'CUP AND RING:' AN OLD PROBLEM SOLVED

[3]Primitive Culture, ii. pp. 312, 313, 1873.

[4]Callaway, p. 29.

[5]Callaway, p. 41;Folk Lore, ut supra, p. 23.

[6]Callaway, p. 10, note 25.

[7]Ibid.p. 21.

[8]Ibid. p. 17.

[9]Ibid.pp. 26, 27.

[10]Umdabukois derived fromukadabuka, to be broken off, a word implying the pre-existence of something from which the division took place. Callaway, i. note 3, 50, note 95. It is usually a vaguely metaphysical term.

[11]Callaway, pp. 52, 53.

[12]Waitz,Anthropologie, i. 167.

[13]Ibid.p. 59, and note 12.

[14]Ibid. 61, and note 17, 9, and note 22.

[15]Callaway, 63, and note 23.

[16]Ibid.p. 65.

[17]Waitz,Anthropologie, pp. 105, 106.

[18]Missionary Travels, p. 158.

[19]Folk Lore, March 1901, pp. 26, 27.

[20]Callaway,Rel. of Amazulu, p. 67.

[21]Folk Lore Journal, South Africa, ii. iv. 1880, p. 59,et seq.

[22]Golden Bough, i. 155; ii. 10. Dos Santos, in Pinkerton, xvi. 682-687,et seq.

[23]Dos Santos; in Pinkerton, xvi. 687. He confuses Quiteva, the country, and the king, the Quiteva. Cf. supra, p. 97 note 3.

[24]Macdonald,Africana, i. 66, 67. For etymological guesses, and the application ofMulungu(as ofBarimo) to ancestral spirits, and the statement that 'all things in the world were made by Mulungu,' who was prior to death, seeAfricana, and Mr. Clement Scott'sDictionary of the Mang'anja Language in British Central Africa, andMaking of Religion, pp. 232-238.

[25]Beiderbecke,F. L. Journal, South Africa, iv. v. 88-97.

[26]Callaway, p. 124.

[27]Callaway, pp. 74-76.

[28]Callaway, p. 55, note 4.

History and antiquity supply our curious minds with many pleasant profitless exercises. Even in these days of education there are still many persons who have heard of the Man in the Iron Mask, and would like to know who he was. Nobody, of course, reads the 'Letters of Junius,' but many would be glad to be certain as to who wrote them.

My riddle is infinitely more remote, but it has this merit: that I think I can unriddle it. If ever you roamed on that moor of the Cheviot Hills which is near Chatton Park (I think on Lord Tankerville's ground), you may have noticed, engraved on the boulders, central cup-like depressions, surrounded by incised concentric circles. Who hollowed out these devices, why, and in what age?

I remember putting these questions when I first saw the 'scalps' of whinstone, just swelling out of the turf among the heather, on a beautiful day of September. It was a lonely spot, where victual never grew; about us were the blue heights of the Cheviots, below us thefabulosus amnisof Till, that drowns three men to one drowned by Tweed. My friend told me that some said the stones were places of Druid human sacrifice, and others, men of common sense, held that the herd-boys carved the circles out of sheer idleness.

But these answers will not pass. There were noherd-boys nor Druids in Central Australia, nor on the Rio Negro in Brazil, among the Waimara Indians, nor in Fiji, nor in Georgia of old, nor in Zululand, where these decorative markings occur with others of primeval character. In our own country they are found, not only on scalps of rock, but on the stones of 'Druid circles,' from Inverness-shire to Lancashire, Cumberland, and the Isle of Man. They also occur on great stones arranged in avenues; on cromlechs (one huge horizontal stone supported on others which are erect); on the stones of chamberedtumuli(artificial mounds) in Yorkshire; on stone 'kist' or coffins, in Scotland, Ireland, and in Dorset; on prehistoric obelisks, or solitary 'standing stones,' in Argyll; on walls in underground Picts' houses in the Orkneys and Forfarshire; in prehistoric Scottish forts; near old camps; as well as on isolated rocks, scalps, and stones. Analogous double spirals occur at New Grange, in Ireland, at the entrance of the great gallery leading to the domed chamber; in Scandinavia; in Asia Minor; in China and Zululand; in Australia, India, America, North and South, and in Fiji.[1]

Now, who made these marks, when, and why? Sir James Simpson says: 'They are archæological enigmas, which we have no present power of solving.' He cites some guesses. The markings are 'archaic maps or plans of old circular camps and cities.' They are sundials—but they occur in dark chambers of sepulchres, or underground houses! They stand for sun, or moon, or for Lingam worship. They are Roman, or they are Phœnician—a theory on which much learning has been wasted.

To all these guesses Sir James Simpson opposed thesolution that the markings are merely decorative. 'From the very earliest historic periods in the architecture of Egypt, Assyria, Greece, &c., down to our own day, circles, single or double, and spirals have formed, under various modifications, perhaps the most common types of lapidary decoration.' It appears in Polynesian tattooing, this love of spirals and volutes. But, added Sir James, 'that they were emblems or symbols, connected in some way with the religious thoughts and doctrines of those that carved them, appears to me to be rendered probable, at least, by the position and circumstances in which we occasionally find them placed,' as on the lids of stone coffins and mortuary urns. Their date must be 'very remote.' They preceded writing and tradition. They are found in company with polished neolithic stone weapons, as in Brittany, without any remains of the metals, save in one case, of gold. The markings are certainly, in Australia, earlier than the use of metals. Sir James found by experiment that the markings could be made even on Aberdeen granite with a flint celt and a wooden mallet. He reckoned them earlier than the arrival of the Celtic race, and asked for evidence of their existence in Africa, America, or Polynesia. He did not know the Fijian example in Williams's work on the Fijians, nor the American and Australian examples.

Sir James did not live to hear much about these mysterious marks in remote and savage lands. But, in 1875, Professor Daniel Wilson discovered, or rather reported his discovery of, cups and rings on a granite boulder in Georgia. The designs are quite of the familiar orthodox sort, and rocks covered with deep cup-marks occur in Ohio.[2]Now there are romantic antiquaries, all for Druids and Phœnicians; and there are sardonicantiquaries, who like to rub the gilt off the gingerbread. Dr. Wilson was of the latter class, and explained the cups as holes made by early men in grinding stone pestles. The concentric rings may have been drawn round the cups 'for amusement.' This is clamping, but early man did not use stone kists and the inner walls of sepulchres as grindstones; yet on these the marks occur. Nor would he climb an almost inaccessible rock to find his grindstone; yet the summit of such a rock has the decorations, in the parish of Tannadyce (Forfarshire). We may, therefore, discard Dr. Wilson's theory as a general solution of the problem. Sir James Simpson left it with the answer that the marks are decorative,plusreligious symbolism.[3]His guess, as I think I can prove, or, at least, cause to seem probable, was correct. The cups and circles, with other marks, were originally decorative, with a symbolical and religious meaning in certain cases. How I have reached this conclusion I go on to show.

When you want to understand an old meaningless custom or belief, found in the middle of civilisation, you try to discover the belief or custom in some region where it possesses intelligible life. Then you may reckon that, where you now find it without meaning, it once meant what it now does where it is full of vitality, or meant something analogous.

The place where the concentric circles and other markings have a living and potent signification I discovered by pure accident. I had been reading the proofs of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen's valuable book on the 'Native Tribes of Central Australia' (Macmillan). There I had noted plenty of facts about the native churinga, or 'sacred things,' flat oval pieces of wood or stone, covered with concentric circles, cups, and other decorations, whichare read, or deciphered, as records of the myths and legendary history of the native race. These churinga are of various sizes, down to a foot or less in length. I did not think of them in connection with our cups, circles, and so forth on our boulders and standing stones. But a friend chanced to come into my study, who began to tell me about the singular old site, Dumbuck, discovered by Mr. W. A. Donnelly (July 1898), under high-tide mark in the Clyde estuary, near Dumbarton. 'The odd thing,' said my friend, 'is that they have found small portable stones, amulets marked in the same way as the cup and ring marked rocks,' and he began to sketch a diagram. 'Why, that's a churinga,' said I, 'a Central Australian churinga,' enlightened by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen. My friend, after being informed as to churinga, told me that other examples had been dug up, also by Mr. Donnelly, in an ancient fort near the other site, at a place called Dunbuie. Here, then, I had things very like churinga, and of the same markings as our boulders, kists, and so on, in two Scottish sites, where I understand neither pottery nor metal has yet been detected. Next, I found that the marks which the Australians engrave on their small churinga, they alsopainton boulders, rock-walls, and other fixtures in the landscape, on sacred ground, tabooed to women.

The startling analogy between Australian and old Scottish markingssaute aux yeux.

On the cover of Sir James Simpson's book, stamped in gold, is a central set of six concentric circles, surrounding a cup. From the inmost circle a groove goes to the circumference of the outer circle (the circles often occur without this radial groove), and there the line gives a wriggle, suggesting that the circle was evolved out of a spiral. Above and below this figure are a similar one withthree and another with four concentric circles; at each side are two-circled and one-circled specimens with the wriggled line, and two cups and circles with no wriggle. Now compare fig. 131, p. 631, of Messrs Spencer and Gillen. Here we have the churinga ilkinia, or sacred rock-drawing, in red and white, of the honey ant totem in the Warramunga tribe. Here are, first, seven concentric circles, through the centre of which goes a straight line of the same breadth (only found among the Warramunga), while to each extremity are added two concentric circles of small dimensions, ending in a cross. Around, as on Sir James's cover, are smaller sets of less numerous concentric circles, exactly like Sir James's, except for the radial groove which ends in a wriggle. Again (fig. 124, p. 615), we have two sets of concentric circles with white dots answering to cups, and, where the third set of circles should be, is a volute, as at New Grange, in Ireland, and in many other examples in our islands.

Now, in Central Australia the decorative motives, or analogous motives, of the permanent rock-paintings are repeated on the small portable churinga, which are deciphered by the blacks in a religious, or rather in a mythical, sense. It is, therefore, arguable that the small portable Scottish cup and circle marked stones, only recently discovered, bore the same relation to the engravings on permanent stones, scalps, and boulders as do the Australian churinga to the Australian sacred rock-paintings. They may have been portable sacred things.

I have been unable to visit Dumbuck, now in course of excavation, and have only seen some casts and pen-and-ink sketches sent to me by Mr. Donnelly. But I have examined the similar objects from Dunbuie, in the museum at Edinburgh. The antiquaries looked dubiously on them, because they had seen no such matters before(they might have done so in Ireland), because a shell, with a very modern scratched face, was among the finds, and because a few of the markings on one or two stones look recent and fresh. But I argue that a Dumbarton humourist wishing to hoax us Monkbarnses would hardly 'salt' an old site with objects unknown to Scottish antiquaries, yet afterwards discovered in Central Australia. How could the idea occur to him? A forger would forge things known, such as flint weapons; he would not forge novelties, which, later, are found to tally with savage sacred things in actual use.

Many of the Dunbuie finds are engraved in Mr. Millar's paper on Dunbuie.[4]But he has not engraved the most unmistakable churinga, a small oval slab of stone, with an ornament of little cups following its outline (much as in an Irish instance), and provided, like stone churinga in Australia, with a hole for suspension.

He does engrave certain hitherto unheard-of articles-spearheads of slate, two supplied with suspension holes. One (p. 294) has a pattern of the simplest, like a child's drawing of a larch, which recurs in Australia.[5]That these slate spear-heads, pierced for suspension, were used in war I doubt, though some Australians do use spear-heads 'of a flinty slate;' and where flint is so scarce, as in Scotland, hard slate may be used—for example, in North America.[6]I rather regard the slate weapons as amulets, or churinga, analogous to the very old and rare boomerang-shaped churinga of the Arunta (lizard totem)of Central Australia. Mr. Millar observes: 'They have all been saturated with oil or fat, as water does not adhere to them, but runs off as from a greasy surface.' Now the Australian churinga are very frequently rubbed with red ochre, and made greasy with 'hand grease'—a singular coincidence. Footmarks are among the sacred Australian rock-paintings with a legendary sense. They also occur, engraved on rock in Brittany, Ireland, on 'The Fairy Stone' (ilkinia) in Glenesk, and on 'The Witches' Stone' at Monzie, associated with cups and concentric circles.[7]These close analogies point all in one direction.

Meaningless in Europe, what meaning have these designs in Australia? Though certainty is impossible, I take it that they were first purely decorative, before the mythical and symbolical meaning was read into them by the savages. They occur on the mystic 'bull-roarers' of Central Queensland, but I do not learn that in Queensland the circles and so on are interpreted or deciphered as among the Arunta.[8]Still, they occur here in a religious connection—the bull-roarer being swung at the mysteries—and they are carved on trees at mysteries held far south in New South Wales.[9]But even in Central Australia the markings sometimes occur as purely decorative, on one rock or other object, while on others they are sacred, and are interpreted as records of legends,[10]according to Spencer and Gillen. There are 'ordinary rock-paintings,' and certain other drawings, in many cases not distinguishable from some of the first series, so far as their formis concerned, but belonging to a class all of which are spoken of as churinga ilkinia, and are regarded as sacred because they are associated with totems. Each local totemic group has certain of these specially belonging to the group, and in very many cases preserved on rock-surfaces in spots which are strictlytabuto the women, children, and uninitiated men.' One of the commonest I represents a snake coming out of a hole in a rock,' which the wriggle out of the cup in our circle-marked stones would stand for fairly well. Some designs are only 'play-work;' others exactly similar, on another spot, have a definite meaning. The meaning is read, where the spot is sacred ground. The concentric circles are 'believed, on good ground, to have been derived from an original spiral.' 'It is much more easy to imagine a series of concentric circles originating out of a spiral than to imagine a spiral originating out of a series of concentric circles.' In this country the spiral seems to be later than the circle.

These devices not only occur on fixed rocks and portable churinga, they are also painted on the bodies of boys when initiated in the mysteries: 'concentric circles with radiating lines preponderate.'

In Mr. Haddon's 'Decorative Art of British New Guinea' he describes designs of concentric circles and spirals which are clearly derivatives of drawings of the human face.[11]Thus our concentric circles and spiralsmay,in the last resort, have been derived from drawings of the human face, thoughdiablement changés en route.

What, then, however we interpret the origin, decorative or symbolic, of the sacred designs, is their significance as understood by the Arunta of Central Australia at the present time?

The Arunta are totemistic—that is, they believe in close relations which bind up the groups of their society with certain plants and animals. But they differ vastly from other totemistic races all over the world, and even in Australia. So much do they differ that it may be doubted whether their totems can properly be called totems at all. Elsewhere a man of a given totem—say the emu—cannot marry a woman of that stock; it is incest. The children inherit their totem, either from the mother, or, less frequently, the father. Any local group in a given region contains persons of various totems. People may not kill, eat, or make any use of the plants and animals which, in each case, are their totems.

Among the Arunta all is otherwise. A child's totem may be that of his father, of his mother, or different from that of either parent. A man may marry a woman of his own totem, which elsewhere is incest, and capitally punished. Thus, father is a grub; mother is a grub; one child may be a grub, another an emu. Moreover, here totems arelocal; almost every one in a given place will be, for example, a lizard or a plum tree. Usually people do eat their own totems, though sparingly, at magical rites, intended to multiply the animal or plant with which it is associated, in the interests of the general food supply. The Grubs work a rite to cause plenty of grubs, and they give the other groups a lead by eating sparingly of the first fruits of the grubs. This bears, in my opinion, no strong analogy to the so-called 'totem-sacrament.' To work the magic, the men of the grub or other totem must eat a little of it. This probably confirms their relation to the grub, but involves noreligiouselement. They do not adore the grub. If any one likes to call this a 'totem-sacrament,' he is rather easily satisfied. Nor does it agree with thenotion that a man's totem is the receptacle of his 'life' or 'soul;' if so, why should he encourage his neighbour to kill and eat it? Nay, he even helps them to destroy it.

Whether Arunta totemism is the most archaic kind, from which all other totemism has varied, or whether it is a private 'sport' from the main stock, does not concern us here, and is matter of conjecture. The Arunta, and other Central Australian tribes, look back to a mythic past, when ancestors, closely connected with this or that plant or animal, perhaps transformations of such animal or plant, roamed the country in groups, each of the same totem name, each feeding freely on its own totem.

This was 'the Alcheringa time,' and existing rites are explained by 'ætiological myths,'stating how such or such a mummery, still practised, was originally practised in the Alcheringa. Nothing of the sort, of course, need have been the case, and such myths cannot tell us what the manners and customs of that dim age really were. Demeter was a woman of the Greek Alcheringa, and the Eleusinian rites were explained by the Greeks as originating in her Alcheringa adventures. But these obviously were invented purely to account for the rites themselves, notvice versâ.

Now, among the Arunta the blacks of to-day are regarded as reincarnations of the Alcheringa fabulous ancestors. Each of these carried about (both men and women) churinga, the portable decorated stones. When an Alcheringite died, a rock or tree rose to mark the place, but his or her spirit 'remained in the churinga.' Plenty of churinga were dropped at different sites, and round these now hover the spirits associated with them. In one place is a crowd of wild cat ghosts; at another, a mob of frog or lizard or emu ghosts. These want to be reincarnated. Consequently, a woman who desires to havea baby goes to one of them (in Argyll she would slide down a cup-marked rock!), a woman who doesnotwant to have a baby keeps away. A child's totem is derived, not from father or mother, but from the totem of the ghosts at the place where the woman thinks she conceived it. When the baby is born her relations hunt the spot, and find for it the churinga left by the spirit which is reincarnated in it.

Thus, first there is the fabulous Alcheringite, himself a transformation of an emu, lizard, water, fire, or what not. Then there is his spirit haunting, after his death, a spot where churinga of his totem were deposited. That spirit enters into and is born again from a passing woman, and the spirit's churinga is found and is henceforth the child's churinga—an oval plate of stone, with cup and ring or other decorations.[12]All these churinga are kept at sacred central stores, caves, or crevices. Each member of the tribe is represented by her or his 'churinga nanja' in these repositories. Women may not go near these sacred stores, nor may they see a churinga.[13]If they do, their eyes are burned out with a fire stick. A man's churinga isnot, to him, like the egg in which was the life of the giant in the fairy tale. If it comes to grief, he does not die, but expects bad luck, as we do if we break a mirror. Not till he has been through the mysteries and the most cruel mutilations, and just before he has been painted with the pattern on the sacred rock of his totem, can a man see the store-houses of the churinga. Now, in the witchetty grub totem this sacred painting tallies with the lines incised, under concentric circles, on the coveringof a stone kist at Tillicoutry.[14]There are circles above the lines in the Australian example, or rather circular dabs of paint, called 'the decorated eyes,' painted on the rocks; the corresponding patterns are incised on the portable churinga. In Scotland the patterns are incised both on fixed rocks and portable stones; the latter at Dumbuck and Dunbuie.

I observe many patterns common to both regions. There are the concentric circles, the spiral, the marks like horseshoes, the tree pattern, the witchetty grub pattern, the volute, the long sinuous snake-like pattern, and a number of these recur in Brazil, on the banks of the Rio Negro.[15]Now, though we have those patterns onrocksin Ohio, Brazil, Australia, in this country, in France, in Asia Minor, I only know the patternson portable small stonesin Australia, at Dunbuie, on the Dumbuck site, and, I think, in a cairn near Lough Crew, in County Meath. The curious, for this last case, may consult 'Proceedings of Scottish Society of Antiquaries,' 1893, p. 299, where in figs. 6 and 7 he will see what in Australia would be called two stone churinga, with any number of Scoto-Australian patterns on large stones. On one the pattern is like that of a stone from Dunbuie.

In Australia members of each totem decipher the marks, purely conventional, as representative of the totem, and of adventures in the Alcheringa time. For example, a mark like two croquet hoops, or horseshoes, is 'an old woman gathering frogs.' The concentric circles are frogs; the dots round them are tracks of women; dull, often dirty, stories are told about the adventures of the Alcheringitescommemorated by the patterns. At the sacred pattern-painted rocks, magic ceremonies, extremely puerile, are performed to ensure a supply of the edible totem which the pattern represents. Some event occurred there in the Alcheringa; the rite repeats what, in myth, was then done, and the stomachs of the men are rubbed with the churinga 'for luck.' Such are the uses of the churinga. Did they once exist wherever the similarly decorated fixed rocks exist? Did the makers of the decorations in Scotland decipher the churinga as the Central Australians do now? Were the dwellers by Clyde (much more advanced in culture than the Australians) totemists, looking on their small decorated stones as associated with the spirits of Alcheringa ancestors? Do women in Argyll slide down a cup-marked rock, in hope of offspring, because totemistic ghosts once hovered round it, eager to be reincarnated? The fact of the sliding is attested by a chief of Clan Diarmid.

Nobody can answer! I have shown these decorated rocks and small stones to have a living significance, a vital legendary symbolism, in Central Australia. I cannot prove that they had the same significance in County Meath or Dumbartonshire. The Australians may have begun with mere decoration, and later added a symbolism suited to their amazing theory of life. In our country the decorations may have quite a different symbolical sense, but probably they had some sense. Otherwise, why engrave them, not only on rocks, but on small stones pierced for suspension? Perhaps men believed in an Alcheringa time on the Clyde; perhaps they multiplied salmon and deer by magical mummeries at the engraved rocks; perhaps these were sacred places, tabooed to women. Or quite a different set of fables and customs may have crystallised in Scotland round marked rocks and inscribed small stones. I cannot prove that, as in Australia,Clydesdale boys of old, when initiated in the mysteries, were painted with the pattern on their sacred totem rock and stone or wood churinga. But, if not these rites, other rites were, I conceive, connected with the decorative patterns found in so many still savage countries.

One piece of evidence rather points in this direction. The Australian stone churinga are shaped like the wooden churinga, and these are shaped like thetundun, or 'bull-roarer.' Now the bull-roarer (which occurs in Australia where stone churinga do not) is a sacred oval piece of wood, not to be seen by women, which is whirled at the mysteries, and makes a windy, roaring noise. The same object is used, for the same purpose, at the mysteries in America, Africa, and, of old, in Greece.[16]The roaring noise is taken to be the voice of Tundun, son of Mungan-ngaur, 'Our Father' in the heavens, among the Kurnai, and of gods or culture heroes of other names in other tribes. Now, in Celtic Scotland (as also in England) this instrument, the tundun, occurs as a mere toy, in Gaelic namedstrannam.Does it descend from a sacred object of savage mysteries, and are the Australian stone churinga—in shape like the tundun, and like the tundun tabooed to women—mere lapidary modifications of the wooden tundun? However this may be, thestrannamlooks like a link in the long chain which binds us to the prehistoric past.

While correcting the proof-sheets of this article I read, in theGlasgow Herald(January 7, 1899), an article on Dumbuck and Dunbuie, by Dr. Munro, the eminent authority on crannogs, or pile-dwellings, and, generally on prehistoric Scotland. Dr. Munro, as I understand him, does not regard Dumbuck as an older than mediæval site, nor as atrue crannog. The incised stones he looks on either as of most singular character (if genuine) or as forgeries of to-day, the opinion which he seems to prefer. He was then unacquainted with similar objects in any part of the world. I have here provided references to similar objects from Central Australia, and I suggest examination of theapparentlysimilar Irish objects, figured in 'Proceedings of Scottish Society of Antiquaries,' 1893, p. 299, figs. 6 and 7. Not having seen these stones I can only offer the hint suggested by the illustrations in 'Proceedings.' Why a forger should forge such unknown objects, and place them at Dunbuie, in 1895, before the Central Australian stones had been described, I cannot guess. Nor can I enough deplore the stupidity of the same hypothetical forger in not 'salting' Dunbuie and Dumbuck with neolithic implements, whether antique or made by some Flint Jack of to-day. Both his sins of omission and of commissiondonnent furieusement à penser. Dr. Munro, however, as I gather from his article on Dumbuck in 'The Reliquary' (April 1901), still declines to recognise the Dumbuck decorated portable stones as of genuine antiquity.

[1]For India seeArchaic-logical Notes on Ancient Sculpturings on Rocks in Kumaon, India, by Mr. J. H. Bivett-Carnac, Calcutta, 1883. The form of the Jew's harp is common to India and Scotland.

[2]Proceedings S.A.S., June 1875. 'Ohio Rock Markings.'

[3]Ancient Sculpturings of Cups, Circles, &c. Edinburgh, 1871.

[4]Proceedings S.A.S. vol. xxx. 1896, pp. 291-316.

[5]Spencer and Gillen, p. 632, Nos. 14-23. 'Ilkinia and Plum Tree Totem.'

[6]The evidence for Australian slate spear-heads is not strong. Capt. King acquired a bundle of bark in a raid on natives. It contained 'several, spear-heads, most ingeniously and curiously made of stone ... the stone was covered with red pigment, and appeared to beof a flinty slate.'—SeeThe Picture of Australia, p. 243. London, 1829.

[7]Simpson, pp. 182-184.

[8]Both,Natives of N. W. Queensland, p. 129, pi. xvii.

[9]Journal Anthrop. Institute, May 1895, p. 410, pi. 21, fig. 7.

[10]Some wooden churinga are engraved, as 'Australian Magic Sticks,' in Ratzel's popularHistory of Mankind, i. 379. They exactly answer to the churinga of the Arunta.

[11]Royal Irish Academy,Cunningham Memoirs, No. x. 1894.

[12]For cups, see Spencer and Gillen, p. 129; for concentric circles, see p. 131.

[13]The tribal stores of churinga arenotthe same as the places where churinga were dropped in the Alcheringa.

[14]Proceedings S.A.S. vol. xxix. p. 193. Spencer and Gillen, fig. 132, No. 6.

[15]S.A.S. 1884-5, vol. vii. pp. 388-394. Compare, for County Meath, the same work, 1892-93, pp. 297-338.

[16]See the author'sCustom and Myth: The Bull Roarer. Prof. Haddon has discovered many other instances; see alsoThe Golden Bough, iii. 423et seq.

Taboo is one of the few savage words which have struck root in England. Introduced from New Zealand (tapu) and other Polynesian islands, it is used in English to denote a prohibition. This, that, or the other thing, or person, or book is 'tabooed.' Many of the Ten Commandments are, in this sense, taboos. But, in anthropological language, 'taboo' generally denotes something more than a prohibition. It commonly means a prohibition for which, to the civilised mind, there is no very obvious meaning. In this way the prohibitive Commandments are not precisely taboos; it is pretty obvious why we ought not to steal or kill, though theraison d'êtreof the Seventh Commandment is obscure to some advanced intelligences. But the reasons why a Sinclair must not cross the Ord on a certain 'lawful day,' or why on another 'lawful day' the fishermen of St. Andrews might not go a-fishing, resemble many savage taboos in the lack of a manifest reason why. Secondly, the infraction of the savage taboo generally, unlike that of the decalogue, carries its own punishment. Forbidden food is poison, tabooed land is dangerous to tread upon, to handle tabooed property may mean death; nobody knows what awful cosmic catastrophe might occur if a tabooed woman saw the sun; many words and names are taboo, and no luck will come of using them—for instance, you must notname 'salmon,' 'pigs,' or the minister when out fishing in some parts of Scotland.

In many cases the reason of this or that taboo is easily discovered. A day is unlucky because all the fishers, as at St. Andrews, were lost on that day in a past century through a storm; or the Sinclairs on another day were cut off in an expedition. Most of us have our lucky or unlucky days, clothes, and other vanities. Again, things are taboo for some reason in that kind of faith which holds that things connected in the association of ideas are mystically connected in fact. You must not mention salmon, lest they hear you and escape; or tin in Malay tin mining, lest the tin should literally 'make itself scarce.' You may not name the fairies, a jealous folk. Therefore you say 'the people of peace,' and so on. But many other taboos have good practical reasons. If women, among ourselves, were tabooed from salmon-fishing, eating oysters, or entering smoking-rooms (all of which things are greatly to be desired), the reason would be the convenience of the men, who wish a sanctuary or asylum in the smoking-room, and want to keep oysters and fishing to themselves. It is pretty plain why the sight of the royal treasury is tabooed to a West African king: to speak colloquially, if admitted to see the hoards he 'would blue the lot.' A taboo often protects by a supernatural sanction the property and persons of the privileged classes. If the umbrella of a bishop or a baronet were taboo, it would not be taken away from the club by accident.

This simple explanation covers the case of many taboos.

Brother and sister may scarcely ever see each other, still less speak to or name each other, where the law against brother and sister marriage or amour is the one most definite law of the community. 'It is not, therefore,surprising,' says Mr. Jevons, 'that the earlier students of the custom' (of taboo) 'regarded it as an artificial invention, a piece of statecraft, cunningly devised in the interests of the nobility and the priests. This view is, however, now generally abandoned,' because taboo 'is most at home in communities which have no state organisation, and flourishes where there are no priests or no priesthood. Above all the belief is not artificial and imposed, but spontaneous and natural.'[1]

I hesitate about this theory. Taboo can hardly flourish more than it does in Polynesia and West Africa, where there are kings and priests. Moreover, though there are human societies without kings or priests (as in Australia), there are no societies in which artificial rules are not propagated, instituted, and enforced by the adult males meeting in councils. The Arunta of Central Australia are, of course, far from 'primitive.' They have institutions, ceremonies, weapons, rules, and a complete system of philosophy, which must have needed unknown ages to develop. They have local head-men, or Alatunjas, whose office passes always in the male line: from father to son, if the son be of age to succeed, or, if he is not, to the brother, on whose death it reverts to the son. An Alatunja dying without a son nominates a brother or nephew to succeed him. Messrs. Spencer and Gillen know no equivalent to this law among other Australian tribes, and it indicates, among the so-called 'primitive' Arunta, a marked advance beyond other tribes in social evolution. The Alatunja is hereditary Convener of Council, and if an able man has considerable power. He is guardian of the Sacra of the group, determines the date of the cessation of close-time for certain sorts of game, the date of the magical ceremonies for fostering the game or edibleplants, and directs the ceremonies. In the councils called by the Alatunja it appears that changes in stereo-typed custom may be introduced. Men learned in the customs and skilled in magic 'settle everything.' Definite proof of fundamental innovations thus introduced Messrs. Spencer and Gillen do not possess; but tradition indicates alterations of custom, and it is quite possible that a strong Alatunja, well backed, might bring in even a radical reform.[2]There are also recognised grades of skill among the medicine-men and the dealers with spirits, who must have their own share of social influence.

In brief, though without priests or kings these backward tribes have councils, and conveners, and directors whose office is hereditary in the male line. These persons, through unknown ages, have moulded customs and taboos, which are just as much sanctioned by tradition and authority just as little 'spontaneous and universal,' as if kings and priests had invented them for purposes of statecraft. Mr. Jevons next argues that taboo 'cannot have been derived from experience. It is prior to and even contradictory of experience. In fine, it is an inherent tendency of the human mind.' In the same way Gibbon's ancestor, Blue Gown herald, when among North American Indians, declared that heraldry is an inherent tendency of the human mind, an innate idea.

An opinion is not necessarily erroneous because it is obsolete, nor a view wrong because 'it is generally abandoned.' I am here supporting the 'generally abandoned' hypothesis that many taboos, at least, are artificial and imposed, against Mr. Jevons's idea that the taboo, like armorial bearings, results from 'an inherent tendency of the human mind' 'prior to and even contradictoryof experience.'[3]That 'a new-born baby is dangerous,' or that 'the water in which a holy person has washed is dangerous,' my private experience does not tell me; in fact, I never made either experiment: never tubbed in the water previously used by a bishop. But I am prepared to admit that neither babies nor bishops are proved by our experience to be dangerous. That is not the question. The savage argued, not from unbiassed and impartial scientific experiment, but fromfanciedexperience. Thus Mr. Jevons mentions a Maori who died after rinding out that he had eaten, unawares, the remains of the luncheon of a holy person, a chief. There was experience produced by suggestion. The suggestion was suggested in the interests of holy chiefs; they were 'tabooed an inch thick,' as Mr. Manning writes. As to the baby, the Dyaks, as in our own fairy belief, hold that 'new-born children are the especial prey of evil spirits,' just as corpses were in—Scotland, where, if the door was left ajar, the corpse sat up, and mopped and mowed. If the watchers left it, and dined in the 'but,' an awfulvacarmearose in the 'ben.' The minister entered, stilled the tumult, asked for the tongs, and came back holding in the tongsa bloody glove! This he dropped into the fire.

This kind of thing is contradictory to the experience of Mr. Jevons, but not to thefanciedexperience of Dyaks, Scots, and other races. Opinion therefore makes taboos in accordance with experience, or what is believed to be experience, and the belief is fortified by suggestion, which produces death or disease when the taboo is broken. On the analogy of infectious diseases, the mischief of the tabooed thing is held to be contagious.

Thus I cannot hold with Mr. Jevons that the human mind is provided with ana prioricategorical imperativethat there are some things which must not be done,' 'a feeling' 'independent of sense experience.'[4]If the choice of what things are 'not to be done' seems to us 'irrational,' that is merely because our reason is more enlightened than that of the savage. He prohibited just such things as his philosophy, and what he believed to be his experience, showed him to be dangerous for obscure reasons. Any fool could see that it was dangerous to eat poison berries or frolic with a bear. But it took reflection to discover that a baby or a corpse was dangerous by reason of evil spirits,Iruntarinia, whom theAlkna Buma,or clairvoyant, could see, and describe, though Mr. Jevons and I could not discern them.[5]These Iruntarinia notoriously carry off women, and probably, like the fairies, have their best chance in the hour of child-birth: at all events, the fairies have.[6]The belief is socially useful: it prevents young Arunta women from wandering off alone, and philandering out of bounds.

Thus these taboos are sanctioned by the tribal counsellors as the results of experience, not their own perhaps, but that of theAlkna Buma, or clairvoyant, or 'sensitive,' or 'medium,' or habitually hallucinated person. Other taboos, as to women, are imposed for very good reasons, though not for the reasons alleged, and broken taboos are not (in actual ordinary experience) attended by the penalties which, however, suggestion may produce.

Taboo, then, is not imposed irrationally, nor in deference to 'an inherent tendency of the human mind' (that Mrs. Harris of philosophy), but for a very good reason, as savage reasoning goes, and in accordance with what is believed to be experience, and, by dint of suggestion, really does become experience.

It was 'irrational' in Dr. Johnson to touch certain posts, and avoid certain stones, and enter a door twice, if he first entered it with the wrong foot. All my life I have had similar private taboos, though nobody knows better that they are nonsense. But some solitary experience in childhood probably suggested a relation of cause and effect, where there was only a fortuitous sequence of antecedent and consequent, and so Dr. Johnson and I (though not so conspicuously as the Doctor) imposed taboos on ourselves in deference to (fancied) experience. Early man has acted in the same way on a large scale, obeying no categoricala prioriimperative, but merely acting on his philosophy and experience which is real to him, though not to civilised men. They usually do not understand it, but educated persons with a survival of savagery in their mental constitutions find the affair intelligible.

But the reason in actual practical experience for some taboos must be plain to the most civilised minds, except those of Badical voters for the Border Boroughs. Man, in the hunter stage,musthave game laws and a close-time for edible animals and plants. The Border Badical will not permit a close-time for trout, preferring to destroy them, and with them their offspring, when gravid and unfit for human food, or before they recover condition.

The 'primitive' Arunta are not so irrational, and have a close-time, protected by taboo, or, at least, by ceremonies of a nature more or less magical. In these ceremonies of a people not pastoral or agricultural, we seem to see the germs of the offerings of first-fruits to gods or spirits, though the Australian produce is offered neither to spirits nor to gods. These tribes recognise a great spirit, indeed, Twanyirika, but that he plays any other part in religion or society than presiding over the tribal mysterieswe have at present no evidence to prove. Similar figures, associated with the mysteries, are, in other parts of Australia, provided with an ample mythology, and are subject to a being more august and remote. But either the Arunta are advanced thinkers who have passed beyond such ideas, or they have not yet attained to them, or our witnesses are uninformed on the subject.[7]In any case, the first-fruits of the game, grubs, and plants of the Arunta are not offered to Twanyirika, or to the minor sprites,Iruntarinia.

The ceremonies, partly intended to make the creatures used for food prolific, and partly, I think, to indicate that the close-time is over and that the creatures may be taken and eaten, are called Intichiuma. On the mummeries expected to make animals and plants plentiful we need not dwell. In each case the men who belong to the totem of the beast, grub, or plant perform the ceremonies. There is believed to be a close and essential connection between a man of the kangaroo totem and all kangaroos, between a man of the grub totem and all grubs, so each totem group does the magic to propagate its ally among beasts or plants. How these ideas arose we do not know. But if a local group was originally called kangaroos or grubs (and some name it must have), the association of names would inevitably lead, by association of ideas, to the notion that a mysterious connection existed between the men of a totem name and the plant, animal, or what not which gave the name. These men, therefore, would work the magic for propagating their kindred in the animal and vegetable world. But the existence of this connection would also suggest that, in common decency, a man should not kill and eat his animal or vegetable relations. In most parts of the world he abstains from thisuncousinly behaviour: among the Arunta he may eat sparingly of his totem, and must do so at the end of the close-time or beginning of the season.

He thus, as a near relation of the actual kangaroos or grubs, declares the season open, and gives his neighbours of other totems a lead. Now they may begin to eat grubs or kangaroos; the taboo is off. Thus, in 1745, Gask tabooed the corn of his tenants; they must not reap it, because they refused 'to rise and follow Charlie.' Prince Charles, hearing of this, cut a few ears with his claymore, thus removing the taboo. In the same way the grub or kangaroo men publicly eat a little of their own totem, after which the tribesmen and other totems may fall to and devour. When the grub or whatever it is becomes plentiful, after the magic doings for its propagation, it is collected and placed before some members of the grub totem. TheAlatunja, or convener, grinds up some of the grub, he and his fellow totemists eat a little, and hand the mass back to the members of other totems. They eat a little of their own totem, partly, Messrs. Spencer and Gillen say, to strengthen their mystic connection with the creature. This, in a way, is a 'sacramental' idea, though no religious regard is paid to the plants and animals. But the men also partake, to remove the taboo, and to let the rest of the community gorge themselves legally.[8]

The rite has thus a practical purpose. The grubs or other creatures are not prematurely destroyed, like trout on the Border. In fact, trout themselves are sensible enough not to begin feeding on May fly prematurely.'Throughout the previous week,' says Sir Herbert Maxwell, 'a few May flies had been seen ... but not a trout would point his nose at one.... This hesitation on the part of the trout to begin their annual banquet is one of the best known and, at the same time, least explicable features of the May fly fortnight.'[9]The Arunta also let the grub come on to its full rise before feeding. When a certain bulb is ripe, the men of its totem rub off and blow away the husks, then the general public may begin feeding. There is nothing sacramental inthisceremony, which merely opens the season for tuber eating. The taboo is off. And so in other cases: the kangaroo men are smeared with the fat of the kangaroo, and eat a little of the animal.[10]The non-kangaroo tribesmen may then eat kangaroo. The traditions of the Arunta represent their mythical ancestors as in some cases feedingsolelyon their totems. But this cannot possibly be true. A grub man would die, when grubs were out, of starvation, and so with the rest. 'When fruits is in, cats is out,' and a man of the gooseberry totem, who only ate gooseberries, would perish miserably.

The Arunta eating of the totem has nothing to do with consecrating the first-fruits of grubs or kangaroos to a god or with absorbing the qualities of a spirit. When Swedish peasants bake a cake shaped like a girl, from the last sheaf of the new corn, they perhaps originally ate the cake 'as the body of the corn spirit.'[11]But when the Lithuanian farmer takes the first swig of the new beer—'the second brew was for the servants'—perhaps he is only declaring his ownership, and opening the beer season.[12]In an unnamed part of Yorkshire the parson cuts thefirst corn; he is theAlatunja, and opens the harvest. In the Celebes the priest opens the rice harvest; all eat of it; 'after this every one is free to get in his rice.' At St. Andrews on the Medal Day (which is in harvest time) the Alatunja (that is the new captain) drives a ball from the first tee; after this every one is free to drive off in his turn—but not before. In some places, as in Indo-China, the first-fruits are offered to a god; in Zululand the king pops a little into the mouth of every man present, who 'may immediately get in his crops.' If he began harvest before he would die, or, if detected, would be speared, or forfeited. Sometimes the first-fruits are offered to 'the holy spirit of fire.' There are all sorts of ways and ceremonies of opening the season and taking off the taboo. I really don't think it follows that the first fruits are dangerous to eat, before the ceremony,because'they are regarded as instinct with a divine virtue, and consequently the eating of them is a sacrament or communion.[13]I It is dangerous to eat them, as it would be dangerous to steal a tabooed umbrella. They are tabooed because it is close-time.

The other ideas may come to be entertained, an automatic punishment may be thought to follow the breach of the taboo, though we do not learn that this is the case among the Arunta. But the origin of the taboo on the immature food, I think, is the perfectly practical idea of a close-time; plants are not to be gathered, nor animals killed, prematurely. The more or less supreme being of the Fuegians is angry—if you shoot flappers. 'Very bad to shoot little duck, come rain, come wind, blow, very much blow.'[14]The 'great black man, who cannot be escaped, and who influences the weather according to men's conduct,' is right about the flappers. He sanctionsa necessary game law. TheHow(king), in Tonga, used to wait till the yams were ripe, then he fixed a day for gathering them, and had a religious function. The sort of function depends on the stage at which local religion has arrived; but a close-time—no premature killing or gathering—is the practical idea at the base of all these affairs of first-fruits. Any other superstition, sacrificial or sacramental, may crystallise round the practical primitive prohibition, especially when it was sanctioned by the good old device of automatic punishment, following on infringement of taboo.

If Sir Herbert Maxwell could persuade Mr. Thomas Shaw, M.P., that the proverbially execrable weather on the Border is the direct result of fishing, especially with salmon-roe, out of season; if there was to be no fishing till Mr. Shaw, after tasting of the first trout, declared the season open; if the clergy of all denominations lent their presence to the imposing ceremony, then I believe that Tweed, Ettrick, Teviot, Yarrow, Ail, and Kale would be worth fishing in again.

Taboo, as Mr. Frazer and Mr. Jevons agree, has had its uses in the evolution of morality; but remark that strictly moral offences are nowhere under taboo. You may steal (as long as the object stolen is not tabooed and does not belong to a chief or priest), you may kill, you may interfere with the domestic bliss of your neighbour, you may lie, but the automatic punishment of taboo-breaking nowhere follows. Baiame or Pundjel may punish you; but there is no instant mechanical penalty, as under taboo.

After writing this paper, I found that Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson's experience oftapu, in the Pacific, led him to form the same opinions as are here expressed. 'The devil-fish, it seems, were growing scarce upon thereef; it was judged fit to interpose what we should call a close season ... a tapu had to be declared.' The tapus described 'are for thoroughly sensible ends.' There are tapus which, to us, appear absurd, 'but the tapu is more often the instrument of wise and needful restrictions.'[15]

These taboos are imposed from above, by Government. In other cases, where the taboo expresses an inference from savage superstition (say that a baby or a corpse is dangerous), the taboo is not imposed except by public opinion. That opinion is sanctioned (as in the case of first-fruits) by the action of the Alatunja, or headman: in more advanced societies, by the king. In many cases, taboos are imposed on the king himself by the priestly colleges. But the greatest authority is tradition, resting on fancied experience.

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