Custom and Myth Part 13

{152a} Turner's Samoa.

{152b} Josephus, loc. cit. For this, and many other references, I am indebted to Schwartz's Prahistorisch-anthropologische Studien. In most magic herbs the learned author recognises thunder and lightning-a theory no less plausible than Mr. Brown's.

{152c} Lib. xxviii.

{152d} Schoolcraft.

{157a} Talvj, Charakteristik der Volkslieder, p. 3.

{157b} Fauriel, Chants de la Grece moderne.

{160} Thus Scotland scarcely produced any ballads, properly speaking, after the Reformation. The Kirk suppressed the dances to whose motion the ballad was sung in Scotland, as in Greece, Provence, and France.

{161} L. Preller's Ausgewahlte Aufsatze. Greek ideas on the origin of Man. It is curious that the myth of a gold, a silver, and a copper race occurs in South America. See Bra.s.seur de Bourbourg's Notes on the Popol Vuh.

{164a} See essay on Early History of the Family.

{164b} This constant struggle may be, and of course by one school of comparative mythologists will be, represented as the strife between light and darkness, the sun's rays, and the clouds of night, and so on. M. Castren has well pointed out that the struggle has really an historical meaning. Even if the myth be an elementary one, its constructors must have been in the exogamous stage of society.

{169} Sampo may be derived from a Thibetan word, meaning 'fountain of good,' or it may possibly be connected with the Swedish Stamp, a hand-mill. The talisman is made of all the quaint odds and ends that the Fetichist treasures: swan's feathers, flocks of wool, and so on.

{170} Sir G. W. c.o.x's Popular Romances of the Middle Ages, p. 19.

{171} Fortnightly Review, 1869: 'The Worship of Plants and Animals.'

{176} Mr. McLennan in the Fortnightly Review, February 1870.

{178} M. Schmidt, Volksleben der Neugriechen, finds comparatively few traces of the worship of Zeus, and these mainly in proverbial expressions.

{183} Preller, Ausgewahlte Aufsatze, p. 154.

{184a} Tylor, Prim. Cult., ii. 156. Pinkerton, vii. 357.

{184b} Universities Mission to Central Africa, p. 217. Prim. Cult,, ii. 156, 157.

{186} Quoted in 'Jacob's Rod': London, n.d., a translation of La Verge de Jacob, Lyon, 1693.

{190} Lettres sur la Baguette, pp. 106-112.

{200} Turner's Samoa, pp, 77, 119.

{201} c.o.x, Mythol. of Aryan Races, pa.s.sim.

{202a} See examples in 'A Far-travelled Tale,' 'Cupid and Psyche,' and 'The Myth of Cronus.'

{202b} Trubner, 1881.

{203a} Hahn, p. 23.

{203b} Ibid., p. 45.

{204} Expedition, i. 166.

{205} Herodotus, ii.

{209} See Fetichism and the Infinite.

{211} Sacred Books of the East, xii. 130, 131,

{218} Lectures on Language. Second series, p. 41.

{222} A defence of the evidence for our knowledge of savage faiths, practices, and ideas will be found in Primitive Culture, i. 9-11.

{223} A third reference to Pausanias I have been unable to verify. There are several references to Greek fetich-stones in Theophrastus's account of the Superst.i.tious Man. A number of Greek sacred stones named by Pausanias may be worth noticing. In Botia (ix. 16), the people believed that Alcmene, mother of Heracles, was changed into a stone. The Thespians worshipped, under the name of Eros, an unwrought stone, aya?a pa?a??tat??, 'their most ancient sacred object' (ix. 27). The people of Orchomenos 'paid extreme regard to certain stones,' said to have fallen from heaven, 'or to certain figures made of stone that descended from the sky' (ix. 38). Near Chaeronea, Rhea was said to have deceived Cronus, by offering him, in place of Zeus, a stone wrapped in swaddling bands. This stone, which Cronus vomited forth after having swallowed it, was seen by Pausanias at Delphi (ix. 41). By the roadside, near the city of the Panopeans, lay the stones out of which Prometheus made men (x. 4). The stone swallowed in place of Zeus by his father lay at the exit from the Delphian temple, and was anointed (compare the action of Jacob, Gen. xxviii. 18) with oil every day. The Phocians worshipped thirty squared stones, each named after a G.o.d (vii. xxii.). 'Among all the Greeks rude stones were worshipped before the images of the G.o.ds.' Among the Trzenians a sacred stone lay in front of the temple, whereon the Trzenian elders sat, and purified Orestes from the murder of his mother. In Attica there was a conical stone worshipped as Apollo (i. xliv.). Near Argos was a stone called Zeus Cappotas, on which Orestes was said to have sat down, and so recovered peace of mind. Such are examples of the sacred stones, the oldest worshipful objects, of Greece.

{226} See essays on 'Apollo and the Mouse' and 'The Early History of the Family.'

{230} Here I may mention a case ill.u.s.trating the motives of the fetich-worshipper. My friend, Mr. J. J. Atkinson, who has for many years studied the manners of the people of New Caledonia, asked a native why he treasured a certain fetich-stone. The man replied that, in one of the vigils which are practised beside the corpses of deceased friends, he saw a lizard. The lizard is a totem, a worshipful animal in New Caledonia. The native put out his hand to touch it, when it disappeared and left a stone in its place. This stone he therefore held sacred in the highest degree. Here then a fetich-stone was indicated as such by a spirit in form of a lizard.

{233a} Much the same theory is propounded in Mr. Muller's lectures on 'The Science of Religion.'

{233b} The idea is expressed in a well known parody of Wordsworth, about the tree which

'Will grow ten times as tall as me And live ten times as long.'

{236} See Essay on 'The Early History of the Family.'

{241} Bergaigne's La Religion Vedique may be consulted for Vedic Fetichism.

{247a} Early Law and Custom.

{247b} Studies in Ancient History, p. 127.

{248} Descent of Man, ii. 362.

{249} Early Law and Custom, p. 210.

{250a} Here I would like to point out that Mr. M'Lennan's theory was not so hard and fast as his manner (that of a very a.s.sured believer in his own ideas) may lead some inquirers to suppose. Sir Henry Maine writes, that both Mr. Morgan and Mr. M'Lennan 'seem to me to think that human society went everywhere through the same series of changes, and Mr. M'Lennan, at any rate, expresses himself as if all those stages could be clearly discriminated from one another, and the close of one and the commencement of another announced with the distinctness of the clock-bell telling the end of the hour.' On the other hand, I remember Mr. M'Lennan's saying that, in his opinion, 'all manner of arrangements probably went on simultaneously in different places.' In Studies in Ancient History, p. 127, he expressly guards against the tendency 'to a.s.sume that the progress of the various races of men from savagery has been a uniform progress: that all the stages which any of them has gone through have been pa.s.sed in their order by all.' Still more to the point is his remark on polyandry among the very early Greeks and other Aryans; 'it is quite consistent with my view that in all these quarters (Persia, Sparta, Troy, Lycia, Attica, Crete, &c.) monandry, and even the patria potestas, may have prevailed at points.'

{250b} Early Law and Custom, p. 212.

{251} Studies in Ancient History, pp. 140-147.

{252} Totem is the word generally given by travellers and interpreters for the family crests of the Red Indians. Cf. p. 105.

{256} Domestic Manners of the Chinese, i. 99.

{258} Fortnightly Review, June 1, 1877.