus, to give a few instances, in New Guinea they have no idols, and apparently no idea of a supreme being or a good spirit. Their only religious ideas consist in a belief in evil spirits. They live a life of slavish fear to these, but seem to have no idea of propitiating them by sacrifice or prayer. They believe in the deathlessness of the soul. A death inthe village is the occasion of bringing plenty of ghosts to escort their new companion, and perhaps fetch some one else. All night the friends of the deceased sit up and keep the drums going to drive away the spirits; they strike the fences and posts of houses all through the village with sticks. This is done to drive back the spirits to their own quarters on the adjacent mountain tops. But it is the spirits of the inland tribes, the aborigines of the country, that the coast tribes most fear. They believe, when the natives are in the neighbourhood, that the whole plain is full of spirits who come with them. All calamities are attributed to the power and malice of these evil spirits. Drought, famine, storm and flood, disease and death are all supposed to be brought by Vata and his hosts, so that the people are an easy prey to any designing individuals who claim power over these. Some disease charmers and rain-makers levy heavy toll on the people.[478]

It appears that the native population of New Zealand was originally composed of two different races, which have retained some of their characteristic features, although in course of time they have in all other respects become mixed, and a number of intermediate varieties have thence resulted. From the existence of two races in New Zealand the conclusion might be drawn that the darker were the original proprietors of the soil anterior to the arrival of a stock of true Polynesian origin, that they were conquered by the latter and nearly exterminated. There is a district in thenorthern island, situated between Taupo and Hawke's Bay, called Urewera, consisting of steep and barren hills. The scattered inhabitants of this region have the renown of being the greatest witches in the country. They are very much feared, and have little connection with the neighbouring tribes, who avoid them if possible. If they come to the coast the natives there scarcely venture to refuse them anything for fear of incurring their displeasure. They are said to use the saliva of the people whom they intend to bewitch, and visitors carefully conceal their spittle to give them no opportunity of working their evil. Like our witches and sorcerers of old, they appear to be a very harmless people, and but little mixed up with the quarrels of their neighbours.[479]The Australians, according to Oldfield, ascribe spirit powers to those residing north of themselves and hold them in great dread.[480]

In Asia the same idea prevails among the native races. Thus Colquhoun says,

"it was amusing to find the dread in which the Lawas [a hill tribe] are held by both Burmese and Siamese. This is due to a fear of being bitten by them and dying of the bite. They are called by their Burmese neighbours the 'man-bears.' A singular custom obtains amongst these people which may perhaps partly account for this superstition. On a certain night in the year the youths and maidens meet together for the purpose of pairing. Unacceptable youths are said to be bitten severely if they make advances to the ladies."[481]

The Semang pygmy people, afraid to approach the Malays even for purposes of barter, "learnt to work upon the superstition of the Malays by presenting them with medicines which they pretended to derive from particular shrubs and trees in the woods."[482]That this is a real superstition of the conquerors for the conquered is proved from other sources to which I have referred elsewhere.[483]

In Africa it appears as a living force, and we are told that the stories current in the country of the Ukerewé, "about the witchcraft practised by the people of Ukara island, prove that those islanders have been at pains to spread abroad a good repute for themselves; that they are cunning, and aware that superstition is a weakness of human nature have sought to thrive upon it."[484]

It appears in more definite form with the Hindus. The Kathkuri, or Katodi, have a belief that they are descended from the monkeys and bears which Adi Narayun in his tenth incarnation of Rama, took with him for the destruction of Rawun, King of Lanka, and he promised his allies that in the fourth age they should become human beings. They practise incantation, and encourage the awe with which the Hindu regards their imprecations, for a Hindu believes that a Katodi can transform himself into a tiger.[485]

To this day the Aryans settled in Chota-Nagpore and Singbhoom firmly believe that the Moondahs have powers as wizards and witches, and can transform themselves into tigers and other beasts of prey with the view of devouring their enemies, and that they can witch away the lives of man and beast. They were in all probability one of the tribes that were most persistent in their hostility to the Aryan invaders.[486]In Ceylon the remnants of the aborigines are found in the forests and on the mountains, and are universally looked upon and feared as demons, the beliefs engendered therefrom being exactly parallel to the witch beliefs of our own country.[487]

There is similar evidence among European peoples. Formerly in Sweden the name of Lapp seems to have been almost synonymous with that of sorcerer, and the same was the case with Finn. The inhabitants of the southern provinces of Sweden believed their countrymen in the north to have great experience in magic.[488]The famous Gundhild, of Saga renown, was believed to be a sorceress brought up among the Finns,[489]and even in respect of classical remains Mr. Warde Fowler "prefers to think of the Fauni as arising from the contact of the first clearers and cultivators of Italian soil with a wild aboriginal race of the hills and woods."[490]

These facts are sufficient to show that the mythic influence of a conquered race is a factor which may assist in the discussion of the ethnological conditions of folklore, and it is obvious that they reveal a very powerful influence for the continuance of ancient ideas as well as for the creation of fresh examples of ancient ideas applied to new experiences. It is well in this connection to remember certain historical facts connected with the settlement of the English in Britain.

From Freeman'sOld English Historyit appears that at the beginning of the seventh century "the tract of country which the English then ruled over south of the Humber, coincided almost exactly with the boundary of the Gaulish portion of Britain," as distinct from non-Aryan Britain. This apparent recognition of Celtic landmarks, says Professor Rhys, by the later invaders, "is a fact, the historical and political significance of which I leave to be weighed by others,"[491]and I venture to suggest that one important result is to show Britain to have contained an Aryan culture-ground and a non-Aryan culture-ground. If we try to step from one to the other we quickly discover the mythic relationship of conqueror to the conquered.

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