Folklore as an Historical Science Part 11

It is impossible to deny a place among these myths of creation to the Hebrew tradition of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The first chapter of Genesis is the answer which the early Hebrews gave to the scientific question as to the origin of man. How much it cost them to arrive at this conclusion one cannot guess, one only knows that it has become a glory to the ages of Hebrew history, as well as to the civilisation of Christianity. Unfortunately it has become much more.

The science of the primitive Hebrew has been adopted as the G.o.d-given revelation to all mankind. It is the function of folklore to correct this error, to restore the Hebrew tradition to its proper place among the myths of the world which have answered the cry of early man for the knowledge of his origin. There is no degradation here. Science is no longer in doubt as to the origin of man within the evolutionary process of the natural world, and it rightly rejects the first chapter of Genesis as of value to modern research. But science should accept it as a chapter in the history of anthropology, a chapter which has only proved not to be true, because of the limited range of early man in the facts about man, but a chapter, nevertheless, which has the inherent value of a faithful record of man's search after truth. This is a great position. This is the revelation which is made to us from the first chapter of Genesis, and when the theologian is bold and able enough to step outside the formularies of his ancient faith, and reach the magnificent world of thought which lies in front of him by the revelations of scientific discovery, he will consider the anthropological interpretation of the Hebrew Bible as one of the necessary elements of his equipment. There is on present lines a whole world of thought between science and religion, although they both have the same object. They both seek the great unknown. Science, however, gives up all efforts in the past which have proved futile and erroneous, cheerfully surrenders all errors of research and interpretation, starts investigation afresh, begins new discoveries, and rewrites the story they have to tell. Religion, on the other hand, comes to a full stop when once she has made or accepted a discovery, when once she has p.r.o.nounced that the great unknown has become known to her votaries and supporters. She is skilful to use the results of science up to the point where they serve her purpose, and to use the terms of science in order to build up her shattering position. But she does not advance. She does not accept the first chapter of Genesis as a wonderful revelation of the early stages of human investigation into the realms of the unknown, but still keeps to her old formula of a revelation of the deity as to the origin of man, and she does not see that by this att.i.tude she is lessening every day her capacity for teaching truth.

I think the att.i.tude of science to the Hebrew tradition is only a little less unfortunate than that of religion. Professor Huxley employed all the resources of his great knowledge to disprove the scientific accuracy of the tradition, and when one rereads his chapters on this subject[190] one wonders at the absence of the sense of proportion. Perhaps it was necessary, considering the place which the Hebrew tradition occupies in civilised thought, to show its utter inconsistency with the facts of nature, but it was equally necessary to show that it has its place in the history of human thought. The folklorist replaces it among the myths of creation, and then proceeds to a.n.a.lyse and value it. The Hebrew is shown by the myth he adopted to have frankly acknowledged that the origin of man and of the world was undiscoverable by him. Whatever older myths he once possessed, he discarded them in favour of a mythic G.o.d-creator, and this is only another way of stating that the mystery of man's origin could not, to the Hebrew mind, be met by such a myth as the New Zealander believed in, or as the k.u.mis believed in, but could only be met by the larger conception of a special creation. The Hebrew could not find his answer in nature, so he appealed to super-nature. His G.o.d was the unknown G.o.d, and the realm of the unknown G.o.d was the unknowable. Though in terms this may not be the interpretation of the Hebrew creation myth, its ultimate resolve is this; and because modern science has penetrated beyond this confession of the unknown origin of man to the evolution of man, it should not therefore treat contemptuously the effort of early Hebrew science. Because it is not possible to admit this effort as part of modern science, it must not be rejected from the entire region of science. It must be respected as one of the many efforts which have made possible the last effort of all which proclaims that man has kinship with all the animal world.

These points ill.u.s.trate the unsatisfactory att.i.tude of science and religion to myth. There is still to notice the unsatisfactory att.i.tude of the folklorist. Wrong interpretation of special cla.s.ses of myth is, of course, to be antic.i.p.ated in the commencement of a great study such as folklore; but there are also wrong interpretations of the fundamental basis of myth. Thus even Mr. Frazer, with all his vast research into savage thought and action, doubts the possession of good logical faculty by mankind. If mankind, he says, had always been logical and wise, history would not be a long chronicle of folly and crime.[191] But surely we cannot doubt man's logical powers. They have been too strong for his facts. He has applied mercilessly all the powers of his logical faculties upon isolated observations of phenomena, and it is this limited application which has produced the folly and crime. I venture to think that civilised man shares with the savage of to-day, and with the primitive ancestors of all mankind, the charge of applying perfectly good logic to an insufficiency of facts, and producing therefrom fresh chapters of folly and crime.

If myth is correctly defined as primitive science, as I have ventured to suggest, it is important to know how it a.s.sumes a place among the traditions of a people. Primitive science was also primitive belief.

If it accounted for the origin of mankind, of the sun, moon, and stars, of the earth and the trees, it accounted for them as creations of a higher power than man, or, at all events, of a great and specially endowed man, and higher powers than man were of the unknown realm. The unknown was the awful. Primitive science and primitive belief were therefore on one and the same plane.[192] They were subjects to be treated with reverence and with awe. The story into which the myth was so frequently woven is not a story to those who believe in the truth of the myth. It a.s.sumes the personal shape, because the personal is the only machinery by which primitive man is capable of expressing himself. It was held only by tradition, because tradition was the only means of transmitting it, and it was of a sacred character, because sacred things and beliefs were the only forces which influenced primitive thought. When it was repeated to new generations of learners, it was not a case of story-telling--it was a matter of the profoundest importance. Everywhere among the lowest savagery we find the secrets of the group kept from all but the initiated, and these secrets are the traditions which have become sacred, traditions expressed sometimes in ceremonial, sometimes in rites, sometimes in narratives. Thus the mythological and religious knowledge of the Bushmen is imparted in dances, and when a man is ignorant of some myth, he will say, "I do not dance that dance,"

meaning that he does not belong to the group which preserves that particular sacred chapter.[193] The Ashantees have an interesting creation myth which is stated to be the foundation of all their religious opinions.[194] Mr. Howitt, in his important chapter on "Beliefs and Burial Practices,"[195] seems to me to exactly interpret the savage mind. The first thing he notes is the belief--a belief that "the earth is flat, surmounted by the solid vault of the sky," that "there is water all round the flat earth," that the sun is a woman, and that the moon was once a man who lived on earth, and so on. Then, secondly, he notes the manner in which these beliefs are translated to and held by the people, the myth in point of fact--unfortunately, Mr.

Howitt calls it a legend--wherein it is perfectly obvious that the Australian is interpreting the facts of nature in the only language known to him to be applicable, namely, that of his own personality.

Messrs. Spencer and Gillen produce much the same kind of evidence,[196] and describe a ceremony among the northern tribes connected with the myth of the sun, which ends in a newly initiated youth being brought up, "shown the decorations, and had everything explained to him."[197] Among the central tribes the same authorities describe minutely the initiation ceremonies, during which the initiate boy "is instructed for the first time in any of the sacred matters referring to totems, and it is by means of the performances which are concerned with certain animals, or rather, apparently with the animals, but in reality with Alcheringa individuals who were the direct transformations of such animals, that the traditions dealing with this subject, which is of the greatest importance in the eyes of the natives, are firmly impressed upon the mind of the novice, to whom everything which he sees and hears is new and surrounded with an air of mystery."[198] Sir George Grey, speaking of the traditions of the Maori which he collected, says his reader will be in "the position of one who listens to a heathen and savage high priest, explaining to him in his own words and in his own energetic manner, the traditions in which he earnestly believes, and unfolding the religious opinions upon which the faith and hopes of his race rest."[199] This "school of mythology and history," as it is significantly termed in John White's _Ancient History of the Maori_, was "Whare-Kura, the sacred school in which the sons of high priests were taught our mythology and history,"

and it "stood facing the east in the precincts of the sacred place of Mua." The school was opened by the priests in the autumn, and continued from sunset to midnight every night for four or five months in succession. The chief priest sat next to the door. It was his duty to commence the proceedings by repeating a portion of history; the other priests followed in succession, according to rank. On the south side sat the old and most accomplished priests, "whose duty it was to insist on a critical and verbatim rehearsal of all the ancient lore."[200] The American-Indian account, by the Iroquois, of how myths were told to an ancient chief and an a.s.sembly of the people on a circular open s.p.a.ce in a deep forest, wherein was a large wheel-shaped stone, from beneath which came a voice which told the tale of the former world, and how the first people became what they are at present,[201] is in exact accord with this evidence. The priestly novice among the Indians of British Guiana is taught the traditions of the tribe, while the medicine man of the Bororo in Brazil has to learn certain ritual songs and the languages of birds, beasts, and trees.[202]

I do not want to press the point too far, because evidence is not easy to get on account of the incomplete fashion in which it has been collected and presented to the student. The records of native life are divided off into chapters arranged, not on the basis of native ideas, but on the basis of civilised ideas, and from this cause we get myth and belief in different chapters as if they had no connection with each other; we get myths treated as if they were but the fancy-begotten amus.e.m.e.nts of the individual, instead of the serious ideas of the collective people about the elements of nature to which they have directed their attention. Mr. J. A. Farrer comes practically to this correct conclusion,[203] while Mr. Jevons seems to me to have arrived at the same result in spite of some false intermediate steps, due to his failure to discriminate between myth and mythology.[204]

Failures of this kind are of almost infinite loss to scientific research. They stop the results which might flow from the stages correctly reached, and hide the full significance which arises from the fact that man's aspirations are always so much in excess of his accomplished acts. Poetry, philosophy, prayer, worship, are all short of the ideal; and the question may surely arise whether the actual accomplishments of man in civilisation, as compared with those of man in savagery, afford any sort of indication of the distance between man's accomplishment and his aspiration at any age. If man has never travelled at one moment of time, or at one definite period of life, all this distance in thought, it may still be possible to use this distance between savage and cultured accomplishment as a standard of measurement between accomplishment and ideal, wherever the material for such a purpose is available. If folklorists will keep such a possibility in mind, whenever they are called upon to investigate myth, it will at all events save them from proceeding upon lines which cannot lead to progress in the investigation of human history.

The primitive myth does not include all that properly comes within the definition of myth. There must be included the myth formed to explain a rite or ceremony, which originating in most ancient times has been kept up at the instance of a particular religion or cult, but the meaning and intent of which has been forgotten amidst the progress of a later civilisation. Pausanias is the great storehouse of such myths as this, and Mr. Lang has, more than any other scholar, examined and explained the process which has gone on.

There is also included in this secondary cla.s.s of myth, the myths upon which are founded the great systems of mythology. The Hindu mythology, in spite of all that has been done to place it on the pedestal of primitive original thought, is definitely relegated to the secondary position by its best exponents. The Vedic religion is tribal in form, and in the pre-mythological stage.[205] In the Ramayana and Mahabharata, on the contrary, "we trace unequivocal indications of a departure from the elemental worship of the Vedas, and the origin or elaboration of legends which form the great body of the mythological religion of the Hindus."[206] The pre-mythological and the mythological stages of Hindu religion, therefore, are both discoverable from the traditional literature which has descended from both ages, and this fact is important in the cla.s.sification of the various phases of tradition. When once it is admitted that the beginnings of mythology are to be traced in one section of the people who are supposed to derive a common system of mythology from a common home, future research will hesitate to interpret, as Kuhn and Max Muller and their school have done, the traditions of Celts, Teutons, and Scandinavians as the detritus of ancient mythologies instead of the beginnings of what, under favourable conditions, might have grown into mythologies. Mythological tradition is essentially a secondary not a primary stage. This fact is overlooked by many authorities, and I have noted some of the unfortunate results. It is not overlooked by those who study the principles of their subject as well as the details. Thus, as Robertson-Smith has so well explained, "mythology was no essential part of ancient religion, for it had no sacred sanction and no binding force on the worshippers.... Belief in a certain series of myths was neither obligatory as a part of true religion, nor was it supposed that by believing a man acquired religious merit and conciliated the favour of the G.o.ds. What was obligatory or meritorious was the exact performance of certain sacred acts prescribed by religious tradition. This being so, it follows that mythology ought not to take the prominent place that is too often a.s.signed to it in the scientific study of ancient faiths."[207] This is exactly the position, and all that I have advanced for the purpose of aiming at a cla.s.sification of the various kinds of tradition is in accord with this view.

All that I am anxious to prove, all that it is possible to prove, from these considerations of the position occupied by myth, is that myths const.i.tute a part of the serious life of the people. They belong to the men and women, perhaps some of them to the men only and others to the women only, but essentially to the life of the people.

I do not think that even Mr. Hartland in his special study of the subject has quite understood this. He begins at a later period in the history of tradition, the period of story-telling proper, when myths have become folk-tales,[208] and he treats this period as the earliest instead of the secondary stage of myth. In this stage something has happened to push myth back from the centre of the people's life to a lesser position--a new religious influence, a new civilisation, a new home, any one of the many influences, or any combination of influences, which have affected peoples and sent them along the paths of evolution and progress.

It is in this way that we come upon the folk-tale. The folk-tale is secondary to the myth. It is the primitive myth dislodged from its primitive place. It has become a part of the life of the people, independently of its primary form and object and in a different sense. The mythic or historic fact has been obscured, or has been displaced from the life of the people. But the myth lives on through the affections of the people for the traditions of their older life.

They love to tell the story which their ancestors revered as myth even though it has lost its oldest and most impressive significance. The artistic setting of it, born of the years through which it has lived, fashioned by the minds which have handed it down and embellished it through the generations, has helped its life. It has become the fairy tale or the nursery tale. It is told to grown-up people, not as belief but as what was once believed; it is told to children, not to men; to lovers of romance, not to worshippers of the unknown; it is told by mothers and nurses, not by philosophers or priestesses; in the gathering ground of home life, or in the nursery, not in the hushed sanct.i.ty of a great wonder.[209]

The influence of changing conditions upon the position of mythic tradition is well ill.u.s.trated by Dr. Rivers in his account of the Todas. This people, he says, "are rapidly forgetting their folk-tales and the legends of their G.o.ds [that is, their myths], while their ceremonial remains to a large extent intact and seems likely to continue so for some time." Dr. Rivers attributes this to the effect of intercourse with other people. This intercourse has had no missionary results and has not therefore affected their religious rites and ceremonies, but has shown itself largely in the form of loss of interest in the stories of the past.[210] In other words, and in accordance with the definitions I am suggesting, the primitive myths of the Todas have definitely a.s.sumed a secondary position as folk-tale, and not a strong position at that, while religion has clung to rite and formula.

Primitive myth dislodged in this fashion is sometimes preserved in a special manner and for religious purposes in its ancient setting as a belief, or as a tradition belonging to sacred places and appertaining to sacred things. This is what has happened to the Genesis myth of the Hebrews; it has also happened to some of the sacred myths of the Hindus, and perhaps to some of the sacred myths of the Greeks. In this position the myth may even be reduced to writing, and where this happens all the sacredness appertaining to tradition is transferred to the written instrument.

Thus in Arkadia, Pausanias tells us, was a temple of Demeter, and every second year, when they were celebrating what they called the greater mysteries, they took out certain writings which bore on the mysteries, and having read them in the hearing of the initiated, put them back in their place that same night.[211] In India examples occur of land being held for telling stories at the Uchaos or festivals of the G.o.ddess Devi.[212] The colleges of Rome, composed of men specially skilled in religious lore, and charged with the preservation of traditional rules regarding the more general religious observances, the proper fulfilment of which implied a certain amount of information, and rendered it necessary for the state in its own interest to provide the faithful transmission of that information, have been described by Mommsen.[213]

I pa.s.s to the third cla.s.s of tradition, namely, the legend, and this need not detain us long. We have already ill.u.s.trated it by the notes on history and folklore, and by its very nature it belongs essentially to the historic age. In dealing with legend, there is first to determine whether its characters are historical, or are unknown to history. If the former, there is next to disengage those parts of the tradition which, by their parallels to other traditions, or by their nature, may be safely certified as not belonging to the historical hero or to the period of the historical hero. If the latter, the details must be a.n.a.lysed to see what elements of culture are contained therein. In both cases tradition will have served a purpose, and that purpose must be sought. Tradition does not attach itself to an historical personage without cause. There is necessity for it, and in the case of Hereward the necessity was proved to have been the great gap in the history of a national hero. Tradition does not preserve details of primitive culture-history without cause, and in the examples already quoted it has been shown that this cause rests upon the indissoluble links which the uncultured peasant of to-day has with the pre-cultured past of his race. He will have forgotten all about his tribal life and its consequences, but will retain legends which are founded upon tribal life. He will have lost touch with ideas which proclaim that man or woman not of his tribe is an enemy to be feared or attacked, but will gladly relate legends which deal with events growing out of a state of perpetual strife among the ancestors of people now in friendship. He will not understand the personal tie of ancient times, but will listen to the legends attached to places in such strange fashion as to make places seem to possess a personal life full of events and happenings. He will know nothing of giants and ogres, but will love the legends which tell of heroes meeting and conquering such beings. The history of the school books is nothing to him, but the history unknowingly contained in the legends is very real, and is applied over and over again to such later events as by force of circ.u.mstances become stamped upon the popular mind and thus succeed in displacing the original. It would be an important contribution to history to have these legends collected and examined by a competent authority. They would be beacon lights of national history preserved in legend.

It will be readily conceded, I think, that in attempting these definitions of the various cla.s.ses of tradition, and in ill.u.s.trating them from the records of man's life in various parts of the world, it has been impossible for me to deal with certain points in the problem before us. In particular I have not considered the favourite subject of the diffusion of folk-tales. I do not believe in a general system of diffusion, such a system, I mean, as would suffice to account for the parallels to be found in almost all countries.[214] I think diffusion occupies a very small part indeed of the problem, and that it only takes place in late historical times. It is a large subject, and I have virtually stated my answer to the theory of diffusion in the definitions and cla.s.sifications which I have ventured to put forward. It may be considered by some that other facts in the conditions of myth, folk-tale, and legend would not confirm the general outline I have given of the three cla.s.ses of tradition to which I have applied these terms; and of course there are many side issues in so great a problem. I would not urge the correctness of the views I have put forward as applicable to every part of the world, or to every phase in the history of tradition; but I would urge that in the great centres of traditional life they are practically the only means of arriving at the position occupied by tradition, and that in all cases they form a working hypothesis upon which future inquirers may well base their researches.

II

Of late years there have been placed alongside of the traditional myth, folk-tale, and legend many other products of tradition--customs, ceremonies, practices, and beliefs, and it has been argued, and argued strongly and convincingly, that the tradition which has brought down the saga and song as far-off echoes of an otherwise unrecorded past has also brought down these other elements which must also belong to the same distant past. This argument is now no longer seriously disputed. But there still remains open for discussion the exact kind of evidence which these elements of tradition supply, the particular period or people from which they have descended, the particular department of history to which they relate. All this is highly disputed.

Folklore has in this department been greatly aided by Dr. Tylor's impressive terminology, whereby the custom, ceremony, practice, and belief which have come down by tradition are cla.s.sed as "survivals."

This term implies an ancient origin, and the necessary work of the student is to get back to the original. Until very lately the fact of survival has carried with it the presumption of ancient origin, but Mr. Crawley has raised an objection which I think it is well to meet.

He urges that "the history of religious phenomena exemplifies in the most striking manner the continuity of modern and primitive culture; but there is a tendency on the part of students to underestimate this continuity, and, by explaining it away on a theory of survivals, to lose the only opportunity we have of deducing the permanent elements of human nature."

This sentence at once prepares us for much that follows; but Mr.

Crawley leaves the point itself untouched, except by implication, until he is in the middle of his book, and then we have his dictum that "it may be finally a.s.serted that nothing which has to do with human needs ever survives as a mere survival."[215] It will at once be seen that we have here a new estimate of the force which survivals play in the evidence of human progress. They prove the continuity of modern and primitive culture. They are part and parcel of modern life, filling a vacuum which has not been filled by modern thought, carrying on, therefore, the standard of religious belief and religious ideal from point to point until they can be replaced by newer ideas and concepts. This definition of survivals is very bold. It answers Mr.

Crawley's purpose and argument in a way which no other fact in human history, so far as we can judge, could answer it. It is the basis upon which his whole argument is founded. Occupying such an important place, it should have received explicit investigation, instead of being treated as a sort of side issue of incidental importance.

When explicit investigation is undertaken, Mr. Crawley's case must, I think, break down. Survivals are carried along the stream of time by people whose culture-status is on a level with the culture in which the survivals originated. It matters not that these people are placed in the midst of a higher civilisation or alongside of a higher civilisation. When once the higher civilisation penetrates to them, the survival is lost. There is not continuity between modern and primitive thought here, but, on the contrary, there is strong antagonism, ending with the defeat and death of the primitive survival. This is the evidence wherever survivals can be studied, whether in the midst of our own civilisation, or even of primitive civilisations, which constantly exhibit traces of older beliefs and ideas being pushed out of existence by newer. It is, indeed, a mistake to suppose, as some authorities apparently do, that survivals can only be studied when they are embedded in a high civilisation. It is almost a more fruitful method to study them when they appear in the lower strata; and even in such a case as the Australian aborigines I think that it is the neglect of observing survivals that has led to some of the erroneous theories which have recently been advanced against Messrs. Spencer and Gillen's conclusions.

For the purpose of examining survivals in custom, rite, and belief, we have nothing more than a series of notes of customs and beliefs obtaining among the lower and lowest cla.s.ses of the people, and not being the direct teaching of any religious or academic body. These notes are very unequal in value, owing to the manner in which they have been made. They are often accidental, they are seldom if ever the result of trained observation, and they are often mixed up with theories as to their origin and relationship to modern society and modern religious beliefs. To a great extent the two first of these apparent defects are real safeguards, for they certify to the genuineness of the record, a certificate which is more needed in this branch of inquiry than perhaps in any other. But with regard to the third defect there is considerable danger. An inquirer with an object is so apt to find what he wishes to find, either by the exercise of his own credulity or the ingenuous extension of inquiry into answer; whereas the inquirer who is content to note with the simplicity of those who occupy themselves by collecting what others have not collected, may be deficient in the details he gives, but is seldom wrong or violently wrong in what he has recorded. In every direction, however, great caution is needed, and especially where any section of custom and belief has already been the subject of inquiry. It is indeed almost safe to say that all research into custom and belief, even that of such masters as Tylor, Lang, Hartland, Frazer, and others, needs re-examination before we can finally and unreservedly accept the conclusions which have been arrived at.

Such an examination must be directed towards obtaining some necessary points in the life-history of each custom, rite, and belief. We have to approach this part of our work guided by the fact that folklore cannot by any possibility develop. The doctrine of evolution is so strong upon us that we are apt to apply its leading idea insensibly to almost every branch of human history. But folklore being what it is, namely the survival of traditional ideas or practices among a people whose princ.i.p.al members have pa.s.sed beyond the stage of civilisation which those ideas and practices once represented, it is impossible for it to have any development. When the original ideas and practices which it represents were current as the standard form of culture, their future history was then to be looked for along the lines of development. But so soon as they dropped back behind the standard of culture, whatever the cause and whenever the event happened, then their future history could only be traced along the lines of decay and disintegration. We are acquainted with some of the laws which mark the development of primitive culture, but we have paid no attention to the influences which mark the existence of survivals in culture. For this purpose we must first ascertain what are the component parts of each custom or superst.i.tion; secondly, we must cla.s.sify the various elements in each example; and thirdly, we must group the various examples into cla.s.ses which a.s.sociate with each other in motif and character.

By this treble process we shall have before us examples of the changes in folklore, and demonstrably they are changes of decay, not of development. By grouping and arranging these changes it may be possible to ascertain and set down the laws of change--for that there are laws I am nearly certain. It is these laws which must be discovered before we can go very far forward in our studies. Every item of custom and superst.i.tion must be tested by a.n.a.lysis to find out under which power it lives on in survival, and according to the result in each case, so may we hope to find out something about the original from which the survival has descended.

Each folklore item, in point of fact, has a life history of its own, and a place in relationship to other items. Just as the biography of each separate word in our language has been investigated in order to get at Aryan speech as the interpretation of Aryan thought, so must the biography of each custom, superst.i.tion, or story be investigated in order to get at Aryan belief or something older than Aryan belief.

We must try to ascertain whether each item represents primitive belief by direct descent, by symbolisation, or by changes which may be discovered by some law equivalent to Grimm's law in the study of language.

a.n.a.lysis of each custom, rite, or belief will show it to consist of three distinct parts, which I would distinguish by the following names:--

1. The formula.

2. The purpose.

3. The penalty or result.

It will be found that these three component parts are not equally tenacious of their original form in all examples. In one example we may find the formula either actually or symbolically perfect, while the purpose and penalty may not be easily distinguishable. Or it may happen that the formula remains fairly perfect; the purpose may be set down to the desire of doing what has always been done, and the penalty may be given as luck or ill-luck. Of course, further variations are possible, but these are usually the more general forms.

I will give an example or two of these phases of change or degradation in folklore. First, then, where the formula is complete, or nearly so, and the purpose and penalty have both disappeared. At Carrickfergus it was formerly the custom for mothers, when giving their child the breast for the last time, to put an egg in its hand and sit on the threshold of the outer door with a leg on each side, and this ceremony was usually done on a Sunday. Undoubtedly I think we have here a very nearly perfect formula; but what is its purpose, and what is the penalty for non-observance? Upon both these latter points the example is silent, and before they can be restored we must search among the other fragments of threshold customs and see whether they exist either separately from the formula or with a less perfect example. Secondly, where the formula has disappeared and the purpose and penalty remain, nearly the whole range of those floating beliefs and superst.i.tions which occupy so largely the collections of folklore would supply examples. But I will select one example which will be to the point.

When the Manx cottager looks for the traces of a foot in the ashes of his firegrate for the purpose of seeing in what direction the toes point, the penalty being that, if they point to the door, a death will occur, if to the fireplace, a birth,[216] there is no trace of the ancient formula. It is true we may find the missing formula in other lands; for instance, among some of the Indian tribes of Bombay. There the formula is elaborate and complete, while the purpose and the penalty are exactly the same as in the Isle of Man. But this hasty travelling to other lands is not, I contend, legitimate in the first place. We must begin by seeing whether there is not some other item of folklore, perhaps now not even connected with the house-fire group of customs and superst.i.tions, whose true place is that of the lost formula of this interesting Manx custom. And when once we have taught ourselves the way to restore these lost formulae to their rightful places, the explanation of the mere waifs and strays of folklore will be attended with some approach to scientific accuracy, and we shall then be in a position to get rid of that shibboleth so dear to the non-folklore critic, that all these things we deal with are "mere superst.i.tions."

Thirdly, when the formula is complete, or nearly so, and the purpose and penalty become generalised. At St. Edmundsbury a white bull, which enjoyed full ease and plenty in the fields, and was never yoked to the plough or employed in any service, was led in procession in the chief streets of the town to the princ.i.p.al gate of the monastery, attended by all the monks singing and a shouting crowd. Knowing what Grimm has collected concerning the worship of the white bull, knowing what is performed in India to this day, there is no doubt that this formula of the white bull at St. Edmundsbury has been preserved in very good condition. The purpose of it was, however, not so satisfactory. It is said to have taken place whenever a married woman wished to have a child; and the penalty is lost in the obvious generalisation that not to perform the ceremony is not to obtain the desired end.[217]

The second process, that of cla.s.sification of the various elements in each example, will reveal some characteristics of folklore, which, so far as I know, have never yet been taken count of. One very important characteristic is the prevalence of a particular belief attached to different objects in different places. Thus Sir John Rhys in his examination of Manx folklore stopped short in his explanation of the superst.i.tion of the first-foot, because he had heard that, while in the Isle of Man it was attached to a dark man, elsewhere it was attached to a fair man. Of the examples where, on New Year's morning, it is held to be unlucky to meet a dark person, I may mention Lincolnshire, Durham, Yorkshire, and Northumberland. It is, on the contrary, _lucky_ to meet, as first-foot, a dark-haired man in Lancashire, the Isle of Man, and Aberdeenshire.[218] In these cases we get the element of "dark" or "fair" as the varying factor of the superst.i.tion; but instances occur in Sutherlandshire, the West of Scotland, and in Durham, where the varying factor rests upon s.e.x--a man being lucky and a woman being unlucky.

Similarly of the well-known superst.i.tion about telling the bees of the death of their owner, in Berkshire, Bucks, Cheshire, Cornwall, c.u.mberland, Lincolnshire, Lancashire, Monmouthshire, Notts, Northumberland, Shropshire, Somersetshire, Suffolk, Surrey, Suss.e.x, Wilts, Worcestershire, it appears that a relative may perform the ceremony, or sometimes a servant merely, while in Derbyshire, Hants, Northants, Rutland, and Yorkshire it must be the heir or successor of the deceased owner. Again, while in the above places the death of the owner is told to the bees, in other places it is told to the cattle, and in Cornwall to the trees;[219] and, in other places, marriages as well as death are told to the bees.[220]

In some cases the transfer from one object to another of a particular superst.i.tion is a matter of absolute observation. Thus, the labourers in Norfolk considered it a presage of death to miss a "bout" in corn or seed sowing. The superst.i.tion is now transferred to the drill, which has only been invented for a century. Again, in Ireland, it is now considered unlucky to give any one a light for his pipe on May-day--a very modern superst.i.tion, apparently. But the pipe in this case has been the means of preserving the old superst.i.tion found in many places of not giving a light from the homestead fire.

I will just refer to one other example, the well-known custom of offering rags at sacred wells. Sir John Rhys thought that the object of these sc.r.a.ps of clothing being placed at the well was for transferring the disease from the sick person to some one else. But I ventured to oppose this idea, and considered that they were offerings, pure and simple, to the spirit of the well, and referred to examples in confirmation. Among other items, I have come across an account of an Irish "station," as it is called, at a sacred well, the details of which fully bear out my view as to the nature of the rags deposited at the shrine being offerings to the local deity. One of the devotees, in true Irish fashion, made his offering accompanied by the following words: "To St. Columbkill--I offer up this b.u.t.ton, a bit o' the waistband o' my own breeches, an' a taste o' my wife's petticoat, in remimbrance of us havin' made this holy station; an' may they rise up in glory to prove it for us in the last day."[221] I shall not attempt to account for the presence of the usual Irish humour in this, to the devotee, most solemn offering; but I point out the undoubted nature of the offerings and their service in the identification of their owners--a service which implies their power to bear witness in spirit-land to the pilgrimage of those who deposited them during lifetime at the sacred well.[222]

Now, in all these cases there is an original and a secondary, or derivative, form of the superst.i.tion, and it is our object to trace out which is which. Do the rags deposited at wells symbolise offerings to the local deity? If so, they bring us within measurable distance of a cult which rests upon faith in the power of natural objects to harm or render aid to human beings. Does the question of first-foot rest upon the colour of the hair or upon the s.e.x of the person? I think, looking at all the examples I have been able to examine, that colour is really the older basis of the superst.i.tion, and, if so, ethnological considerations are doubtless the root of it. Again, if the eldest son of the deceased owner of bees appears in the earliest form of the death-telling ceremony, we have an interesting fragment of the primitive house-ritual of our ancestors.

When, however, we come upon the worship of local deities, when we can suggest ethnological elements in folklore, and when we can speak of the house-father, and can see that duties are imposed upon him by traditional custom, unknown to any rules of civilised society, we are in the presence of facts older than those of historic times. It is thus that folklore so frequently points back to the past before the age of history. Over and over again we pause before the facts of folklore, which, however explained, always lead us back to some unexplored epoch of history, some undated period, which has not revealed its heroes, but which has left us a heritage of its mental strivings.

The method of using these notes of custom, rite, and belief for scientific purposes is therefore a very important matter. It is essential that each single item should be treated definitely and separately from all other items, and, further, that the exact wording of the original note upon each separate item should be kept intact.

There must be no juggling with the record, no emendations such as students of early literary work are so fond of attempting. Whatever the record, it must be accepted. The original account of every custom and belief is a corpus, not to be tampered with except for the purpose of scientific a.n.a.lysis, and then after that purpose has been effected all the parts must be put together again, and the original restored to its form.

The handling of each custom or belief and of its separate parts in this way enables us, in the first place, to disentangle it from the particular personal or social stratum in which it happens to have been preserved. It may have become attached to a place, an object, a season, a cla.s.s of persons, a rule of life, and may have been preserved by means of this attachment. But because every item of folklore of the same nature is not attached to the same agent wherever that particular item has been preserved, it is important not to stereotype an accidental a.s.sociation as a permanent one. Moreover, the modern a.s.sociation is not necessarily the ancient a.s.sociation, and there is the further difficulty created by writers on folklore cla.s.sifying into chapters of their own creation the items they collect or discuss.[223] In the second place, we are enabled to prepare each item of folklore for the place to which it may ultimately be found to belong. The first step in this preparation is to get together all the examples of any one custom, rite, or belief which have been preserved, and to compare these examples with each other, first as to common features of likeness, secondly as to features of unlikeness. By this process we are able to restore what may be deficient from the insufficiency of any particular record--and such a restoration is above all things essential--and to present for examination not an isolated specimen but a series of specimens, each of which helps to bring back to observation some portion of the original. The reconstruction of the original is thus brought within sight.

Generally, it may be stated that the points of likeness determine and cla.s.sify all the examples of one custom or belief; the points of unlikeness indicate the line of decay inherent in survivals.

This partial equation and partial divergence between different examples of the same custom or belief allows a very important point to be made in the study of survivals. We can estimate the value of the elements which equate in any number of examples, and the value of the elements which diverge; and by noting how these values differ in the various examples we shall discover the extent of the overlapping of example with example, which is of the utmost importance. A given custom consists, say, of six elements, which by their constancy among all the examples and by their special characteristics may be considered as primary elements, in the form in which the custom has survived. Let us call these primary elements by algebraical signs, a, b, c, d, e, f. A second example of the same custom has four of these elements, a, b, c, d, and two divergences, which may be considered as secondary elements, and which we will call by the signs g, h. A third example has elements a, b, and divergences g, h, i, k. A further example has none of the primary elements, but only divergences g, h, i, l, m. Then the statement of the case is reduced to the following:--

1 = a, b, c, d, e, f.

2 = a, b, c, d + g, h.