Folklore as an Historical Science Part 25

[457] _Cf._ Kemble, _Saxons in England_, i. 330-335. Dr. Hearn writes: "Even as the good Pope Gregory the Great permitted the newly converted English to retain their old temples and accustomed rites, attaching, however, to them another purpose and a new meaning, so his successors found means to utilize the simple beliefs of early animism. Long and vainly the Church struggled against this irresistible sentiment.

Fifteen centuries ago it was charged against the Christians of that day that they appeased the shades of the dead with feasts like the Gentiles. In the Penitentials we find the prohibition of burning grains where a man had died. In the _Indiculus superst.i.tionum et Paganiarum_ among the Saxons complaint is made of the too ready canonisation of the dead; and the Church seems to have been much troubled to keep within reasonable bounds this tendency to indiscriminate apotheosis. At length a compromise was effected, and the Feast of All Souls converted to pious uses that wealth of sentiment which previously was lavished on the dead" (_The Aryan Household_, p. 60). And, to close this short note upon an important subject, Mr. Metcalfe, speaking of the old poetic literature of the pagan English, says: "It was kidnapped, and its features so altered and disguised as not to be recognisable. It was supplanted by Christian poetical legends and Bible lays produced in rivalry of the popular lays of their heathen predecessors. Finding that the people would listen to nothing but these old lays, the missionaries affected their spirit and language, and borrowed the words and phrases of heathenism" (Metcalfe's _Englishman and Scandinavian_, p. 155).

[458] For some reason not apparent in the doc.u.ment itself, Mrs. S. C.

Lomas, the editor of this report, says this interesting letter gives "a curious and evidently prejudiced description of the religious houses and observances." See preface to _Hist. MSS. Com. Report on the MSS. of Chequers Court, Bucks_, p. x.

[459] _Hist. MSS. Com., Chequers Court Papers_, pp. 171-2.

[460] _Vestiges of Ancient Manners and Customs in Italy_, p. 1.

[461] _Corpus insc. Lat._, i. 409; and _cf._ c.u.mont's _Mysteries of Mithra_ (1903).

[462] Leland, _Etruscan Roman Remains_ (1892).

[463] _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ (Bury), ii. 15.

[464] _Decline and Fall_, ii. 17.

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

CHAPTER VII

ETHNOLOGICAL CONDITIONS

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

Some years ago I advanced this proposition in my little book ent.i.tled _Ethnology in Folklore_. Only haltingly have my conclusions been accepted, but I nowhere find them disproved,[466] while here and there I find good authorities appealing to the ethnological element in folklore to help them in their views. Mr. MacCulloch, for instance, prefers to go for the basis of the Osiris and Dionysius myths to an earlier custom than that favoured by Mr. Frazer and Mr. Grant Allen, namely, to the practices of the neolithic folk, in Egypt and over a wide tract of country which includes Britain, of dismembering the dead body previous to its burial.[467] Mr. Lang, Mr. Frazer, Mr.

Hartland, and others are strangely reticent on this subject. That Mr.

Lang should be content to trace a story from the Vedas, in which Urvasi tells Pururavas that he must never let her see him naked, to "a traditional Aryan law of nuptial etiquette,"[468] seems to be using the heaviest machinery for the smallest purposes, while for other and greater purposes he fails to find in ethnological distinctions, explanations which escape his research.[469] That Mr. Frazer should have been able to examine in so remarkable a manner the agricultural rites of European peoples, and only to have touched upon their ethnological bearings in one or two isolated cases, seems to me to be neglecting one of the obvious means of arriving at the solution of the problem he starts out to solve.[470]

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

The first point in the argument for ethnological data being discoverable in folklore is that a survey of the survivals of custom, belief, and rites in any given country shows one marked feature, which results in a dividing line being drawn as between two distinct cla.s.ses. This feature is the antagonism which is discoverable in these cla.s.ses. On one side of the dividing line is a set of customs, beliefs, and rites which may be grouped together because they are consistent with each other, and on the other side is another set of customs, beliefs, and rites which may be grouped together on the same ground. But between these two sets of survivals there is no agreement.

They are the negations of each other. They show absolutely different conceptions of all the phases of life and thought which they represent, and it is impossible to consider that they have both come from the same culture source. I have applied the test of ethnology to such cases in Britain, and this appears to answer the difficulty which their antagonism presents. It appears too to be the only answer.

The subjects which show this antagonism are all of vital importance.

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

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

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

I do not wish to argue this point out further than is necessary to explain the position which, it appears to me, Druidism occupies, and I will therefore only add a note as to the authorities for the statements I have advanced. The differences between continental and British Druidism are definite and p.r.o.nounced,[473] the mixture of the continental Celts with the Iberic people, which they displaced, is attested, by ancient authority and modern anthropology,[474] while the only evidence of such a mixture in Britain is the prominently recorded instance of the Picts intermarrying with the Gael,[475] and this has to be set against the close distinction between tribesmen and non-tribesmen, which is such a remarkable feature of Celtic law;[476]

the existence of local cults in early Britain having all the characteristics of a ruder and more savage origin, and not identified with Celticism, is a point derived from our early authorities.[477]

These are the main facts of the case, and the subject has to be worked out in considerable detail before it can be settled.

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

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

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

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

"it was amusing to find the dread in which the Lawas [a hill tribe] are held by both Burmese and Siamese.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From Freeman's _Old English History_ it appears that at the beginning of the seventh century "the tract of country which the English then ruled over south of the Humber, coincided almost exactly with the boundary of the Gaulish portion of Britain," as distinct from non-Aryan Britain. This apparent recognition of Celtic landmarks, says Professor Rhys, by the later invaders, "is a fact, the historical and political significance of which I leave to be weighed by others,"[491]

and I venture to suggest that one important result is to show Britain to have contained an Aryan culture-ground and a non-Aryan culture-ground. If we try to step from one to the other we quickly discover the mythic relations.h.i.+p of conqueror to the conquered.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SCENE FROM THE LIFE OF ST. GUTHLAC SHOWING THE ATTACKS OF THE DaeMONES]

Thus in the Anglo-Saxon life of St. Guthlac we have an interesting glimpse into the conditions of the country and the att.i.tude of the two hostile races, Celts and Teutons, to each other.

"There is in Britain a fen of immense size which begins from the river Granta, not far from the city, which is named Grantchester ... a man named Tatwine said that he knew an island especially obscure, which ofttimes many men had attempted to inhabit, but no man could do it on account of manifold horrors and fears, and the loneliness of the wild wilderness....

No man ever could inhabit it before the holy man Guthlac came thither on account of the dwelling of the accursed spirits there.... There was on the island a great mound raised upon the earth, which same of yore men had dug and broken up in hopes of treasure....

Then in the stillness of the night it happened suddenly that there came great hosts of the accursed spirits, and they filled the house with their coming, and they poured in on every side from above and beneath and everywhere. They were in countenance horrible, and they had great heads and a long neck and lean visage; they were filthy and squalid in their beards, and they had rough ears and distorted face, and fierce eyes and foul mouths: and their teeth were like horses' tusks, and their throats were filled with flame, and they were grating in their voice: they had crooked shanks and knees, big and great behind, and distorted toes, and shrieked hoa.r.s.ely with their voices, and they came with such immoderate noises and immense horror that it seemed to him that all between heaven and earth resounded with their dreadful cries.

Without delay, when they were come into the house, they soon bound the holy man in all his limbs, and they pulled and led him out of the cottage and brought him to the black fen and threw and sunk him in the muddy waters. After that they brought him to the wild places of the wilderness, among the dense thickets of brambles that all his body was torn. After they had a long time thus tormented him in darkness they let him abide and stand awhile, then commanded him to depart from the wilderness, or if he would not do so they would torment and try him with greater plagues."[492]

These doings are not sufficiently remote from sober fact for us to be unable to detect human enemies in the supposed beings of the spirit world, and this conclusion is confirmed by a later pa.s.sage in the same narrative describing Guthlac awakened from his sleep and hearing "a great host of the accursed spirits speaking in British [bryttisc] and he knew and understood their words because he had been erewhile in exile among them."[493] Guthlac in England is only experiencing what other saints experienced elsewhere,[494] and we cannot doubt we have in these reminiscences of saintly experience that mixture of fact with traditional belief which would follow the priests of the new religions from their native homes to the cell.

It is necessary to consider another great element in human life with reference to its ethnological value, for folklore has always been intimately a.s.sociated with it, and recently, owing to Mr. Frazer's brilliant researches, this branch of folklore has been almost unduly accentuated. I mean, of course, agriculture. Mr. Frazer has ignored the ethnological side of agriculture, and it has been appropriated by the student of economics as a purely historical inst.i.tution. This has caused a special position to be given to agricultural rites and customs almost without question and certainly without examination, and it will be necessary to go rather closely into the subject in order to clear up the difficulties which present neglect has produced. I shall once again draw my ill.u.s.trations from the British Isles.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SCENE FROM THE LIFE OF ST. GUTHLAC SHOWING THE ATTACKS OF THE DaeMONES]

I put my facts in this way: (1) In all parts of Great Britain there exist rites, customs, and usages connected with agriculture which are obviously and admittedly not of legislative or political origin, and which present details exactly similar to each other in _character_, but differing from each other in _status_; (2) that the difference in status is to be accounted for by the effects of successive conquests; (3) that the ident.i.ty in character is not to be accounted for by reference to manorial history, because the area of manorial inst.i.tutions is not coincident with the area of these rites, customs, and usages; (4) that exact parallels to them exist in India as integral portions of village inst.i.tutions; (5) that the Indian parallels carry the subject a step further than the European examples because they are stamped with the mark of difference in race-origin, one portion belonging to the Aryan people and the other to the non-Aryan.

I shall now pick out some examples, and explain from them the evidence which seems to me to prove that race-distinction is the key for the origin of these agricultural rites and usages in Europe as in India. I have dealt with these examples at some length in my book on the village community, and I shall only use such details as I require for my immediate purpose.

My first point is that to get at the survivals of the village community in Britain it is not necessary to approach it through the medium of manorial history. Extremely ancient as I am inclined to think manorial history is, it is unquestionably loaded with an artificial terminology and with the chains so deftly forged by lawyers. An a.n.a.lysis of the chief features in the types of the English village community shows that the manorial element is by no means a common factor in the series. These types mark the transition from the tribal form to the village form. In Harris Island we have the chief with his free tribesmen around him, connected by blood kins.h.i.+p, living in scattered homesteads, just like the German tribes described by Tacitus. Under this tribal community is the embryo of the village community, consisting of smaller tenantry and cottar serfs, who live together in minute villages, holding their land in common and yearly distributing the holdings by lot. In this type the tribal const.i.tution is the real factor, and the village const.i.tution the subordinated factor as yet wholly undeveloped, scarcely indeed discernible except by very close scrutiny.

At Kilmorie the tribal community is represented merely by the scattered homesteads. These are occupied by a joint farm-tenantry, who hold their lands upon the system of the village community. Here the village const.i.tution has gradually entered into, so to speak, the tribal const.i.tution, and has almost absorbed it.

At Heisgier and Lauder the tribal community is represented by the last link under the process of dissolution, namely, the free council of the community by which the village rights are governed, while the village community has developed to a considerable extent.