Folklore as an Historical Science Part 26

At Aston and at Malmesbury the old tribal const.i.tution is still kept alive in a remarkable manner, and I will venture to quote from my book the account of the evolution at Aston of a tenantry from the older tribal const.i.tution, because in this case we are actually dealing with a manor, and the evidence is unique so far as England is concerned.

The first point is that the village organisation, the rights of a.s.sembly, the free open-air meetings, and the corporate action incident to the manor of Aston and Cote, attach themselves to the land divisions of sixteen hides, because although these hides had grown in 1657 into a considerable tenancy, fortunately as a tenancy they kept their original unity in full force and so obstinately clung to their old system of government as to keep up by _representation_ the once undivided holding of the hide. If the organisation of the hide had itself disappeared, it still formed the basis of the village government, the sixteen hides sending up their sixteen _elected_ representatives. How the tenancy grew out of the original sixteen homesteads may perhaps be conjecturally set forth. In the first place the owners of the yard-lands succeeded to the place originally occupied by the owners of the sixteen hides. Instead of the original sixteen group-owners we have therefore sixty-four individual owners, each yard-land having remained in possession of an owner. And then at succeeding stages of this dissolution we find the yard-lands broken up until, in 1848, "some farmers of Aston have only half or even a quarter of a yard-land, while some have as many as ten or eleven yard-lands in their single occupation." Then disintegration proceeded to the other proprietary rights, which, originally appendant to the homestead only, became appendant to the person and not to the residence, and are consequently "bought and sold as separate property, by which means it results that persons resident at Bampton, or even at great distance, have rights on Aston and Cote Common." And finally we lose all trace of the system, as described by Mr. Horde and as depicted by the representative character of the Sixteens, and in its place find that "there are some tenants who have rights in the common field and not in the pasture, and _vice versa_ several occupiers have the right of pasture who do not possess any portion of arable land in the common field," so that both yard-lands and hides have now disappeared, and absolute owners.h.i.+p of land has taken their place. Mr.

Horde's MS. enables us to proceed back from modern tenancy-holding to the holding by yard-lands; the rights of election in the yard-lands enable us to proceed back to the original holding of the sixteen hides.

At Hitchin, which is Mr. Seebohm's famous example, we meet with the manorial type. But its features are in no way peculiar. There is nothing which has not its counterpart, in more or less well-defined degree, in the other types which are not manorial. In short, the manorial framework within which it is enclosed does little more than fix the details into an immovable setting, accentuating some at the expense of others, legalising everything so as to bring it all under the iron sovereignty which was inaugurated by the Angevin kings.

My suggestion is that these examples are but varying types of one original. The Teutonic people, and their Celtic predecessors, came to Britain with a tribal, not an agricultural, const.i.tution. In the outlying parts of the land this tribal const.i.tution settled down, and was only slightly affected by the economical conditions of the people they found there; in the more thickly populated parts this tribal const.i.tution was superimposed upon an already existing village const.i.tution in full vigour. We, therefore, find the tribal const.i.tution everywhere--in almost perfect condition in the north, in Wales, and in Ireland; in less perfect condition in England. We also find the village const.i.tution everywhere--in almost embryo form in the north, Wales, and in Ireland; in full vigour and force in England, especially in that area which, as already noted, has been identified as the constant occupation-ground of all the races who have settled in Britain.

Now the factor which is most apparent in all these cases is the singular dual const.i.tution which I have called tribal and village. It is only when we get to such cases as Rothwell and Hitchin that almost all traces of the tribal element are lost, the village element only remaining. But inasmuch as this village element is identical in _kind_, if not in degree, with the village element in the other types, and inasmuch as topographically they are closely connected, we are, I contend, justified in concluding that it is derived from the same original--an original which was composed of a tribal community with a village community in serfdom under it.

This dual element should, I think, be translated into terms of ethnology by appealing to the parallel evidence of India. There the types of the village community are not, as was thought by Sir Henry Maine and others, h.o.m.ogeneous. There the dual element appears, the tribal community at the top of the system, the village community at the bottom of the system. But in India a new factor is introduced by the equation of the two elements with two different races--the tribal element being Aryan, and the village element non-Aryan. Race-origins are there still kept up and rigidly adhered to. They have not been crushed out, as in Europe, by political or economical activity.

But if crushed out of prominent recognition in Europe, are we, therefore, to conclude that their relics do not exist in peasant custom? My argument is that we cannot have such close parallels in India and in England without seeing that they virtually tell the same story in both countries. It would require a great deal to prove that customs, which in India belong now to non-Aryan aborigines and are rejected by the Aryans, are in Europe the heritage of the Aryan race.

The objections to my theory have been formulated by Mr. Ashley, who follows Mr. Seebohm and M. Fustel de Coulanges as an adherent of the chronological method of studying inst.i.tutions. Like the old school of antiquaries, this new school of investigators into the history of inst.i.tutions gets back to the period of Roman history, and there stops. Mr. Ashley suggests that because Caesar describes the Celtic Britons as pastoral, therefore agriculture in Britain must be post-Celtic. I will not stop to raise the question as to who were the tribes from which Caesar obtained his evidence. But it will suffice to point out that if Caesar is speaking of the Aryan Celts of Britain--and this much seems certain--he only proves of them what Tacitus proves of the Aryan Teutons, what the sagas prove of the Aryan Scandinavians, what the vedas prove of the Aryan Indians, what philology, in short, proves of the primitive Aryans generally, namely, that they were distinctly hunters and warriors, and hated and despised the tillers of the soil.

It does not, in point of fact, then, help the question as to the origin of agricultural rites and usages to turn to Aryan history at all. In this emergency Roman history is appealed to. But this is just one of those cases where a small portion of the facts are squeezed in to do duty for the whole.

Both M. Fustel de Coulanges and Mr. Seebohm think that if a Roman origin can be _prima facie_ shown for the economical side of agricultural inst.i.tutions, there is nothing more to be said. But they leave out of consideration a whole set of connected inst.i.tutions.

Readers of Mr. Frazer's _Golden Bough_ are now in possession of facts which it would take a very long time to explain. They see that side by side with agricultural economics is agricultural religion, of great rudeness and barbarity, of considerable complexity, and bearing the stamp of immense antiquity. The same villagers who were the observers of those rules of economics which are thought to be due to Roman origin were also observers of ritual and usages which are known to be savage in theory and practice. Must we, then, say that all this ritual and usage are Roman? or must we go on ignoring them as elements in the argument as to the origin of agricultural inst.i.tutions? One or the other of these alternatives must, I contend, be accepted by the inquirer.

Because the State has chosen or been compelled for political reasons to lift up peasant economics into manorial legal rules, thus forcibly divorcing this portion of peasant life from its natural a.s.sociations, there is no reason why students should fix upon this arbitrary proceeding as the point at which to begin their examination into the origin of village agriculture. Manorial tenants pay their dues to the lord, lot out their lands in intermixed strips, cultivate in common, and perform generally all those interesting functions of village life with which Mr. Seebohm has made us familiar. But, in close and intimate connection with these selfsame agricultural economical proceedings, it is the same body of manorial tenants who perform irrational and rude customs, who carry the last sheaf of corn represented in human or animal form, who sacrifice animals to their earth deities, who carry fire round fields and crops, who, in a scarcely disguised ritual, still wors.h.i.+p deities which there is little difficulty in recognising as the counterparts of those religious G.o.ddesses of India who are wors.h.i.+pped and venerated by non-Aryan votaries. Christianity has not followed the lead of politics, and lifted all this portion of peasant agricultural life into something that is religious and definite. And because it remains sanctioned by tradition, we must, in considering origins, take it into account in conjunction with those economic practices which have been unduly emphasised in the history of village inst.i.tutions. In India primitive economics and religion go hand in hand as part of the village life of the people; in England primitive economics and _survivals_ of old religions, which we call folklore, go hand in hand as part of the village life of the people. And it is not in the province of students to separate one from the other when they are considering the question of origin.

This is practically the whole of my argument from the folklore point of view. But it is not the whole of the argument against the theory of the Roman origin of the village community. I cannot on this occasion re-state what this argument is, as it is set forth at some length in my book. But I should like to point out that it is in reality supported by arguments to be drawn from ethnological facts.

Mr. Ashley surrenders to my view of the question the important point that ethnological data, derived from craniological investigation, fit in "very readily with the supposition that under the Celtic, and therefore under the Roman rule, the cultivating cla.s.s was largely composed of the pre-Celtic race; and allows us to believe that the agricultural population was but little disturbed." Economically it was certainly not disturbed by the Romans. If the agricultural implements known to and used by the Romans were never used in Britain after their departure; if the old methods of land-surveying under the agrimensores is not to be traced in Britain as a continuing system; if wattle and daub, rude, uncarpentered trees turned root upwards to form roofs, were the leading principles of house-architecture, it cannot be alleged that the Romans left behind any permanent marks of their economical standard upon the "little disturbed agricultural population." Why, then, should they be credited with the introduction of a system of lords.h.i.+p and serf-bound tenants, when both lords.h.i.+p and serfdom are to be traced in lands where Roman power has never penetrated, under conditions almost exactly similar to the feudal elements in Europe? If it be accepted that the early agricultural population of Britain was non-Aryan; if we find non-Aryan agricultural rites and festivals surviving as folklore among the peasants of to-day; why should it be necessary, why should it be accepted as a reasonable hypothesis, to go to the imperial and advanced economics of Rome to account for those other elements in the composition of the village community which, equally with the rites and festivals, are to be found paralleled among the non-Aryan population living under an Aryan lords.h.i.+p in India? The only argument for such a process is one of convenience. It does so happen that the Roman theory _may_ account for some of the English phenomena. But, then, the Celtic and Teutonic, or Aryan theory also accounts for the same English phenomena, and, what is more, it accounts for other phenomena not reckoned by the Roman theory. My proposition is that the history of the village community in Britain is the history of the economical condition of the non-Aryan aborigines; that the history of the tribal community is the history of the Aryan conquerors, who appear as overlords; and that the Romans, except as another wave of Aryan conquerors at an advanced stage of civilisation, had very little to do with shaping the village inst.i.tutions of Britain.[495]

It is necessary before leaving this subject to take note of a point which may lead, and in fact has led to misconception of the argument.

I have stated that all custom, rite, and belief which is Aryan custom, rite, and belief, as distinct from that which is pre-Aryan--pre-Celtic in our own country--must have a position in the tribal system, and I have said that custom, rite, and belief which cannot be traced back to the tribal system may be safely p.r.o.nounced to be pre-tribal in origin and therefore pre-Celtic, to have survived, that is, from the people whom the Celts found in occupation of the country when first they landed on its sh.o.r.es. I did not interrupt my statement of the case to point out one important modification of it, because this modification has nothing to do with the great ma.s.s of custom and belief now surviving as folklore, but I will deal with this modification now so that I may clear up any misconception. We have already ascertained that over and above the custom and belief, which may be traced back to their tribal origins, there are both customs and beliefs which owe their origin to psychological conditions, and there are myths surviving as folk-tales or legends which owe their origin to the primitive philosophy of earliest man. Neither of these departments of folklore enters into the question of race development. The first may be called post-ethnologic because they arise in a political society of modern civilisation which transcends the boundaries of race; the second may be called pre-ethnologic, because they arise in a savage society before the great races had begun their distinctive evolution. The point about this cla.s.s of belief is that it has never been called upon to do duty for social improvement and organisation, has never been specialised by the Celt or Teuton in Europe, nor by other branches of the same race. The myth alone of these two groups of folklore could have had an ethnological influence, and this must have been very slight. It remained in the mind of Aryan man, but has never descended to the arena of his practical life. It has influenced his practical life indirectly of course, but it has never become a brick in the building up of his practical life. This distinction between custom and belief which are tribal and custom and belief which are not tribal, is of vast importance. It has been urged against the cla.s.sification of custom, rite, and belief into ethnological groups that it does not allow for the presence of a great ma.s.s of belief, primitive in character and undoubtedly Aryan, if not in origin at all events in fact. The objection is not valid. The custom, rite, and belief which can be cla.s.sified as distinctively Aryan is that portion of the whole corpus of primitive custom, rite, and belief, which was used by the Aryan-speaking folk in the building up of their tribal organisation. They divorced it by this use from the general primitive conceptions, and developed it along special lines. It is in its special characteristics that this belief belongs to the tribal system of the Aryans, not in its general characteristics. Not every custom, rite, and belief was so used and developed. The specialisation caused the deliberate rejection or neglect of much custom, rite, and belief which was opposed to the new order of things, and did not affect the practical doings of Aryan life.

There are thus three elements to consider: (1) the custom, rite, and belief specialised by the Aryan-speaking people in the formation and development of their tribal system; (2) the custom, rite, and belief rejected or neglected by the Aryan tribesmen; and (3) the belief which was not affected by or used for the tribal development, but which, not being directly antagonistic to it, remained with the primitive Aryan folk as survivals of their science and philosophy.

For ethnological purposes we have only to do with the first group. It is definite, and it is capable of definite recognition within the tribe. When once it was brought into the tribal system it ceased to exist in the form in which it was known to general savage belief; it developed highly specialised forms, took its part in the formation of a great social force, a great fighting and conquering force, a great migratory force. In accomplis.h.i.+ng this task it grew into a solid system, each part in touch with all other parts, each part an essential factor in the ever-active forces which it helped to fas.h.i.+on and control.

It is in this wise that we must study its survivals wherever they are to be found, and the study must be concentrated within certain definite ethnographic areas. If I were to pursue the subject and choose for my study the folklore of Britain, I should have to object to the treatment accorded to British custom, rite, and belief by even so great an authority as Mr. Frazer, because they are used not as parts of a tribal system but as mere detritus of a primitive system of science, or philosophy. According to my views they had long since become separated from any such system and it is placing them in a wrong perspective, giving them a false value, a.s.sociating them with elements to which they have no affinity to divorce them from their tribal connection. The custom, rite, and belief which were tribal, when they were brought to their present ethnographic area, cannot be considered in the varied forms of their survival except by restoration to the tribal organisation from which they were torn when they began their life as survivals.

What I have endeavoured to explain in this way are the principles which should govern folklore research in relation to ethnological conditions. The differing races which made up the peoples of Europe before the era of political history must have left their distinctive remains in folklore, if folklore is rightly considered as the traditional survivals of the prehistory period. To get at and cla.s.sify these remains we must be clear as to the problems which surround inquiry into them. The solution of these problems will place us in possession of a ma.s.s of survivals in folklore which are naturally a.s.sociated with each other, and which stand apart from other survivals also naturally a.s.sociated with each other. In these two ma.s.ses we may detect the main influences of the great tribal races and the non-tribal races. We cannot, I think, get much beyond this. We may, perhaps, here and there, detect smaller race divisions--Celtic, Teutonic, Scandinavian or other distinctions, according to the area of investigation--but these will be less apparent, less determinable, and will not be so valuable to historical science as the larger division.

To this we shall by proper investigation be indebted for the solution of many doubtful points of the prehistoric period, and it is in this respect that it will appeal to the student of folklore.

FOOTNOTES:

[466] Mr. Nutt's presidential address to the Folklore Society in 1899 does not, I think, disprove my theory. It ignores it, and confines the problem to legend and folk-tale. Mr. Nutt's powerful, but not conclusive, study is to be found in _Folklore_, x. 71-86, and my reply and correspondence resulting therefrom are to be found at pp. 129-149.

[467] MacCulloch, _Childhood of Fiction_, 90-101; Greenwell, _British Barrows_, 17, 18.

[468] _Custom and Myth_, 76.

[469] _Myth, Ritual and Religion_, ii. 215, compared with Gomme, _Ethnology in Folklore_, 16.

[470] I have discussed this point at greater length in _Folklore_, xii.

222-225.

[471] Mr. J. O'Beirne Crowe in _Journ. Arch. and Hist. a.s.soc. of Ireland_, 3rd ser., i. 321.

[472] Rhys, _Lectures on Welsh Philology_, 32; _Celtic Heathendom_, 216; _Celtic Britain_, 67-75; Rhys and Brynmor-Jones, _Welsh People_, 83.

[473] The continental evidence has been collected together in convenient shape by modern scholars: thus Mr. Stock, in his work on _Caesar de bello Gallico_, notes and compares the evidence of Caesar, Strabo, Diodorus Siculus, Ammia.n.u.s Marcellinus, Mela, Lucan, and Pliny as it has been interpreted by modern scholars (see pp. 107-113), and he is followed by Mr. T. Rice Holmes in his study of _Caesar's Conquest of Gaul_, pp. 532-536. The Druidic cult of belief in immortality, metempsychosis, ritual of the grove, augury, human sacrifice, is all set out and discussed. These are the continental Druidic beliefs and practices, and they may be compared with the Druidic Irish beliefs and practices in Eugene O'Curry's _Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish_, lect. ix. and x. vol. ii. pp. 179-228, and Dr. Joyce's _Social History of Ancient Ireland_, i. 219-248, where "the points of agreement and difference between Irish and Gaulish Druids" are discussed. Mr.

Elton notices the difference between the continental and the British Druids, but ascribes it to unequal development (_Origins of Eng.

Hist._, 267-268). Caesar's well-known account of the wickerwork sacrifice is very circ.u.mstantial. It is not repeated by either Diodorus or Strabo, who both refer to individual human sacrifice. Pliny introduces the mistletoe, oak, and serpent cults, and the other three authorities are apparently dependent upon their predecessors.

[474] The mixture of Celt and Iberian is very ably dealt with by Mr.

Holmes in his _Caesar's Conquest of Gaul_, pp. 245-322, and by Ripley, _Races of Europe_, 461, 467, together with cap. vii. and xii.; see also Sergi, _Mediterranean Race_, cap. xii.

[475] The intermarrying of the Picts with the Celts of the district they conquered is mentioned in all the chronicles as an important and significant rite, which determined the succession to the Pictish throne through the female side (Skene's _Chron. of the Picts and Scots_, 40, 45, 126, 319, 328, 329). Beda, i. cap. i., mentions female succession.

Skene discusses this point in _Celtic Scotland_, i. 232-235, and McLennan includes it in his evidence from anthropological data (_Studies in Anc. Hist._, 99).

[476] Mr. Seebohm is the best authority for the importance of the non-tribesman in Celtic law (_Tribal System in Wales_, 54-60).

[477] The local cults in Great Britain which are not Celtic in form, and do not seem to be connected with Celtic religion on any a.n.a.logy, are those relating to Cromm Cruaich, referred to in the _Tripart.i.te Life of St. Patrick_ (see Whitley Stokes in _Revue Celtique_, i. 260, xvi. 35-36; O'Curry, _MS. Materials of Anc. Irish History_, 538-9; Joyce, _Social History of Ancient Ireland_, i. 275-276; Rhys, _Celtic Heathendom_, 200-201). I do not follow Rhys in his identification of this cult as a part of the ceremonies on mounds, and suggest that Mr.

Bury in his _Life of St. Patrick_, 123-125, gives the clue to the purely local character of this idol wors.h.i.+p which I claim for it.

Similarly the overthrow of the temple at Goodmanham, G.o.dmundingham, described by Beda, ii. cap. 13, with its priest who was not allowed to carry arms, or to ride on any but a mare, is the destruction of a successful local cult, not of a national or tribal religion. I confess that Dr. Greenwell's observations in connection with his barrow discoveries (_British Barrows_, 286-331) are in favour of an early Anglican cultus, but I think his facts may be otherwise interpreted, and in any case they confirm my view of the special localisation of this cult.

[478] Rev. W. G. Lawes in _Journ. Royal Geographical Soc._, new series, iii. 615. _Cf._ Romilly, _From my Verandah_, 249; _Journ. Indian Archipelago_ vi. 310, 329.

[479] Dieffenbach, _Travels in New Zealand_, ii. 7, 10, 59.

[480] _Trans. Ethnol. Soc._, new series, iii. 235.

[481] Colquhoun's _Amongst the Shans_, 52; Bastian, _Oestl. Asien_, i.

119.

[482] Skeat and Blagden, _Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula_, i. 228; and compare Rev. P. Favre, _Account of Wild Tribes of the Malayan Peninsula_ (Paris, 1865), p. 95.

[483] _Ethnology in Folklore_, 45; and see Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, i. 112-113.

[484] Stanley, _Through the Dark Continent_, i. 253. _Cf._ Burrows, _Land of the Pigmies_, 180, for the state of fear which the pygmies cause to their neighbours.

[485] Latham, _Descriptive Ethnology_, ii. 457.

[486] _Journ. As. Soc. Bengal_, 1866, ii. 158; see also Geiger, _Civilisation of Eastern Iranians_, i. 20-21.

[487] _Journ. Ceylon As. Soc._, 1865-1866, p. 3. _Journ. Ind.

Archipelago_, i. 328; Tennant, _Ceylon_, i. 331; J. F. Campbell, _My Circular Notes_, 155-157.

[488] Landtman, _Origin of Priesthood_, p. 82, quoting the original authorities.

[489] Vigfusson and Powell, _Corpus Boreale_, ii. 38; and see i. 408.

[490] _Roman Festivals_, 264.