Myth, Ritual And Religion Volume I Part 12

(3) Ibid., iii. 362.

(4) Catlin, ii. 17.

(5) In Schoolcraft, iv. 402.

(6) Pond, in Schoolcraft, iv. 647.

(7) Auckland, 1863.

(8) Page 148.

Here is the place to mention a fact which, though at first sight it may appear to have only a social interest, yet bears on the development of mythology. Property and rank seem to have been essential to each other in the making of social rank, and where one is absent among contemporary savages, there we do not find the other. As an example of this, we might take the case of two peoples who, like the Homeric Ethiopians, are the outermost of men, and dwell far apart at the ends of the world. The Eskimos and the Fuegians, at the extreme north and south of the American continent, agree in having little or no private property and no chiefs.

Yet magic is providing a kind of basis of rank. The bleak plains of ice and rock are, like Attica, "the mother of men without master or lord".

Among the "house-mates" of the smaller settlements there is no head-man, and in the larger gatherings Dr. Rink says that "still less than among the house-mates was any one belonging to such a place to be considered a chief". The songs and stories of the Eskimo contain the praises of men who have risen up and killed any usurper who tried to be a ruler over his "place-mates". No one could possibly establish any authority on the basis of property, because "superfluous property, implements, etc., rarely existed". If there are three boats in one household, one of the boats is "borrowed" by the community, and reverts to the general fund.

If we look at the account of the Fuegians described in Admiral Fitzroy's cruise, we find a similar absence of rank produced by similar causes.

"The perfect equality among the individuals composing the tribes must for a long time r.e.t.a.r.d their civilisation.... At present even a piece of cloth is torn in shreds and distributed, and no one individual becomes richer than another. On the other hand, it is difficult to understand how a chief can arise till there is property of some sort by which he might manifest and still increase his authority." In the same book, however, we get a glimpse of one means by which authority can be exercised. "The doctor-wizard of each party has much influence over his companions." Among the Eskimos this element in the growth of authority also exists. A cla.s.s of wizards called Angakut have power to cause fine weather, and, by the gift of second-sight and magical practices, can detect crimes, so that they necessarily become a kind of civil magistrates. These Angekkok or Angakut have familiar spirits called Torngak, a word connected with the name of their chief spiritual being, Torngarsak. The Torngak is commonly the ghost of a deceased parent of the sorcerer. "These men," says Egede, "are held in great honour and esteem among this stupid and ignorant nation, insomuch that n.o.body dare ever refuse the strictest obedience when they command him in the name of Torngarsak." The importance and actual existence of belief in magic has thus been attested by the evidence of inst.i.tutions, even among Australians, Fuegians and Eskimos.

It is now necessary to pa.s.s from examples of tribes who have superst.i.tious respect for certain individuals, but who have no property and no chiefs, to peoples who exhibit the phenomenon of superst.i.tious reverence attached to wealthy rulers or to judges. To take the example of Ireland, as described in the Senchus Mor, we learn that the chiefs, just like the Angakut of the Eskimos, had "power to make fair or foul weather" in the literal sense of the words.(1) In Africa, in the same way, as Bosman, the old traveller, says, "As to what difference there is between one negro and another, the richest man is the most honoured,"

yet the most honoured man has the same magical power as the poor Angakuts of the Eskimos.

(1) Early History of Inst.i.tutions, p. 195.

"In the Solomon Islands," says Dr. Codrington, "there is nothing to prevent a common man from becoming a chief, if he can show that he has the mana (supernatural power) for it."(1)

(1) Journ. Anth. Inst., x. iii. 287, 300, 309.

Though it is antic.i.p.ating a later stage of this inquiry, we must here observe that the sacredness, and even the magical virtues of barbarous chiefs seem to have descended to the early leaders of European races.

The children of Odin and of Zeus were "sacred kings". The Homeric chiefs, like those of the Zulus and the Red Men, and of the early Irish and Swedes, exercised an influence over the physical universe. Homer(1) speaks of "a blameless king, one that fears the G.o.ds, and reigns among many men and mighty, and the black earth bears wheat and barley, and the sheep bring forth and fail not, and the sea gives store of fish, and all out of his good sovereignty".

(1) Od., xix. 109.

The attributes usually a.s.signed by barbarous peoples to their medicine-men have not yet been exhausted. We have found that they can foresee and declare the future; that they control the weather and the sensible world; that they can converse with, visit and employ about their own business the souls of the dead. It would be easy to show at even greater length that the medicine-man has everywhere the power of metamorphosis. He can a.s.sume the shapes of all beasts, birds, fishes, insects and inorganic matters, and he can subdue other people to the same enchantment. This belief obviously rests on the lack of recognised distinction between man and the rest of the world, which we have so frequently insisted on as a characteristic of savage and barbarous thought. Examples of accredited metamorphosis are so common everywhere, and so well known, that it would be waste of s.p.a.ce to give a long account of them. In Primitive Culture(1) a cloud of witnesses to the belief in human tigers, hyaenas, leopards and wolves is collected.(2) Mr. Lane(3) found metamorphosis by wizards as accredited a working belief at Cairo as it is among Abipones, Eskimo, or the people of Ashangoland. In various parts of Scotland there is a tale of a witch who was shot at when in the guise of a hare. In this shape she was wounded, and the same wound was found on her when she resumed her human appearance. Lafitau, early in the last century, found precisely the same tale, except that the wizards took the form of birds, not of hares, among the Red Indians. The birds were wounded by the magical arrows of an old medicine-man, Shonnoh Koui Eretsi, and these bolts were found in the bodies of the human culprits. In j.a.pan, as we learn from several stories in Mr. Mitford's Tales of Old j.a.pan, people chiefly metamorphose themselves into foxes and badgers. The sorcerers of Honduras(4) "possess the power of transforming men into wild beasts, and were much feared accordingly". Among the Cakchiquels, a cultivated people of Guatemala, the very name of the clergy, haleb, was derived from their power of a.s.suming animal shapes, which they took on as easily as the Homeric G.o.ds.(5) Regnard, the French dramatist, who travelled among the Lapps at the end of the seventeenth century (1681), says: "They believe witches can turn men into cats;" and again, "Under the figures of swans, crows, falcons and geese, they call up tempests and destroy ships".(6) Among the Bushmen "sorcerers a.s.sume the forms of beasts and jackals".(7) Dobrizhoffer (1717-91), a missionary in Paraguay, found that "sorcerers arrogate to themselves the power of transforming themselves into tigers".(8) He was present when the Abipones believed that a conversion of this sort was actually taking place: "Alas," cried the people, "his whole body is beginning to be covered with tiger-spots; his nails are growing". Near Loanda, Livingstone found that a "chief may metamorphose himself into a lion, kill any one he choses, and then resume his proper form".(9) Among the Barotse and Balonda, "while persons are still alive they may enter into lions and alligators".(10) Among the Mayas of Central America "sorcerers could transform themselves into dogs, pigs and other animals; their glance was death to a victim".(11) The Thlinkeets think that their Shamans can metamorphose themselves into animals at pleasure; and a very old raven was pointed out to Mr. C. E.

S. Wood as an incarnation of the soul of a Shaman.(12) Sir A. C. Lyall finds a similar belief in flourishing existence in India. The European superst.i.tion of the were-wolf is too well known to need description.

Perhaps the most curious legend is that told by Giraldus Cambrensis about a man and his wife metamorphosed into wolves by an abbot. They retained human speech, made exemplary professions of Christian faith, and sent for priests when they found their last hours approaching. In an old Norman ballad a girl is transformed into a white doe, and hunted and slain by her brother's hounds. The "aboriginal" peoples of India retain similar convictions. Among the Hos,(13) an old sorcerer called Pusa was known to turn himself habitually into a tiger, and to eat his neighbour's goats, and even their wives. Examples of the power of sorcerers to turn, as with the Gorgon's head, their enemies into stone, are peculiarly common in America.(14) Hearne found that the Indians believed they descended from a dog, who could turn himself into a handsome young man.(15)

(1) Vol. i. pp. 309-315.

(2) See also M'Lennan on Lykanthropy in Encyclopedia Britannica.

(3) Arabian Nights, i. 51.

(4) Bancroft, Races of Pacific Coast, i. 740.

(5) Brinton, Annals of the Cakchiquels, p. 46.

(6) Pinkerton, i. 471.

(7) Bleek, Brief Account of Bushman Folk-Lore, pp. 15, 40.

(8) English translation of Dobrizhoffer's Abipones, i. 163.

(9) Missionary Travels, p. 615.

(10) Livingstone, p. 642.

(11) Bancroft, ii.

(12) Century Magazine, July, 1882.

(13) Dalton's Ethnology of Bengal, p. 200.

(14) Dorman, pp. 130, 134; Report of Ethnological Bureau, Washington, 1880-81.

(15) A Journey, etc., p. 342.

Let us recapitulate the powers attributed all over the world, by the lower people, to medicine-men. The medicine-man has all miracles at his command. He rules the sky, he flies into the air, he becomes visible or invisible at will, he can take or confer any form at pleasure, and resume his human shape. He can control spirits, can converse with the dead, and can descend to their abodes.

When we begin to examine the G.o.ds of MYTHOLOGY, savage or civilised, as distinct from deities contemplated, in devotion, as moral and creative guardians of ethics, we shall find that, with the general, though not invariable addition of immortality, they possess the very same accomplishments as the medicine-man, peay, tohunga, jossakeed, birraark, or whatever name for sorcerer we may choose. Among the Greeks, Zeus, mythically envisaged, enjoys in heaven all the attributes of the medicine-man; among the Iroquois, as Pere le Jeune, the old Jesuit missionary, observed,(1) the medicine-man enjoys on earth all the attributes of Zeus. Briefly, the miraculous and supernatural endowments of the G.o.ds of MYTH, whether these G.o.ds be zoomorphic or anthropomorphic, are exactly the magical properties with which the medicine-man is credited by his tribe. It does not at all follow, as Euemerus and Mr. Herbert Spencer might argue, that the G.o.d was once a real living medicine-man. But myth-making man confers on the deities of myth the magical powers which he claims for himself.

(1) Relations (1636), p. 114.

CHAPTER V. NATURE MYTHS.

Savage fancy, curiosity and credulity ill.u.s.trated in nature myths--In these all phenomena are explained by belief in the general animation of everything, combined with belief in metamorphosis--Sun myths, Asian, Australian, African, Melanesian, Indian, Californian, Brazilian, Maori, Samoan--Moon myths, Australian, Muysca, Mexican, Zulu, Maca.s.sar, Greenland, Piute, Malay--Thunder myths--Greek and Aryan sun and moon myths--Star myths--Myths, savage and civilised, of animals, accounting for their marks and habits--Examples of custom of claiming blood kinship with lower animals--Myths of various plants and trees--Myths of stones, and of metamorphosis into stones, Greek, Australian and American--The whole natural philosophy of savages expressed in myths, and survives in folk-lore and cla.s.sical poetry; and legends of metamorphosis.

The intellectual condition of savages which has been presented and established by the evidence both of observers and of inst.i.tutions, may now be studied in savage myths. These myths, indeed, would of themselves demonstrate that the ideas which the lower races entertain about the world correspond with our statement. If any one were to ask himself, from what mental conditions do the following savage stories arise? he would naturally answer that the minds which conceived the tales were curious, indolent, credulous of magic and witchcraft, capable of drawing no line between things and persons, capable of crediting all things with human pa.s.sions and resolutions. But, as myths a.n.a.logous to those of savages, when found among civilised peoples, have been ascribed to a psychological condition produced by a disease of language acting after civilisation had made considerable advances, we cannot take the savage myths as proof of what savages think, believe and practice in the course of daily life. To do so would be, perhaps, to argue in a circle. We must therefore study the myths of the undeveloped races in themselves.

These myths form a composite whole, so complex and so nebulous that it is hard indeed to array them in cla.s.ses and categories. For example, if we look at myths concerning the origin of various phenomena, we find that some introduce the action of G.o.ds or extra-natural beings, while others rest on a rude theory of capricious evolution; others, again, invoke the aid of the magic of mortals, and most regard the great natural forces, the heavenly bodies, and the animals, as so many personal characters capable of voluntarily modifying themselves or of being modified by the most trivial accidents. Some sort of arrangement, however, must be attempted, only the student is to understand that the lines are never drawn with definite fixity, that any category may glide into any other category of myth.

We shall begin by considering some nature myths--myths, that is to say, which explain the facts of the visible universe. These range from tales about heaven, day, night, the sun and the stars, to tales accounting for the red breast of the ousel, the habits of the quail, the spots and stripes of wild beasts, the formation of rocks and stones, the foliage of trees, the shapes of plants. In a sense these myths are the science of savages; in a sense they are their sacred history; in a sense they are their fiction and romance. Beginning with the sun, we find, as Mr.

Tylor says, that "in early philosophy throughout the world the sun and moon are alive, and, as it were, human in their nature".(1) The ma.s.s of these solar myths is so enormous that only a few examples can be given, chosen almost at random out of the heap. The sun is regarded as a personal being, capable not only of being affected by charms and incantations, but of being trapped and beaten, of appearing on earth, of taking a wife of the daughters of men. Garcila.s.so de la Vega has a story of an Inca prince, a speculative thinker, who was puzzled by the sun-worship of his ancestors. If the sun be thus all-powerful, the Inca inquired, why is he plainly subject to laws? why does he go his daily round, instead of wandering at large up and down the fields of heaven?

The prince concluded that there was a will superior to the sun's will, and he raised a temple to the Unknown Power. Now the phenomena which put the Inca on the path of monotheistic religion, a path already traditional, according to Garcila.s.so, have also struck the fancy of savages. Why, they ask, does the sun run his course like a tamed beast?

A reply suited to a mind which holds that all things are personal is given in myths. Some one caught and tamed the sun by physical force or by art magic.