^ MODERN,^ ^iGIENCEj SERIES V SI K JOHN LUBBOCK, .JETHNOLOGY IN Folklore ¥M iii- GEORGE LAURE fiDobern Science Series EDITED BY SIR JOHN LUBBOCK, BART., M.P. ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE MODERN SCIENCE SERIES, Edited by Sir JOHN LUBBOCK, Bart, M. P. I. The Oaiise of an Ice Age. By Sir Robert Ball, LL. D., F. R. S., Royal Astronomer of Ireland. II. The Horse: A Study in Natural History. By William Henry Flower, C. B., Director of the British Natural History Museum. m. The Oak: A Popular Introduction to Forest Botany. By 11. Marshall Ward, F. R. S. IV. Ethnology in Folklore. By George Lawrence Gomme, F. R. S., President of the Folklore Society, etc. {Others in preparation.) New York : D. Appleton & Co., 1, 3, & 5 Bond St. ^ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE BY GEORGE LAUEEXCE GOMME, F. S. A. PRESIDENT OF THE FOLKLORE SOCIETY, ETC. NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1892 COPTEIGHT, 1892, bt d. appleton and company. All rights resei-ved. Electkottped and Printed AT THE Appleton Pebss, U. S. A. > ' \ 5-5- PEEFACE I HAVE sought in this book to ascertain and set forth the principles upon which folklore may be classi- fied, in order to arrive at some of the results which should follow from its study. That it contains ethno- logical elements might be expected by all who have paid any attention to recent research, but no attempt has hitherto been made to set these elements do-mi cate- gorically and to examine the conclusions which are to be drawn from them. It is due to the large and increasing band of folklore devotees that the uses of folklore should be brought for- ward. The scoffer at these studies is apt to have it all his own way so long as the bulk of the books published on folklore contain nothing but collected examples of tales, customs, and superstitions, arranged for no pur- pose but that of putting the facts pleasantly before readers. But, more than this, recent research tends to show the increasing importance of bringing into proper order, within reasonable time, all the evidence that is available from different sources upon any given subject of inquiry. Looked at in this light, ethnology Vi PREFACE. lias great claims upon the student. The science of culture has almost refused to deal with it, and has been content with noting only a few landmarks which occur here and there along the lines of development traceable in the elements of human culture. But the science of history has of late been busy with many problems of ethnological importance, and has for this purpose turned sometimes to craniology, sometimes to archae- ology, sometimes to philology, but rarely to folklore. If folklore, then, does contain ethnological facts, it is time that they should be disclosed, and that the method of discovering them should be placed before scholars. Of course, my attempt in this direction must not be looked upon in any sense as an exhaustive treatment of the subject, and I am not vain enough to expect that all my conclusions will be accepted. I believe that the time has come when every item of folklore should be docketed and put into its proper place, and I hope I have done something toward this end in the following pages. When complete classification is attempted some of the items of folklore will be found useless enough. But most of them will help us to understand more of the development of thought than any other subject ; and many of them will, if my reading of the evidence is correct, take us back, not only to stages in the history of human thought, but to the people who have yielded up the struggle of their minds to the modern student of man and his strivings. PREFACE. vii At the risk of crowding the pages with footnotes, I have been careful to give references to all my authorities for items of folklore, because so much depends upon the value of the authority used in these studies. I believe they are all quoted accurately, but shall always be glad to know of any corrections or additions. Professor Rhys has kindly read through my proofs, and I am very grateful for the considerable service he has thereby rendered me. Barnes Common, S. W., March, 1892. CONTENTS. CELiPTER PAGE I. — Survival axd Development 1 II. — Ethxic Elements in Custom axd Ritual . . 21 III. — The Mythic Ixfluexces of a Coxquered Race . 41 IV. — The Localization of Primitive Belief . . .67 V. — The Ethnic Genealogy of Folklore . . . 110 VI. — The Coxtixuation of Races 175 Ixdex 197 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. CHAPTER I. SURVIVAL AND DEVELOPMEIST. There has grown up of late years a subject of in- quiry — first antiquarian merely, and now scientific — into the peasant and local elements in modem culture, and this subject has not inaptly been termed " folklore." Al- most always at the commencement of a new study much is done by eager votaries which has to be undone as soon as settled work is undertaken, and it happens, I think, that because the elements of folklore are so humble and unpretentious, because they have to be sought for in the peasant's cottage or fields, in the children's nursery, or from the lips of old gaffers and gammers, that unusual difficulties have beset the student of folklore. Not only has he to undo any futile work that stands in the way of his special inquiry, but he has to attempt the re- building of his edifice in face of contrasts frequently drawn between the elements which make up his subject and those supposed more dignified elements with which the historian, the archaeologist, and the philologist have to deal. 2 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKI-ORE. The csscutiul characteristic of folklore is that it consists of beliefs, customs, and traditions which are far behind civilization in their intrinsic value to man, though they exist under tlie cover of a civilized nationality. This estimate of the position of folklore with reference to civilization suggests that its con- stituent elements are survivals of a condition of human thought more backward, and therefore more ancient, than that in which they are discovered. Except to the students of anthropology, the fact of the existence of survivals of older culture in our midst is not readily grasped or understood. Historians have been so engrossed with the political and commercial progress of nations that it is not easy to determine what room they would make in the world for the non- progressive portion of the population. And yet the history of every country must begin with the races who have occupied it. Almost everywhere in Europe there are traces, in some form or other, of a powerful race of people, unknown in modern history, who have left material remains of their culture to later ages. The Celts have written their history on the map of Europe in a scarcely less marked manner than the Teutons, and we still talk of Celtic countries and Teutonic countries. On the other hand, Greek and Roman civilizations have in some countries and some districts an almost unbroken record, in spite of much modifi- cation and development. With such an amalgam in the background, historians have scarcely ever failed to SURVIVAL AND DEVELOPMENT. 3 draw the picture of European civilization in deep col- ors, tinted according to their bias in favor of a Celtic, or Teutonic, or classical origin. But the picture of un- civilization within the same area has not been drawn. The story always is of the advanced part of nations,* though even here it occurs to me that very frequently the terminology is still more in advance of the facts, so that while every one has heard a great deal of the con- ditions of civilization, very few people have any adequate idea of the unadvanced lines of European life. It will be seen that I accentuate the contrast between civilization and uncivilization within the same area, and the purpose of this accentuation will be seen when the significant difference in origin is pointed out. Dr. Tylor states that the elevation of some branches of a race over the rest more often happens as the result of foreign than of native action. " Civilization is a plant much oftener propagated than developed," he says.f How true this remark is will be recognized by any one familiar with the main outlines of the history of civilization, ancient or modern. An axiom formulated by Sir Arthur Mitchell that " no man in isolation can become civilized," may be extended to societies. Whether in the case of Eoman, Greek, Assyrian, Egyp- tian, or even Chinese civilization, a point has always * Some confirmation of this from classical history was pointed out by Dr. Beddoe in his address to the Anthrop. Inst, (see Journal, XX, 355). f Primitive Cidiure, i, 48. 4 ETDNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. been reached iit wliicli scholars have had to turn their attention from the land where these civilizations were consummated to some other land or people, whose in- fluence in building them up is detected in considerable force. And so it is in the Western world. 1'here are few scholars now who advocate the theory of an ad- vanced Celtic or Teutonic civilization. Koman law, Greek philosophy and art, and Christian religion and ethics have combined in producing a civilization which is essentially foreign to the soil whereon it now flourishes. But with uncivilizatiou the case is very different. Arrested by forces which we can not but identify with the civilizations which have at various times swept over it, it seems imbedded in the soil where it was first trans- planted, and has no power or chance of fresh propaga- tion. There is absolutely no evidence, in spite of alle- gations to the contrary, of the introduction of uncivil- ized culture into countries already in possession of a higher culture. And yet it is found everywhere and is kept alive by the sanction of tradition — the traditional observance of what has always been observed, simply be- cause it has always been observed. Thus, after the law of the land has been complied with and the marriage knot has been effectually tied, traditional custom im- poses certain rites wdiich may without exaggeration be styled irrational, rude, and barbarous. After the Church has conducted to its last resting-place the corpse of the departed, traditional belief necessitates the per- formance of some magic rite which may with propriety SURVIVAL AND DEVELOPMENT. 5 be considered not only rude, but savage. Underneath the law and the Church, therefore, the emblems of the foreign civilization, lie the traditional custom and be- lief, the attributes of the native uncivilization. And the native answer to any inquiry as to why these irra- tional elements exist is invariably the same — " They are obliged to do it for antiquity or custom's sake " ; * they do it because they believe in it, " as things that had been and were real, and not as creations of the fancy or old- wives' tales and babble." Even after real belief has passed away the habit continues ; there is " a sort of use and wont in it which, though in a certain sense honored in its observance, it is felt, in some sort of indirect, un- meditated, unvolitional sort of way, would not be dis- honored in the breach." f The significant answer of the peasant, when ques- tioned as to the cause of his observing rude and irra- tional customs, of entertaining strange and uncouth be- liefs, marks a very important characteristic of what has been so conveniently termed folklore. All that the peasantry practice, believe, and relate on the strength of immemorial custom sanctioned by unbroken sueces- * Buchan's Si. Kilda, p. 35. Mr. Atkinson gives much the same testimony of Yorkshire. Inquiring as to a usage practiced on a farm, the answer was : " Ay, there's many as dis it yet. My au'd father did it. But it's sae many years syne it must be about wore out by now, and I shall have to dee it again." — Forty Years in a 3Ioorland Parish, p. 62. Miss Gordon Cumming's example of the force of custom in her book on the JJtlridcs is very amus- ing (p. 209). f Atkinson, op. cit., pp. 63, 72. Q EinXOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. sion from one generation to anotlier, has a value of peculiar significance so soon as it is perceived that the genealogy of each custom, belief, or legend in nearly all cases goes back for its commencing point to some fact in the history of the people which has escaped the no- tice of the historian. No act of legislation, no known factor in the records of history, can be pointed to as the origin of the practices, beliefs, and traditions of the peasantry, which exist in such great abundance. They are dateless and parentless when reckoned by the facts of civilization. They are treasured and reverenced, kept secret from Church, law, and legislation, handed down by tradition, when reckoned by the facts of peasant life. That these dateless elements in the national culture are also very frequently rude, irrational, and senseless only adds to the significance of their existence and to the necessity of some adequate explanation of that existence being supplied. Xo one would pretend that modern civilization con- sciously admits within its bounds practices and beliefs like those enshrined in folklore, and few will argue that modern civilization is an evolution in direct line from such rude originals. The theory that best meets the case is that they are to be identified with the rude cult- ure of ancient Europe, which has been swept over by waves of higher culture from foreign sources, that nearly everywhere the rude culture has succumbed to the force of these waves, but has nevertheless here and there stood firm. SURVIVAL AND DEVELOPMENT. 7 Isow, these being the conditions under which the survivals of ancient customs and beliefs exist, we have to note that they can not by any possibility develop. Having been arrested in their progress by some outside force, their development ceases. They continue, gener- ation after generation, either in a state of absolute crys- tallization, or they decay and split up into fragments ; they become degraded into mere symbolism or whittled down into mere superstition ; they drop back from a position of general use or observance by a whole com- munity into the personal observance of some few indi- viduals, or of a class ; they cease to affect the general conduct of the people, and become isolated and secret. Thus in folklore there is no development from one stage of culture to a higher one. These considerations serve to show how distinctly folklore is marked off from the political and social sur- roundings in which it is imbedded, and all questions as to its origin must therefore be a specific inquiry dealing with all the facts. The answer of the peasant already given shows the road which must be taken for such a purpose. We must travel back from generation to gen- eration of peasant life until a stage is reached where isolated beliefs and customs of the peasantry of to-day are found to occupy a foremost place in tribal or na- tional custom. To do this, the aid of comparative cus- tom and belief must be invoked. As Mr. Lang has so well expressed it : " When an apparently irrational and anomalous custom is found in any country, the method 8 ETHNOLOGY IN TOLKLORE. is to look for a country where a similar practice is no longer irrational or anomalous, but in harmony with the manners and ideas of the people amoug whom it prevails." * Here, then, will be found the true meaning of customs and beliefs which exist uselessly in the midst of civilization. Their relationship to other customs and beliefs at a similar level of culture will also be ascer- tained. When we subtract any particular custom of an uncivilized people from the general body of its asso- ciated customs, in order to compare it with a similar custom existing in isolated form in civilization, we are careful to note what other customs exist side by side with it in corelationship. These are its natural adhe- sions, so to speak, and by following them out we may also discover natural adhesions in folklore. But this is not all. The work of comparison having been accom- plished with reference to the group of customs and be- liefs in natural adhesion to each other, there will be found in folklore a large residuum of manifest incon- sistencies. I am inclined to lay considerable stress upon these inconsistencies in folklore. They have been noted frequently enough, but have not been adequately ex- plained. They have been set down to the curious twist- ings of the human mind when indulging in mythic thought. But I shall have another explanation to give, which will rest upon the facts of ethnology. Is it true, then, that the process of comparison be- * Custom and Myth, p. 21. SURVIVAL AND DEVELOPMENT. 9 tween the elements of folklore and the customs and beliefs of uncivilized or savage people can be carried out to any considerable extent, or is it limited to a few isolated and exceptional examples ? It is obvious that this question is a vital one. It will be partly answered in the following pages ; but in the mean time it may be pointed out that although anthropologists have very sel- dom penetrated far into the realms of folklore, they have frequently noted that the beliefs and customs of savages find a close parallel among peasant beliefs and practices in Europe. More than once in the pages of Dr. Tylor, Sir John Lubbock, Mr. McLennan, and others, it is to be observed that the author turns aside from the consideration of the savage phenomena he is dealing with to draw attention to the close resemblance which they bear to some fragments of folklore — "the series ends as usual in the folklore of the civilized world " are Dr. Tylor's expressive words.* I do not want to lay too much stress upon words which may, perhaps, be considered by some to have been only a happy literary expression for interpreting an isolated group of facts immediately under the notice of the author. But that they are not to be so consid- ered, and that they convey a real condition of things in the science of culture, may be tested by an examination of Dr. Tylor's work, and I set them forth in order to fix upon them as one of the most important axioms in folk- * Primitive Culture, i, 407. 10 ETUNOLOGY IS FOLKLORE. lore research. This axiom must, indeed, be constantly borne in mind as we wend our way through the various items of folklore in the following pages, and it will help to illustrate how much need there is to establish once and for all what place the several groups of folklore oc- cupy in the culture series. This way of expressing the relationship between sav- age culture and folklore suggests many important con- siderations when applied to a particular area. If peasant culture and savage culture are now at many points in close contact, how far may we go back to find the begin- ning of that contact ? Must we not dig down beneath each stratum of overlying higher culture and remove all the superincumbent mass before we can arrive at the original layer ? There seems to be no other course open. The forces that keep certain beliefs and ideas of man in civilized countries within the recognizable limits of sav- age culture, and continue them in this state generation after generation, can not be derived from the nature of individual men or women, or the results would be less systematic and evenly distributed, and would be liable to disappear and reappear according to circumstances. They must, therefore, act collectively, and must form an essential part of the beliefs and ideas which they govern. I do not know whether my use of the terms of geol- ogy in the attempt to state the position of folklore in relationship to the higher cultures is unduly suggestive, but it undoubtedly puts before the inquirer into the SURVIVAL AND DEVELOPMENT. H origins of folklore the suggestion that the unnamed forces which are so obviously present must to a very great extent be identical with race. It can not be that the fragments of rude and irrational practices in civil- ized countries arise from the poor and peasant class hav- ing been in the habit of constantly borrowing the prac- tices and ideas of savages, because, among other reasons against such a theory, this borrowed culture must to a corresponding degree have displaced the practices and ideas of civilization. All the evidence goes to prove that the peasantry have inherited rude and irrational practices and ideas from savage predecessors — practices and ideas which have never been displaced by civiliza- tion. To deal adequately with these survivals is the ac- cepted province of the science of folklore, and it must therefore account for their existence, must point out the causes for their arrested development and the causes for their long continuance in a state of crystallization or degradation after the stoppage has been effected. And I put it that these requirements can only be met by an hypothesis which directly appeals to the racial elements in the population. There is first the arresting force, identified with the higher culture sweeping over the lower ; there is then the continuing force, identified with the lower culture. Let us see how this works out. The most important fact to note in the examination of each fragment of folklore is the point of arrested development. Has the custom or belief, surviving bv the side of much higher 12 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. culture, been arrested in its development while it was simply a savage custom or belief ; when it was a barbaric custom or belief at a higher level than savagery ; when it was a national custom or belief discarded by the gov- erning class and obtaining locally ? Translating these factors in the characteristics of each item of folklore into terms of ethnology, it appears that we have at all events sufficient data for considering custom or belief which survives in the savage form as of different ethnic origin from custom or belief which sur- vives in higher forms. But if the incoming civilizations flowing over lower levels of culture in any given area have been many, there will be as many stages of arrestment in the folk- lore of that area, and in so far as each incoming civili- zation represents an ethnic distinction, the different stages of survival in folklore would also represent an ethnic distinction. The incoming civilizations in modern Europe are not all ethnic, as the most impressive has been Chris- tianity. It is impossible for the most casual reader to have left unnoticed the frequent evidence which is afforded of folklore being older than Christianity — hav- ing, in fact, been arrested in its development by Chris- tianity. But at the back of Christianity the incoming civilizations have been true ethnic distinctions, Scandi- navian, Teutonic, Roman, Celtic, overflowing each other, and all of them superimposed upon the original unciv- ilization of the prehistoric races of non- Aryan stock. SURVIVAL AND DEVELOPMENT. 13 It appears to me that the clash of these races is still represented in folklore. It is not possible at the com- mencement of studies like the present to unravel all the various elements, and particularly is it impossible with our present knowledge to discriminate to any great ex- tent between the several branches of the Aryan race.* The biography of each item of Arj-an custom and be- lief has not been examined into like the biography of each word of the Aryan tongue. This will have to be done before the work of the comparative sciences has been comjDleted. But even with our limited knowledge of Aryan culture, it does seem possible to mark in folk- lore traces of an arrested development at the point of savagery, side by side with a further development which has not been arrested until well within the area of Aryan culture. This dual element in folklore, represented by a series of well-marked inconsistencies in peasant custom and belief, proves that the stages of development at which the several items of folklore have been arrested are not at the same level ; and they could not therefore have been produced by one arresting power. Thus the con- flict between paganism and Christianity is so obviously * Miss Burne lias, I think, successfully distinguished between Welsh and English origins in the folklore of Shropshire (see her Shropshire Folklore, p. 462, and the map). And Lord Teign- mouth suggested that the prejudice against swine held by the Western Highlanders and Hebrideans indicates a difference of race from the Orcadians, who have no such prejudice. — Islands of Scotland, i, 376. 14:' ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. a source to wliicli the phenomenon of pagan survivals might be traced, that almost exclusive attention has been paid to it. It would account for one line of arrest- ment. It would have stopped the further progress of Aryan beliefs and customs represented in the Teutonic, Celtic, and Scandinavian culture, and it would corre- spondingly account for survivals at this point of arrest- ment. Survivals at a point of arrestment further back in the development of culture than the Aryan stage must have already existed under the pressure of Aryan culture. They must have been produced by a stoppage antecedent to Christianity, and must be identified, therefore, with the arrival of the Aryan race into a country occupied by non-Ayrans. If, then, I can show that there are, primarily, two lines of arrested development to be traced in folklore, these two lines must be represented the one by savage culture, which is not Aryan, the other by Aryan culture. It must, however, be pointed out that the relation- ship between what may be termed savagery and Arj-an culture has not been formally set forth, though it seems certain that there is a considerable gap between the two, caused by a definite advance in culture by the Aryan race before its dispersal from the primitive home. This advance is the result of development, and where development takes place the originals from which it has proceeded disappear in the new forms thus produced. To adopt the terms of the manufactory, the original forms would have been all used up in the process of SURVIVAL AND DEVELOPMENT. 15 production. Hence, none of the savage culture from which may be traced the beginnings of Aryan culture can have survived among Aryan people. If items of it are found to exist side by side with Aryan culture in any country, such a phenomenon must be due to causes which have brought Aryan and savage races into close dwelling with each other, and can in no sense be in- terpreted as original forms existing side by side with those which have developed from them. I put this im- portant proposition forward without hesitation as a sound conclusion to be derived from the study of human culture. It is not possible in these pages to give the tests which I have applied to prove it, because they belong to the statistical side of our study, but I adduce Dr. Tylor's notable attempt to work out the method of studying institutions as sufficient evidence for my im- mediate purpose.* These somewhat dry technicalities are necessary in order to explain the basis of our present inquiry. Some years ago Sir John Lubbock said : " It can not be doubted that the careful study of manners and customs, traditions and superstitions, will eventually solve many difficult problems of ethnology. This mode of research, however, requires to be used with great caution, and has, in fact, led to many erroneous conclusions. . . . Much careful study will therefore be required before this class of evidence can be used with safety, though I doubt not * See Journ. Anthrop. Inst. IG ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. tluit eventually it will be found most instructive." * It is singular what little progress has been made in this branch of work since this paragrajih was written, and, indeed, how very generally the subject has been neg- lected, although now and again a jiassage in some of our best authorities suggests the necessity for some re- search being undertaken into the question of race dis- tinctions in custom and myth. Mr. Lang, for instance, when asking how the pure religion of Artemis had de- veloped from the cult of a ravening she-bear, puts the case forcibly thus : " Here is a moment in mythical and religious evolution which almost escapes inquiry. . . . How did the complex theory of the nature of Artemis arise ? What was its growth ? At what precise hour did it emancipate itself on the whole from the lower savage creeds ? Or how was it developed out of their unpromising materials ? The science of mythology may perhaps never find a key to these obscure prob- lems." f But I think the science of folklore may go far toward the desired end. Its course would be to take note of the points of arrested development, and to claissify what has survived in the savage stage and what * Origin of Civilization, p. 4. Dal yell, in some of his acute observations on superstition, says that he thought " it might be possible to connect the modern inhabitants of Scotland with the ancient tribes of other countries, and to trace their descent through the medium of superstitions." — DarJier Superstitions of Scotland, p. 236. In 1835, when this book was published, this way of putting the relationship of one people with another had not been abolished by the work accomplished by anthropology. f Myth, Ritual, and Religion, ii, 215. SURVIVAL AND DEVELOPMENT. 17 is represented in the higher stages as being of two dis- tinct ethnic origins, and its conclusion would be that Artemis " succeeded to and threw her protection over an ancient worship of the animal," and that therefore the cult of Artemis and the local cults connected with it are as to race of different origin, and may both be called Greek in reference only to their final state of amalgamation in the land which the Aryan Greeks con- quered and named. One of the principal features of the Artemis cult is the extremely savage form of some of the local rituals, and it will frequently be found that localities preserve relics of a people much older than those who now in- habit them. Thus the daubing of the bridegroom's feet with soot in Scotland,* the painting with black substance of one of the characters in the Godiva ride at Southam in "Warwickshire,! the daubing of the naked body in the Dionysiac mysteries of the Greeks, are ex- plained by none of the requirements of civilization, but by practices to be found in Africa and elsewhere. The ancestry of the Scottish, Warwickshire, and Greek cus- toms, therefore, may be traced back to a people on the level of culture with African savages. But when we come to ask who were the people who introduced this savage custom, we are for the first time conscious of the important question of race. Are we * Gregor, Folklore of Northeast Scotland, p. 90 ; Rogers, Social Life in Scotland, i, 110. \ Hartland, Science of Fairy Tales, p. 85. 18 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. compelled to call them Scotchmen, Englishmen, or Greek ? Mr. Lang and Mr. Frazer would, I believe, answer " Yes " ; * and they are followed, consciously or unconsciously, by all other folklorists. I shall attempt a somewhat different answer, the construction and proof of which will occupy the following pages. But as a preliminary justification for such a course I quote Dr. Tylor's warning : " The evidence of locality may be misleading as to race. A traveler in Greenland coming on the ruined stone buildings at Kakortok would not argue justly that the Esquimaux are degenerate de- scendants of ancestors capable of such architecture, for, in fact, these are the remains of a church and baptistry built by the ancient Scandinavian settlers." f Exactly. The long-chambered barrows, hill earthworks and culti- vation sites, cave dwellings and palaeolithic implements, are not attributable to Celt or Teuton. Can we, then, without substantial reason and without special inquiry, say that a custom or belief, however rude and savage, is Celtic, or Teutonic, or Greek, simply because it is extant in a country occupied in historic times by people speak- ing the language of any of these peoples ? A negative answer must clearly be returned to this question. The subject, no doubt, is a difficult one when thought of in connection with European countries. But in India, less leveled by civilization than the Western world, the ethnographer, with very little effort, can de- * Consult Mr. Lang's Custom and Myth, p. 26. f Primifiue Culture, i, 51. SURVIVAL AND DEVELOPMEXT. 19 tect ethnic distinctions in custom and belief. Stone worship in India, for instance, is classed by Dr. Tylor as " a survival of a rite belonging originally to a low civilization, probably a rite of the rude indigenes of the land." * But are not survivals of stone worship in Europe similarly to be classed as belonging to the rude indigenes of the land ? The log that stood for Artemis in Euboea, the stake that represented Pallas Athene, the unwrought stone at Hyettos which represented Herakles, the thirty stones which the Pharseans wor- shiped for the gods, and the stone representing the Thespian Eros, may, with equal propriety, be classed as survivals of the non-Ar3'an indigenes of Greece. What may be rejected as belonging to the Aryans of India because there is distinct evidence of its belonging to the non- Aryans, can not be accepted without even an in- quiry as belonging to the Aryans of Greece. No doubt the difficulty of tracing direct evidence of the early non- Aryan races of Europe is very great, but it is no way out of the difficulty to ignore the fact that there exist survivals of savage culture which would readily be classi- fied as non-Aryan if it so happened that there now ex- isted certain tribes of non-Aryan peoj)le to whom they might be allotted. On the contrary, the existence of survivals of savage culture is prima facie eYidence of the existence of races to whom this culture belonged and from whom it has descended. I do not mean to suggest * Primitive Culture, ii, 150. 20 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. that in all places where items of non-Aryan culture have survived people of non-Aryan race have survived. Old races disappear while old customs last— carried on by successors, but not necessarily by descendants. The gen- ealogy of folklore carries us back to the race of people from whom it derives its parentage, but it does not neces- sarily carry back the genealogy of modern peasantry to the same race. This latter part of the question is a matter for ethnologists to deal with, and it may be that some unlooked-for results are yet to be derived from a close study of ethnic types in our local populations in relation to the folklore jDreserved by them. CHAPTER 11. ETHXIC ELEMENTS IN" CUSTOM AND RITUAL. It is necessary now to test by the evidence of actual example the hypothesis that race distinction is the true explanation of the strange inconsistency which is met with in folklore. There should be evidence somewhere, if such a hypothesis is tenable, that the almost un- checked conclusions of scholars are not correct when they argue that because a custom or belief, however sav- age and rude, obtained in Eome or in Greece, in Ger- man or Celtic countries of modern Europe, it is Roman, Greek, German, or Celtic throughout all its variations. For this purpose an example must be found which will comply with certain conditions. It must obtain in a country overlorded by an Aryan people, and still occu- pied by non- Aryan indigenes. It must consist of dis- tinct divisions, showing the part taken by Aryans and the part taken by non- Aryans. And as such an ex- ample can scarcely be found in Europe, it must at least be paralleled in the folklore of Europe, if not in all its constituent parts, at all events in all the essential details. Such an example is to be found in India. I shall 22 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. first of all sot forth the principal points Avhich are neces- sary to note in this example in the words, as nearly as possible, of the authority I quote, so that the comments which it will be necessary to make upon it may not in- terfere with the evidence as it stands originally recorded. The festival of the village goddess is honored throughout all southern India and in other parts, from Berar to the extreme east of Bustar and in Mysore. She is generally adored in the form of an unshapely stone covered with vermilion. A small altar is erected behind the temple of the village goddess to a rural god named Potraj. All the members of the village community take part in the festival, with the hereditary district officers, many of them Brahmans. An examination of the ritual belonging to this vil- lage festival enables us not only to detect the presence of race distinctions and of practices which belong to them, but compels us to conclude that the whole cere- mony originated in race distinctions. The festival is under the guidance and management of the Parias, who act as officiating priests. With them are included the Mangs or workers in leather, the Asadis or Dasaris, Paria dancing-girls devoted to the service of the temple, the musician in attendance on them, who acts as a sort of jester or buffoon, and a functionary called Potraj, who officiates aspujari to the god of the same name. The shepherds or Dhangars of the neigh- boring villages are also invited. Of these the Parias are an outcast peoi:>le, degraded in the extreme, and always ETHNIC ELEMENTS IN CUSTOM AND RITUAL. 23 excluded from the village and from contact with the in- habitants. They are identified with the Paraya, a south- ern aboriginal tribe nearly allied to the Gonds. The shepherd caste is found throughout the greater part of the Dekkan in detached communities, called Kurum- bars, Kurubars, and Dhangars, in different parts of In- dia. These are the non- Aryan races who take part in this Aryan village festival ; they occupy the foremost place during the festival, and at its termination they retire to their hamlets outside the town and resume their humble servile character. From these facts Sir W. Elliot has deduced as probable conclusions that the earliest known inhabitants of southern India were an aboriginal race, who worshiped local divinities, the tute- lary gods of earth, hill, grove, and boundaries, etc., and that this worship has been blended in practice with that of the Aryan overlords. The principal parts of the ritual which it is useful for us to note are as follows : The Potraj priest was armed with a long whip, to which at various parts of the ceremony divine honors were paid. The sacred buffalo was turned loose when a calf, and allowed to feed and roam about the village. On the second day this animal was thrown down before the goddess, its head struck off by a single blow, and placed in front of the shrine with one foreleg thrust into its mouth. Around were placed vessels containing the different cereals, and hard by a heap of mixed grains with a drill- ploAV in the center. The carcass was then cut up into 24 ETHNOLOGY L\ FOLKLORE. small pieces, and each cultivator received a portion to bury in his field. The blood and offal were collected into a large basket over which some pots of cooked food had previously been broken, and Potraj, taking a live kid, hewed it to pieces over the whole. The mess was then mixed together, and the basket being placed on the head of a naked Mang, he ran off with it, flinging the contents into the air and scattering them right and left as an offering to the evil spirits, and followed by the other Parias. The whole party made the circuit of the village. The third and fourth days were devoted to private offerings. On the former, all the inhabitants of caste who had vowed animals to the goddess during the pre- ceding three years for the welfare of their families or the fertility of their fields brought the buffaloes or sheep to the Paria piijdri, who struck off their heads. The fourth day is appropriated exclusively to the offer- ings of the Parias. In this way some fifty or sixty buffaloes and several hundred sheep were slain, and the heads piled up in two great heaps. Many women on these days walked naked to the temple in fulfillment of vows, but they were covered with leaves and boughs of trees, and surrounded by their female relations and friends. On the fifth and last day the whole community marched in procession with music to the temple, and offered a concluding sacrifice at the Potraj altar. A lamb Avas concealed close by. The Potraj having found ETHNIC ELEMENTS IN CUSTOM AND RITUAL. 25 it after a pretended search, struck it simply Avith his whip, which he then placed upon it, and making several passes with his hands rendered it insensible. His hands were then tied behind his back by the pujdri, and the whole party began to dance round him with noisy shouts. Potraj joined in the excitement, and he soon came fully under the influence of the deity. He was led up, still bound, to the place where the lamb lay mo- tionless. He rushed at it, seized it with his teeth, tore through the skin, and ate into its throat. When it was quite dead he was lifted up, a dishful of the meat-offer- ing was presented to him ; he thrust his bloody face into it, and it was then with the remains of the lamb buried beside the altar. Meantime his hands were untied, and he fled the place. The rest of the party now adjourned to the front of the temple, where the heap of grain deposited the first day was divided among all the cultivators, to be buried by each one in his field with the bit of flesh. After this a distribution of the piled-up heads was made by the hands of the musician or Raniga. About forty sheep's heads were given to certain privileged persons, among which two were allotted to the sircar. For the rest a general scramble took place — paiks, shepherds, Parias, and many boys and men of good caste were soon rolling in the mass of putrid gore. The scramble for the buffa- lo-heads was confined to the Parias. Whoever was for- tunate enough to secure one of either kind carried it off and buried it iu his field. 26 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. Tlic proceedings terminated by a procession round the boundaries of the village lands, preceded by the goddess and the head of the sacred buffalo carried on the head of one of the Mangs. All order and propriety now ceased. Eaniga began to abuse the goddess in the foulest language ; he then turned his fury against the Government, the head man of the \illage, and every one who fell in his way. The Parias and Asadis at- tacked the most respectable and gravest citizens, and laid hold of Brahmans, Lingayats, and zamindars with- out scruple. The dancing - women jumped on their shoulders, the shepherds beat the big drum, and uni- versal license prevailed. On reaching a little temple sacred to the goddess of boundaries, they halted to make some offerings and to bury the sacred head. As soon as it was covered the up- roar began again. Eaniga became more foul-mouthed than ever, and the head men, the Government officers, and others tried to pacify him by giving him small cop- per coins. This went on till, the circuit being com- pleted, all dispersed.* It has been worth while transcribing here this elabo- rate description of a veritable folk drama because it is necessary to have before us the actual details of the ritual observed and the beliefs expressed before we can properly attempt a comparison. "We must now ascertain how far European folklore * Sir W. Elliot, in Joiim. Ethnological Soc, N. S. i, 97-100. ETHNIC ELEMENTS IN CUSTOM AND RITUAL. 27 tallies with tlie ceremonies observed in this Indian vil- lage festival. If there is a strong line of parallel be- tween the Indian ceremonies and some ceremonies still observed in Europe as survivals of a forgotten and un- recognized cult, I shall argue that ceremonies which are demonstrably non-Aryan in India, even in the presence of Aryan people, must in origin have been non-Aryan in Europe, though the race from whom they have de- scended is not at present identified by ethnologists. I shall not at this juncture dwell upon the unshapen stone which represented the goddess. Its parallels exist throughout the whole range of early religions, and, as we have already seen, aj^pear in the folklore of Europe. As the Kafirs of India say of the stones they use, " This stands for God, but we know not his shape." * All the more need for it to be unshapen by men's hands, and the history of the sacred use of monoliths commences at this point f and ends with the sculptured glories of Greece. I Later on some special forms of stone deities will be noticed ; it is the use of a stone as a sort of altar of the goddess, who is not identical with it, and the recognition of stone worship as a part of the aboriginal cult, and not Aryan,* which interests us now. This stone is the place of sacrifice to the harvest * Latham, Descriptive Ethnology, ii, 240. f Cf. Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, pp. 18G-195 ; Ellis, Ewe-speaking People, p. 28. X See an able article in the Archa'ological Review, ii, 1G7-184, by Mr. Farnell. * Arch. Survey of India, xvi, 141. 28 ETUNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. goddess, and the ceremonial observed at the Indian fes- tival directs us at once to the local observances con- nected with the cult of Dionysus. The Cretans in rep- resenting the sufferings and death of Dionysus tore a bull to pieces with their teeth ; indeed, says Mr. Frazer, quoting the authority of Euripides, the rending and de- vouring of live bulls and calves appears to have been a regular feature of the Dionysiac rites, and his worship- ers also rent in pieces a live goat and devoured it raw. At Tenedos the new-born calf sacrificed to the god was shod in buskins, and the mother cow was tended like a woman in childbed — sure proof of the symbolization of human sacrifice, which indeed actually took place at Chios and at Orchomenus.* These are virtually the same practices as those now going on in India, and the identification is confirmed by the facts (1) that Dionysus is sometimes represented to his worshipers by his head only — a counterpart of the sacred character of the head in the Indian rites ; (2) that the sacrificer of the calf at Tenedos was, after the accomplishment of the rite, driv- en out from the place and stoned — a counterpart of the Potraj fleeing the place after the sacrifice of the lamb in the Indian ceremony ; and (3) that the female worship- ers of Dionysus attended in a nude state, crowned with garlands, and their bodies daubed over with clay and dirt — a counterpart of the female votaries who attended * Mr. Frazer has collected all the references to these facts in his Golden Bough, i, 336-329 ; see also Lang, Custom and Myth, ii, 331-234. ETHNIC ELEMENTS IN CUSTOM AND RITUAL. 29 naked aud surrounded with branches of trees at the Indian festival. I have selected this cult of the Greeks for the pur- pose of comj)aring it with the non- Aryan ceremonial of India, because it has recently been examined with all the wealth of illustration and comparison by two such great authorities as Mr. Lang and Mr. Frazer. They have stripped it of most of the fanciful surroundings with which German and English mythologists have re- cently loaded it, and once more restored the local rituals and the central myth as the true sources from which to obtain information as to its origin. At almost every point the details of the local rituals are comparable, not to Greek conceptions of Dionysus, "a youth with clus- ters of golden hair and in his dark eyes the grace of Aphrodite," but to the ferocious and barbaric practices of savages. Then where is the evidence of the Greek origin of these local observances? Greek religious thought was far in advance of them. It stooped to admit them within the rites of the god Dionysus, but in this act there was a conscious borrowing by Greeks of something lower in the stage of culture than Greek culture, and that something has been character- ized by a recent commentator as appertaining to " the divinities of the common people." * This is very near * Dyer's Gods of Greece, p. 133. Mr. Dyer says : " The most painstaking security, the minutest examination of such evidence as may be had, will never disentangle completely, never make perfectly plain, just what elements constituted the Dionysus first 30 ETIIXOLOGV IN FOLKLORE. to the race distinction I nm in .search of. The common people of Crete, Tenedos, Chios, and Orchomenus were not necessarily Aryan Greeks, and, judged by their savage customs, they most likely stood in the same re- lationship to the Aryans of Greece as the Parias of the Indian villages stand to their Aryan overlords. I pass from Greek folklore to English. It would be easy to extend research right across Europe, especially with Mr. Frazer's aid, but it is scarcely necessary. A Whitsuntide custom in the parish of King's Teignton, Devonshire, is thus described : A lamb is drawn about the parish on "Whitsun Monday in a cart covered with garlands of lilac, laburnum, and other flowers, when persons are requested to give something toward the ani- mal and attendant expenses ; on Tuesday it is then killed and roasted whole in the middle of the village. The lamb is then sold in slices to the poor at a clieap rate. The origin of the custom is forgotten, but a tra- dition, supposed to trace back to heathen days, is to this effect : The village suffered from a dearth of water, worshiped in early Greece. ITis character was composite from the moment Greeks worshiped him ; for in Boeotia (Ilesvchius) as in Attica (Pausanias, xxxi. 4) and in Naxos (Athena?us, iii, 78), some part of him was native to the soil, and he was nowhere wholly Thracian." — Gods of Greece, p. 82. Mr. Dyer had prob- ably not studied Mr. Frazer's book when this passage was written, but it shows the opinions of specialists who have not called in the aid of ethnology. That part of Dionysus which was '' native to the soil " was not Greek ; the Greeks were immigrants to the land they adorned as their home, and the Dionysus "native to the soil" was shaped by them into the Athenian Dionysus. ETHNIC ELEMENTS IX CUSTOM AND RITUAL. 31 wlien the inhabitants were advised by their priests to pray to the gods for water ; whereupon the water sprang up spontaneously in a meadow about a third of a mile above the river, in an estate now called Eydon, amply suflQcient to supply the wants of the place, and at pres- ent adequate, even in a dry summer, to work three mills. A lamb, it is said, has ever since that time been sacrificed as a votive thank-offering at Whitsuntide in the manner before mentioned. The said water appears like a large pond, from which in rainy weather may be seen jets springing up some inches above the surface in many parts. It has ever had the name of " Fair Wa- ter."* It is noticeable that, while the custom here described does not present any very extraordinary feat- ures, the iDOj)ular legend concerning its origin introduces two very important elements — namely, its reference to " heathen days " and the title of " sacrifice " ascribed to the killing of the lamb. The genealogy of this custom, then, promises to take us back to the era of heathen sacrifice of animals. The first necessity in tracing the genealogy is to analyze the custom as it obtains in nineteenth-century Devonshire. The analysis gives the following results : 1. The decoration of the victim lamb with garlands. 2. The killing and roasting of the victim by villagers. 3. The place of the ceremony in the middle of the village. * Notes and Queries, vii, 353. 32 ETUN0L()(;Y in rOLKLORE. 4. The selling,' of the rousted flesh to tlic poor. :/•. Tlie tnulitioiiiil ori;L,nii of tlie custom as a sacrifice for vvjiti'r. It fioenis clear that hetween the fourth step of the analysis and the traditional origin there are some consid- erable lacunae to be filled up which prevent us at present from numbering the last item. The more primitive elements of this custom have been worn down to van- ishing point, the practice probably being considered but an old-fashioned and cumbrous method of relieving distressed parishioners before the poor law had otherwise provided for them. Another example from Devonshire fortunately overlaps this one, and permits the restora- tion of the lost elements, and the consequent carrying back of the genealogy. At the village of Holne, situated on one of the spurs of Dartmoor, is a field of about two acres, the property of the parish, and called the Ploy Field. In the center of this field stands a granite pillar (Menhir) six or seven feet high. On May morning, before daybreak, the young men of the village used to assemble there, and then proceed to the moor, where they selected a ram lamb, and, after running it down, brought it in triumjih to the Ploy Field, fastened it to the pillar, cut its throat, and then roasted it whole, skin, wool, etc. At midday a struggle took place, at the risk of cut hands, for a slice, it being supposed to confer luck for the ensuing year on the fortunate devourer. As an act of gallantry the young men sometimes fought their way through the ETHNIC ELEMENTS IN CUSTOM AND RITUAL. 33 crowd to get a slice for the chosen among the young women, all of whom, in their best dresses, attended the Earn Feast, as it was called. Dancing, wrestling, and other games, assisted by copious libations of cider during the afternoon, prolonged the festivity till midnight.* Analyzing this example, and keeping to the notation of the first analysis, we have the following results : — 2. The killing and roasting of the victim ram by villagers. 3. The place of the ceremony, at a stone pillar in a field which is common property. 4. The struggle for pieces of raw flesh " at the risk of cut hands." 5. The time of the ceremony, before daybreak. 6. The luck conferred by the possession of a slice of the flesh. 7. The festivities attending the ceremony. Thus, of the five elements in the King's Teignton custom, three are retained in the Holne custom, and three additional ones of importance are added. I think we may conclude, first, that the Holne cus- tom is a more primitive form of a common original from which both have descended ; secondly, that we may strike out the " roasting " as an entirely civilized ele- * Notes and Queries, 1st ser., vii, 353. Compare Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, p. 320, and Owen, Notes on the Naga Tribes, pp. 15-16, for some remarkable parallels to this Devonshire custom. I would also refer to Miss Burne's sugges- tive description of the bull sacrifice in her Shropshire Folklore, p. 475. 34 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLOUE. iiicnl (liu! to modern influences. The final form of tlie unulysis miglit then be restored from the two fragment- ary ones as follows : 1. The decoration of the victim with garlands. 2. The killing of the victim by the community. 3. The place of the ceremony, on lands belonging to the community, and at a stone pillar. 4. The struggle for pieces of flesh by members of the community. 5. The time of the ceremony, before daybreak. G. The sacred power of the piece of flesh. 7. The festivities attending the ceremony. 8. The origin of the ceremony, as a sacrifice to the god of waters. The obvious analogy this bears to the Indian type "we are examining scarcely needs to be insisted on, and I shall leave it to take its place among the group of Euro- pean parallels. The special sanctity of the head of the sacrificed ^'ic- tim, so apparent in the Indian festival, appears in Euro- pean paganism and folklore in several places.* The Longobards adorned a divinely honored goat's head.f A well-known passage in Tacitus, describing the sacred groves of the Germans, states that the heads of the ani- mals hung on boughs of trees, or, as it is noted in an- other passage, " immolati diis equi abscissum caput." * Compare Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, pp. 359, 3G2. t Grimm, Teutonic Myth. p. 31. ETHNIC ELEMENTS IN CUSTOM AND RITUAL. 35 Heathendom, says Grimm, seems to have practiced all sorts of magic by cutting off horses' heads and sticking them up,* and he quotes examples from Scandinavia, Germany, and Holland. Passing on to folklore, we find that the witches of Germany in the thirteenth century were accused of adoring a beast's head.f A fox's head was nailed to the stable door in some parts of Scotland to bar the entrance of witches. J Camden has noted a cu- rious ceremony obtaining at St. Paul's Cathedral. "I have heard," he says, " that the stag which the family of Le Baud in Essex was bound to pay for certain lands used to be received at the steps of the church by the priests in their sacerdotal robes and with garlands of flowers on their heads " ; and as a boy he saw a stag's head fixed on a spear and conveyed about within the church with great solemnity and sounds of horns.* At Horuchurch, in Essex, a singular ceremony is recorded. The lessee of the tithes supplies a boar's head, dressed, and gar- nished with bay- leaves. In the afternoon of Christmas Day it is carried in procession into the field adjoining the churchyard, where it is wrestled for.|| These customs are also confirmed by the records of archaeology. In the belfry of Elsdon Church, Northum- * Grimm, Teutonic Myth. p. 659. f Ihid, p. 1065. X Dalyell, Darker Superstitions of Scotland, p. 148. * Britannia, Holland's translation, p. 426. II Notes and Queries, 1st Ser., v, 106 ; Gentleman's Magazine Library — 3Ianners and Customs, p. 221. It is also curious to noto that leaden horns are fastened over the east part of the church. 36 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. l)orl!iii(l, were discovered in 1877 the skeletons of three horses' heads. They were in u small chamber, evidently formed to receive them, and the spot was the highest part of the cluirch ; they were piled one against the other in a triangular form, the jaws being uppermost* I will iKit do move, tlian say that these items of folk- lore, following those which relate to the sacrifice of the animal, confirm the parallel which is being sought for between the living ceremonial of Indian festivals and the surviving peasant custom in European folklore, and I pass on from the victims of the sacrifice to the actors in the scene. All the latent savagery exhibited in the action of tearing the victim to pieces has been noted both in the Indian type and in its folklore parallels. One might be tempted, perhaps, to draw attention to the curious parallel Avliich the use of the whip by the Potraj of the Indian village bears to the gad- whip serv- ice at Caistor, in Lincolnshire, especially as the whip here used is bound round with jiieces of that magic plant the rowan-tree, and by tradition is connected with the death of a human being, f But this analogy may be one of the accidents of comparative studies, inas- much as it is not supported by cumulative or other confirmatory evidence. No such reason need detain us from considering the fact of women offering their vows at the festival in a nude condition, covered only with the leaves and boughs of trees, because it is easy to turn * Berinckshire Naturalists' Field Club, ix, 510. t Arch, Journ., vi, 239. ETEXIC ELEMENTS IN CUSTOM AND RITUAL. 37 to the folklore parallels to tliis custom, in Mr. Hart- land's admirable study of the Godiva legend. Every one knows this legend, which, together with all details as to date and earliest literary forms, is ex- plained by Mr. Hartland.* I shall therefore turn to the essential points. The ride of the Lady Godiva naked through the streets of Coventry is the legend told to ac- count for an annual procession among the municipal pageants of that town. The converse view, that the pageant arose out of the legend, is disproved by the facts. To meet this theory the legend would have to be founded upon a definite historical fact concerning only the place to which it relates, namely, Coventry. For this, as Mr. Hartland shows, there is absolutely no proof ; and parallels exist in two other places, one in the shape of an annual procession, the other in the shape of a legend only. I pass over the many interest- ing traces of the legend in folktales which Mr. Hartland has so learnedly collected and commented upon, and proceed to notice the other examples in England. The first occurs at Southam, a village not far from Coventry. " Very little is known about it now, save one singular fact — namely, that there were two Godivas in the cavalcade, and one of them was black." f The * Science of Fairy Tales, p. 71 et seq. f Hartland, op. cit., p. 85. This important discovery of Mr. Hartland's may fairly be compared with the " dirty practice of the Greeks" in the Dionysian mysteries noted above, a counterpart of which Mr. Lang some years ago could not find in modern folklore. — Folklore Record, ii, introd., p. ii. 38 ETUNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. second occurs at St. Briavcls, in Gloucestershire. Here the privilege of cutting and taking the wood in Ilud- noUs, and the custom of distributing yearly upon Whit- sunday pieces of bread and cheese to the congregation at church, are connected by tradition with a right ob- tained of some Earl of Hereford, then lord of the forest of Dean, at the instance of his lady, " upon the same hard terms that Lady Godiva obtained the privilege for the citizens of Coventry." * Thus, then, we have as the basis for considering these singular survivals : («) The Coventry legend and ceremony, kept up as municipal custom, and recorded as early as the thir- teenth century by Eoger of Wendovcr. {h) The Southam ceremony, kept up as local custom, unaccompanied by any legend as to origin. ((■■) The St. Briavels legend, not recorded until toward the end of the eighteenth century, and accomj)anied by a totally different custom. This variation in the local methods of keeping up this remarkable survival is one of some significance in the consideration of its origin,f and I now go on to compare it with an early ceremony in Britain, as noted by Pliny : " Both matrons and girls," says this authority, " among the people of Britain are in the habit of stain- * Rudder, History of Gloucestershire, 1779, p. 307 ; Gomme, GenfJemaii's 3fagazine Library — Manners and Customs, p. 230; llarlliiiul, op. cit., p. 78. f Folklore, i, 13. ETUNIC ELEMENTS IX CUSTOM AND RITUAL. 39 ing their body all over with woad when taking part in the performance of certain sacred rites ; rivaling thereby the swarthy hue of the Ethiopians, they go in a state of nature." * Between the customs and legends of modern folklore and the ancient 2)ractice of the Britons there is intimate connection, and the parallel thus afforded to the Indian festival seems complete. The attendance of votaries at a religious festival in a state of nudity has also been kept up in another form. At Stirling, on one of the early days of May, boys of ten and twelve years old divest themselves of clothing, and in a state of nudity run round certain natural or artificial circles. Formerly the rounded summit of Demyat, an eminence in the Ocliil range, was a favorite scene of this strange pastime, but for many j^ears it has been performed at the King's Knot in Stirling, an octagonal mound in the Eoyal gardens. The performances are not infrequently repeated at Midsummer and Lammas. f The fact that in this instance the practice is continued only by " boys of ten and twelve years old " shows that we have here one of the last stages of an old rite before its final abo- lition. It would have been difficult, perhaps, to attach much importance to this example as a survival of a rude prehistoric cult unless we had previously discussed the Godiva forms of it. But any one acquainted with the * Naf. Jlisf., lib. xxii, cap. 1. I think the passage in the poem of Dionvsius Periegeta about the rites of the Amnites may be compared, the women being " decked in the dark-leaved ivy's clustering buds." See 3Ian. Hist. Brit., p. xvii. f Rogers, Social Life iti Scotland, iii, 240. 4 40 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. frequent change of personnel in the execution of cere- monies sanctioned only by the force of local tradition will have little difficulty in conceding that the Scottish cus- tom has a place in the series of folklore items which connects the Godiva ceremony with the religious rites of the ancient Britons as recorded by Pliny, thus cement- ing the close parallel which the whole bears to the In- dian village festival. I think it will be admitted that these parallels are sufficiently obvious to suggest that they tell the same story both in India and Europe. They do not, by actual proof, belong to the Aryans of India ; they do not, there- fore, by legitimate conclusion, belong to the Aryans of Europe. But it may be argued that customs which in India are parts of one whole can not be compared with cus- toms in Europe which are often isolated and sometimes associated with other customs. The argument will not hold good if the conditions of survivals in folklore al- ready set forth are duly considered. But it can be met by the test of evidence. Some of the customs which in south India form a part of the festival of the village goddess are in other parts of India and in other coun- tries independent customs, or associated with other sur- roundings altogether, thus substantiating my suggestion that this village festival of India has been welded to- gether by the influence of races antagonistic to each other, which have been compelled to live together side by side for a long period. CHAPTER III. THE MYTHIC INFLUE>'CE OF A COXQUEKED EACE. It appears, then, that the influence of a conquered race does not die out so soon as the conquerors are es- tablished. Their religious customs and ritual are still observed under the new regime, and in some cases, as in India, very little, if any attempt is made to disguise their indigenous origin. Another influence exerted by the conquered over the conquerors is more subtle. It is not the adoption or extension of existing customs and beliefs, or the evolution of a new stage in custom and belief in consequence of the amalgamation. It is the creation of an entirely new influence, based on the fear which the conquered have succeeded in creating in the minds of the conquerors. Has any one attempted to realize the effects of a per- manent residence of a civilized people amidst a lower civilization, the members of which are cruel, crafty, and unscrupulous? In some regions of fiction, such as Kingsley's " Hereward " and Lytton's " Harold," a sort of picture has been drawn — a picture drawn and col- ored, however, in times far separated from those AS'hich witnessed the events. Fenimore Cooper has attempted 42 ETHNOLOGY IX FOLKLORE. tlic tusk witli bettor materials in liis stories of tlie white man and his relations to the red Indians. But by far the truest accounts are to be found in the dry records of official history. One such record has been transferred to the archives of the Anthropological Institute,* and it would be described by any ordinary reader as a record of the doings of demons. Of course this phraseology is figurative. But figures of speech very often survive from the figures of the ancient mythic conceptions of actual events, and though we should simply style the doings of the Tasmanians fighting against tlic whites demoniacal as an appropri- ate figure of speech, people of a lower culture, and our own peasantry a few years back, would believe them to be demoniacal in the literal sense of that term. Xo one will doubt that there is much in savage warfare to suggest these ideas, and Avhen it is remembered that savage warfare is waged by one tribe against another simply because they are strangers to each other — that not to be a member of a tribe is to be an enemy — it will not be surprising that the condition of hostility has pro- duced its share of superstition. It is the hostility between races, not the hostility between tribes of the same race, that has produced the most marked form of superstition ; and it may be put down as one of the axioms of our science that the hos- tility of races wherever they dwell long together in close * Joum. Anthrop. Inst., iii., 9 ; cf. Nilsson's Primitive Inhabit- ants of Scandinavia, p. 176. THE MYTHIC INFLUENCE OF A CONQUERED RACE. 43 contact has always produced superstition. Unfortu- nately no examples of this have been noted by travelers as a general rule, but there is ample evidence in sup- port of the statement, and I shall adduce some. The inland tribes of New Guinea are distinct from those of the coast,* but the spirit beliefs of the coast tribes which are described as being unusually prevalent are chiefly derived from their fear of the aboriginal tribes. They believe, says Mr. Lawes, when the natives are in the neighborhood that the whole plain is full of spirits who come with them ; all calamities are attrib- uted 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, f In this case the aborigines are represented as accompanied by their own spiritual guardians, who wage war upon the new-comers. In other cases aboriginal people are credited with the power of exercising demon functions or assuming demon forms. Thus every tribe in West- ern Australia holds those to the north of it in especial dread, imputing to them an immense power of enchant- ment; and this, says Mr. Oldfield, seems to justify the inference that the peopling of New Holland has taken place from various points toward the north. J The Hova tribes of Madagascar deified the Vazimba aborig- ines, and still consider their tombs as the most sacred * Rornilly, From my Veranda, p. 249. ■f Trans. Geog. Soc, N. S., ii, 615. t Trans. Ethnol. Soc, N. S., iii, 216, 235, 236. 44 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. objects in the country. 1'hesc spirits are supposed to be of two kinds — the kindly disposed and the fierce and cruel. Some are said to inhabit the water, while others are terrestrial in their habits, and they are believed to appear to those who seek their aid in dreams, warning them and directing them.* In the case of the Ainos, the supposed aborigines of Japan, the subject and object of the superstition seem to be reversed, for it is the Ainos who are superstitiously afraid of the Japanese ; f but it is to be observed that the ethnology of the Ainos, and their place in the country prior to the present con- dition of things, have not-been sufficiently examined. Certainly their position in this group of superstitions will need consideration. Two examples may be men- tioned of the attitude of Malays to their conquered foes. To a Malay an aboriginal Jakun is a supernatural being endowed with a supernatural power and with an un- limited knowledge of the secrets of nature ; he must be skilled in divination, sorcery, and fascination, and able to do either evil or good according to his pleasure ; his blessing will be followed by the most fortunate success, and his curse by the most dreadful consequences. When he hates some person he turns himself toward the house, strikes two sticks one upon the other, and, what- ever may be the distance, his enemy will fall sick and * Anthrop. Inst., v, 190 ; Sibree, Madagascar, p. 135 ; Ellis, Madagascar, i, 123, 423. f I'ratis. Ethnoh Soc, X. S., vii, 24. Mr. Rickmore in this paper makes some very pertinent suggestions as to the probable ethnic origin of the Ainos. THE MYTHIC INFLUENCE OF A CONQUERED RACE. 45 even die if he perseveres in that exercise for a few days. Besides, to a Malay the Jakun is a man who by his na- ture must necessarily know all the properties of every plant, and consequently must be a clever physician, and the Malay when sick will obtain his assistance, or at least get some medicinal plants from him. The Jakun is also gifted with the power of charming the wild beasts, even the most ferocious.* The second example includes the Chinese. The Malays and Chinese of Ma- lacca have implicit faith in the supernatural power of the Poyangs, and believe that many others among the aborigines are imbued with it. Hence they are careful to avoid offending them in any way, because it is be- lieved they take offense deeply to heart, and will sooner or later, by occult means, revenge themselves. The Malays resort to them for the cure of diseases. Re- venge also not infrequently sends them to the Poyangs, whose power they invoke to cause disease and other mis- fortune, or even death, to those who have injured them.f The Burmese and Siamese hold the hill tribes, the Lawas, in great dread, believing them to be man-bears. J The Budas of Abyssinia are looked upon as sorcerers and werewolves.** These examples will serve to show the influences at work for the production of superstitious beliefs arising * Journ. Ind. Arch., ii. 273-274. f Jbtd., i, 328. X Colquhoun's Amongst the Shans, p. 52 ; Bas^tian, (Estl. Asien., i, 119. » Hall's Life of Nathaniel Pearce, i, 286. 46 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. out of the hostility of races. My next point is to illus- trate this principle in connection with the Aryan race. i)o they, like the inferior races, endow with superhuman faculties the non-Aryan aborigines against whom they have fought in every land where they have become masters ? Again, we must turn to India for an answer to our question. The mountain ranges and great jungle tracts of southern India, says Mr. Walhouse, are inhabited by semi-savage tribes, avIio, there is good reason to believe, once held the fertile open plains, and were the builders of those megalithic sepulchres which abound over the cultivated country.* All these races are regarded by their Hindu masters with boundless contempt, and held unspeakably unclean. Yet there are many curious rights and privileges which the despised castes possess and te- naciously retain. Some of these in connection with the village festival, which has been examined at length, we already know. On certain days they may enter temples which at other times they must not approach ; there are several important ceremonial and social observances which they are always called upon to inaugurate or take some share in, and which, indeed, says Mr. "Wal- house, would be held incomplete and unlucky without them. But, what is more important for our immediate purpose, Mr. "Walhouse also says that " the contempt and loathing in which they are ordinarily held are curiously * Jonrn. Anthrop. Inst., iv. 371. THE MYTHIC INFLUENCE OF A CONQUERED RACE. 47 tinctured with superstitious fear, for they are believed to possess secret powers of magic and witchcraft and in- fluence with the old malignant deities of the soil who can direct good or evil fortune."* I lay stress upon this passage because in it is contained virtually the v/hole of the evidence I am seeking for. It is supported by abundant testimony, brought together with clearness and precision by Mr. Walhouse, and it is confirmed by many other authorities, whom it would be tedious to quote at length. To this day, says Colonel Dalton, the Aryans settled in Chota Nagpore and Singbhoom firmly believe that the Moondalis have powers as wizards and witches, and can transform themselves into tigers and other beasts of jjrey with a view to devouring their ene- mies, and that they can witch away the lives of man and beast. f The Hindus, Latham tells us, regard the Katodi with awe, believing that they can transform themselves into tigers. J I will finally quote the evidence from Cey- lon. " The wild ignorant savages " w ho inhabited this island when the Hindus conquered it are termed by the chroniclers demons,* and demonism in Ceylon, origi- nating with this non-Aryan aboriginal people, has grown into a cult. * Journ. Anthrop. Inst., iv, 371-372. \ Trans. EthiioJ. Soc, N. S., vi. 6 ; Journ. As. Soc. Bengal, 1866, part ii, 158. How these beliefs react on the non-Aryan races among themselves may be ascertained by referring to the Toda beliefs noted in Trans. Ethnol. Soc, N. S., vii, 247, 277, 287. X Descriptive Ethnology, ii, 457. * Journ, As. Soc. Ceylon, 1865-'66, p. 3 ; Tennent's Ceylon, i, 48 ETENOLOGY IN' FOLKLORE. It bears on the question of the relationship between conquerors and conquered which has been illustrated by this evidence to observe that Professor Eobertson Smith, from evidence apart from that I have used, has rele- gated demonism to the position of a cult hostile to and separate from the tribal beliefs of early people.* I feel quite sure that the examples I have drawn from the history of savagery, and from the history of the conflict between Chinese and Hindu civilization and savagery, have already enabled the reader to detect many points of contact between these and the history of demonism and witchcraft in the "Western world. I shall examine some of those points of contact, and then I shall turn to some more debatable matter. The demonism of savagery is parallel to the Avitch- craft of civilization in the power which votaries of the two cults profess, and are allowed by their believers to possess, over the elements, over wild beasts, and in changing their own human form into some animal form, and it will be well to give some examples of these powers from the folklore of the British Isles. (a) In Pembrokeshire there was a person, commonly known as " the cunning man of Pentregethen," who sold winds to the sailors, and who was reverenced in the 331. As to the remnants of these races, see Lassen, Indische Alter- ihumskunde, i, 199, 362. * Religion of the Semites, pp. 55, 115, 129, 145, 246. Mr. Wal- house, in Journ. Anthrop. Inst., v, 413, draws attention to the wide- spread and parallel beliefs in demons — beliefs which in India until lately, and in ancient Germany and Gaul altogether, were THE MYTHIC INFLUENCE OF A CONQUERED RACE. 49 neighborhood in which he dwelt much more than the divines ; he could ascertain the state of absent friends, and performed all the wonderful actions ascribed to conjurers.* At Stromness, in the Orkneys, so late as 1814 there lived an old beldame who sold favorable winds to mariners. She boiled her kettle, muttered her incantations, and so raised the wind.f In the Isle of Man, Higden says, the women " selle to shipmen wynde, as it were closed under three knotes of threde, so that the more wynde he wold have, the more knotes he must vndo." I x\t Kempoch Point, in the Firth of Clyde, is a columnar rock called the Kempoch Stane, from whence a saint was wont to dispense favorable winds to those who paid for them and unfavorable to those who did not put confidence in his powers ; a tradition which seems to have been carried on by the Innerkip witches, who were tried in 1G62, and some portions of which still linger among the sailors of Greenock.* These practices may be compared with the performances of the priest- esses of Sena, who, as described by Pomponius Mela, were capable of rousing up the seas and winds by incan- tations. II entirely ignored by inquirers, and he says they " belong to the Turanian races, and are antagonistic to the Arj-an genius and feelings," p. 411. Cf. Tylor, Primitive Culture, i, 102. * Howells's Cambrian Superstitions, 1831, p. 86. f Gorrie, Summers and Winters in Orkney, p. 47. I Pohjchronicon by Trevisa, i, cap. 44. * Cuthbert Bede, Glencreggan, i, 9, 44 ; c/. Sinclair's Stat. Ace. of Scot., viii, 52. II Pomj)onius Mela, iii, 8. It is curious to note that a district 60 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. (h) Tlic power of witches over animals, and their capacity to transform themselves into animal shapes, is well known, though, as civilization has gradually eradi- cated the wilder sorts of animals, we do not now hear of these in connection with witchcraft. The most usual transformations are into cats and hares, and less fre- quently into red deer, and these have taken the place of wolves. Thus, cat transformations are found in York- shire ; * hare transformations in Devonshire, Yorkshire, Wales, and Scotland ; f deer transformations in Cumber- land ; I raven transformations in Scotland ; * cattle transformations in Ireland. |1 Indeed the connection between witches and the lower animals is a very close one, and hardly anyw'here in Europe does it occur that this connection is relegated to a subordinate place. Story after story, custom after custom, is recorded as ap- pertaining to witchcraft, and animal transformation appears always. From this it may be admitted that the general char- acteristics of the superstitions brought about by the contact between the Aryan conquerors of India and the non-Aryan aborigines are also represented in the cult of European witchcraft. When W'e pass from these gen- eral characteristics to some of the details, the identity of Douglas in the Isle of Man is known as Sena. — Trans. Manx Soc, V, 65 : Rev. Celt, x, 353. * Henderson's Folklore, pp. 206, 207, 209. t Henderson, pp. 201, 202, 208; Dalyell, Darker Supersiiiwns of Scotland, p. 5G0; Folklore, ii, 291. X Henderson, p. 204. * Dalyell, p. 559. | Ibid., p. 561. THE MYTHIC INFLUENCE OF A CONQUERED KACE. 51 of the Indian with the European superstitions is more emphatically marked. Thus, in Orissa it is believed that witches have the power of leaving their bodies and go- ing about invisibly, but if the flower of the pan or betil- leaf can be obtained and placed in the right ear, it will enable the onlooker to see the witches and talk to them with impunity.* This is represented in folklore by the magic ointment, which enables people to see otherwise invisible fairies, and by the supposed property of the fern-seed, which makes people invisible, f Such a par- allel as this could only have been produced by going back to origins. Again, in the charms resorted to by the demon-priests of Ceylon we find a close parallel, which belongs to the same category. A small image, made of wax or wood, or a figure drawn upon a leaf or something else, supposed to represent the person to be injured, is submitted to the sorcerer, together with a few hairs from the head of the victim, some clippings of his finger-nails, and a thread or two from a cloth worn by him. Xails made of a composition of five dif- ferent kinds of metals, generally gold, silver, copper, tin, and lead are then driven into the image at all those points which represent the joints, the heart, the head, and other important parts of the body. The name of the intended victim being marked on the image, it is buried in the ground in some suitable place where the victim is likely * Handbook of Folklore, p. 40. f Ilartland, Science of Fairy Tales, p. 59 et seq. ; Braud, i, 315 ; cf. Griram, Teid. Myth., iii, 1210. 52 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. to pass over it. * This method of destruction by images is one of the most generally known among the practices of witchcraft in Europe. Plato alludes to it as obtain- ing among the Greeks of his period, f Boethius says a waxen image was fabricated for the destruction of one of the Scottish kings of the tenth century, and if this author is not to be taken too seriously for so early a period, his narrative is too circumstantial not to be readily accepted as a current belief at least of his own time. J The later Scottish practices contain all the ele- ments of the Ceylon practices. The image was fabri- cated of any available materials, it was baptized by the name of the victim, or characterized by certain defini- tions identifying the resemblance, the various parts were pierced with pins or needles, or the whole was wasted by heat, and pieces of the victim's hair were associated with it.* These close parallels can not be accidental, and I am tempted to add that when we come upon other parallels which almost suggest the element of accident for their production, they may, after all, be due to par- allel developments from the same originals. || * Journ. As. Soc. Ceylon, 1865-'66, p. 71 ; cf. Ward, Hist, of the Hindoos, ii, 100. f Plato, Latvs, lib. xi. J Dalyell, Darker Superstitions of Scotland, pp. 332, 333. « Dalyell, op. cit., pp. 334-851. I Such, for instance, as the revenge perpetrated upon the young wife in stopping the birth of her first child when her mar- riage was resented by a former financee of her husband : for which compare really remarkable parallels in Ceylon As. Soc. 1865-'6(5, p. 70, and Folklore Record, ii, 11(>-117. It is important to note THE MYTHIC INFLUENCE OF A CONQUERED RACE. 53 It seems to me to be as impossible to ignore the evi- dence produced by these close parallels as to acceiDt it at less than its full value. If the demonism of India is non-Aryan in origin and produced by the contact between Aryans and aborigines, the witchcraft of Europe must be equally non- Aryan in origin, and produced by the contact between Aryans and aborigines, even al- though during the ages of civilization the people who have carried on the cult have not kept up their race dis- tinction side by side with their race superstition.* Fortunately there is one singular fact preserved among the ceremonies of witchcraft in Scotland, which helps us to carry this argument a step forward toward absolute proof. In order to injure the waxen image of the intended victim, the implements used in some cases by the witches were stone arrowheads, or elf-shots, as they were called, f and their use was accompanied by an incantation. J Here we have, in the undoubted form of a prehistoric implement, the oldest untouched detail of early life which has been preserved by witchcraft, and it is such untouched oldest fragments, not their modern substitutions or additions, which must be accentuated that Grimm rejects the idea of plagiarism to account for the simi- larity in witch-doings. — Teut. Myth., iii, 1044. * This observation even may have to be modified by further re- search, for in the Anglo-Saxon laws witchcraft is generally men- tioned jis a crime peculiar to serfs. f Pitcairn, Criminal Trials, i, 192: Dalycll, Darlier Supersti- tions of Scotland, pp. 352, 353 ; cf. Nilsson's Primitire Inhabitants of Scandinavia, p. 199. X Dalyell, op. cit., p. 357. 54 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. by the student of folklore ; they clearly must be the starting-point of any explanation which may be sought for of the usages and superstitions of which they form a part. Grimm has stripped witchcraft of the accretions due to the action of the Church against heretics, and perceives " in the whole witch business a clear connec- tion with the sacrifices and spirit world of the ancient Germans," * and it seems that this definition must be enlarged to include all branches of the Aryan race. It is interesting to turn from these stone implements used in witchcraft to the beliefs about them in peasant thought. Irish peasants wear flint arrowheads about their necks set in silver as an amulet against elf-shoot- ing, f In the west of Ireland, but especially in the Arran Isles, Gal way Bay, they are looked on with great superstition. They are supposed to be fairy darts or arrows, which have been thrown by fairies, either in fights among themselves or at a mortal man or beast. The finder of one should carefully put it in a hole in a wall or ditch. It should not be brought into a house or given to any one ; but the islanders of Arran are very fond of making votive offerings of them at the holy wells on the main-land. They carry them to the differ- ent patrons and leave them there, but they do not seem to leave them at the holy wells on the island. J * Tent. 3Iyfh., iii, 1045. f Henderson, Folklore of Northern Countries, p. 185. X Folklore Record, iv, 112; c/. Vallancey, Collectanea, xiii; Nenia Britaimica, p. 154. THE MYTHIC INFLUENCE OF A CONQUERED RACE. 55 If a quotation from the Brontes' eminently local novels is to be admitted as evidence, the belief that stone arrowheads were elf-shots was prevalent in York- shire.* In Scotland, Edward Lhwyd noted in 1713 that " the most curious as well as the vulgar throughout this country are satisfied they often drop out of the air, be- ing shot by fairies," and that " they have not been used as amulets above thirty or forty years." f At Lauder and in Banffshire the peasantry called them elf -arrow- heads. J At AVick, in Caithness, the peasantry asserted that they were fairies' arrows, and that the fairies shot them at cattle, which instantly fell down dead, though the hide of the animal remained quite entire.** That this was a Lowland Scotch belief is also attested by Keightley's collection of facts. || Thus, then, in witchcraft and in peasant thought there is a common belief as to prehistoric arrowheads having belonged to beings known as elves. It proves, as Nilsson observes, that it was not the Celts themselves, but a people considered by them to be versed in magic, who fabricated and used these stone arrows.-*- These people, whoever they may prove to be, were therefore powerful enough to introduce mythic conceptions con- * Folklore Journal, i, 300. f Folklore Record, iv, 1G9; cf. Gi-egor's Folklore of Northeast of Scotland, p. 59. t Sinclair's Stat. Ace. Scot, i, 73 ; iii, 5G, « Ibid., X, 15 ; xxi, 148. \\ Fairy 3Iythology. pp. 351, 352. •^ Primitive Inhabitants of Scandinavia, p. 200. 5 56 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. cerning themselves into the minds of their conquerors, and some authorities of eminence have not hesitated to urge that they have even left traditions of their exist- ence in a more historical shape.* " Who," asks Mr. Campbell, " were these powers of evil who can not resist iron — these fairies who shoot stone arrows, and are of the foes to the human race ? Is all this but a dim, hazy recollection of war between a people who had iron weapons and a race who had not — a race whose remains are found all over Europe ? " f We are here met by two opposing theories — one whose upholders look back upon the fairy traditions as evidence of so much actual history, the other as evi- dence only of the spirit beliefs of past ages. But if the close inter-relationship between fairy-be- liefs and witch-beliefs be steadily kept in mind, these opposing theories may, I think, be brought into some- thing like unison. Mr. Hartland has proved this close inter-relationship by a lengthy investigation, t and it * Skene, in the first volume of his Celtic Scotland, and Elton, in his Origins of English History, cap. vii, are the most available authorities on this subject, t Tales of the West Highlands, p. Ixxvi; Nilsson. in Primitive Inhabitants of Scandinavia (p. 247 et seq.), and MacRitchie, in his Testimony of Tradition, have followed this line of argument. X Science of Fairy Tales, passim. Grimm's observation that the witches' devils have proper names so strikingly similar in formation to those of elves and kobolds that one can scarcely think otherwise than that nearly all devils' names of that cla^sare dcscentled from other folk-names for those sprites— Tew;'. Myth., iii, 1063— strikingly confirms the explanation I have ventured upon as to the connection between witchcraft and fairycraft. THE MYTHIC INFLUENCE OF A CONQUERED RACE. 57 must henceforth be the basis of research into these de- partments of folklore. We commence the task of certifying to the unison of these two theories with the fact of the personal ele- ment in witchcraft — the attribution of magical powers, derived from the spirit of evil, to certain definite classes of people, the acceptance of this attribution by the peo- ple concerned, and their claim to have become acquainted with their supposed powers by initiation. I am inclined to lay great stress upon the act of initiation. It empha- sizes the idea of a caste distinct from the general pop- ulace, and it postulates the existence of this caste anterior to the time when those who practice their supposed powers first come into notice. Carrying back this act of initiation age after age, as the dismal records of witchcraft enable us to do for some centuries, it is clear that the people from time to time thus introduced into the witch caste carried on the practices and assumed the functions of the caste even though they came to it as novices and strangers. We thus arrive at an artificial means of descent of a particular group of superstitions, and it might be termed initiatory descent. But descent by initiation was not invented without some good and sufficient cause, and this cause will be found, I think, in the failure of blood-descent. In the primitive Aryan family failure of blood-descent led to the legal fiction of adoption, and the history of caste al- most everywhere shows the same phenomenon. I do not wish to ask too much from this argument before it 58 ETHNOLOGY IN FOLKLORE. is substantiated by evidence, but that we may take it as a sound working hypothesis is confirmed by the fact that it supjilies the missing link in a most important series of developments clearly marked in the history of witch- craft and its connection with fairycraft. The only people occupying the lands of modern Euroj^ean civilization who have not succeeded in mark- ing their descendants with the stamp of their race origin are the non- Aryans. Celt, Teuton, Scandinavian, and Slav are still to be found in centers definable on the map of Europe, but except in the Basque Pyrenees the forerunners of the Aryan peoples have become ab- sorbed by their conquerors. Blood-descent was of no avail to them for the keeping alive of their old faiths and beliefs. That they resorted to initiation as a remedy is the suggestion I wish to make, and that in witchcraft there has been preserved some of the non- Aryan faiths and beliefs is the conclusion I wish to draw — a conclu- sion which is met more than half-way by the close parallel which, as we have already partly seen, exists be- tween the beliefs and practices of witches and non- Aryan beliefs. I think it is more than probable that the ancient cult of Druidism will prove to be a factor in the race history of witchcraft. At the time when all traces of Druidism, as such, had completely died out in Britain, some of the practices attributed to witches were exact reproductions of the practices attributed to Druids by the earlier writers. One of the most significant, as it is THE MYTHIC INFLUENCE OF A CONQUERED RACE. 59 one of the most painful, of these practices has for its basis the belief that the life of one man could only be redeemed by that of another. The evidence for the Druidical side of this parallel is given by Ceesar and other authorities. The evidence for it in witchcraft is given in some of the seventeenth-century trials, where all the details of the horrid rites are related with mi- nute accuracy.* I shall have occasion to refer to these details at some length later on, but I note here that they supply us not only with evidence of the continuity in witchcraft of a particular Druid ic belief, but also of the continuity of the methods of adapting this belief to practice — namely, through the interposition of a trained adept, in fact the jiriestess of a cult ; for in this instance, at all events, the Scottish witch is the successor of the Druid priestess. She is so in other characteristics already noted — in her capacity for trans- formation into animal form, in her power over winds and waves, both being common to witch and Druidess alike. It is no answer to the argument that Druidism was continued by witchcraft to point to the apparent chrono- logical gap between the decline of one and the earliest historical mention of the other. f That Druidism con- * Cf. Forbes Leslie, Early Faces of Scotland, i, 83 ; Dalyell, Darker Superstitions of Scotland, p. 176. f Grimm says that the earlier middle ages had known of magicians and witches only in the milder senses, as legendary elv- ish beings peopling the domain of ^Tilgar belief, or even as demo- niacs. — Teut. Myth., iii, 1067. 60 ETHNOLOGY L\ FOLKLORE. tinued to exist long after it was officially dead, can be proved. The character of much of the paganism of the early Scots and Picts has been accepted as Druidic by Mr. Skene. The histories of the labors of St. Pat- rick and St. Columba abound in references to the Druids. " The Druids of Laogaire," says an ancient poem, "concealed not from him the coming of Pat- rick." * Columba competes with the Druids in his supernatural powers on behalf of Christianity, f Druid- ism thus came into contact with Christianity. Mr. Skene and Mr. O'Curry, however, are inclined to think that at this time it was not the Druidism of Caesar and Pliny — " it was," says the former writer, " a sort of fetichism, which peopled all the objects of nature with malignant beings to whose agency its phenomena were attributed." J Mr. O'Curry gives some of the vast num- ber of allusions to the Druids in Irish MSS., which contain instances of contests in Druidical spells, of clouds raised by incantations of Druidesses, of the in- terpretation of dreams, of the raising of tempests, of the use of a yew wand instead of oak or mistletoe, of auguries drawn from birds, and other peculiar rites and beliefs ; but he distinctly repudiates the idea that Irish Druidism, as made known by the MSS., was like the classical Druidism in its adoption of human sacrifice, * Stokes's Gaedelica, p. 131. \ Skene. Celtic Scotland, ii, 115-117, gives the principal evi- dence under this head. Cf. Elton, Origins of English History, pp. 273-274 I Skene, Celtic Scotland, ii, 118. THE MYTHIC IXFLUEXCE OF A CONQUERED RACE. 61 or in its priests being servants of any sjsecial positive worship.* It is difficult to contest opinions like these, but they do not appear to be borne out by the facts. For in- stance, on the question of human sacrifice the Book of BaUymote tells us how one of the kings brought fifty hostages from Munster, and, dying before he reached his palace, the hostages were buried alive around the grave.f The evidence of Scottish witchcraft, already quoted, is clear as to the sacrifice of one human being for an- other in case of sickness ; and Mr. Elton says that the Welsh and Irish traditions contain many traces of the custom of human sacrifice. " Some of the penalties of the, ancient laws," he says, "seemed to have originated in an age when the criminal was offered to the gods ; the thief and the seducer of women were burned on a pile of logs or cast into a fiery furnace ; the maiden who forgot her duty was burned, or drowned, or sent adrift to sea." J To these examples must be added the well-known story of Vortigern, who, on the recommenda- tion of the British Druids, sought for a victim to sacri- * O'Curry, Manners and Cnstoms of the Irish, ii, 222-228, f O'Curry, p. eccxx ; cf. Elton, Origins of English History, p. 272. X Origins of English History, p. 271. Rhys, Celtic Heathen- dom, p. 224, says : " Irish Druidisrn absorbed a certain amount of Christianity, and it would be a problem of considerable difficulty to fix on the point where it ceased to be Druidisrn, and from which onward it could be said to be Christianity in any restricted sense of that term." 62 ETHNOLOGY IX FOLKLORE. fice at the foundation of his castle ; * the parallel sacri- fice of St. Oran in lona by Columba ; f and the sacrifice of the first-born of children and flocks, in order to secure power and peace in all their tribes and to obtain milk and corn for the support of their families.J These facts are perhaps sufficient to show that the evidence for the continuity of Druidism, whatever Druidism may have been, meets the other evidence as to the presence in witchcraft of Druid beliefs and prac- tices sufficiently nearly in point of time for it to be a reasonable argument to affirm that witchcraft is the lineal successor of Druidism. The one point necessary, then, to complete the argument I have advanced is, that Druidism must be identified as a non-Aryan cult. I am aware that this point still awaits much investigation by Celtic philologists and historians, but in the mean time I am content to claim that considerable weight must be given to Professor Ehys's twice-repeated affir- mation that his researches go to prove Druidism to be of non- Aryan origin,* especially as his researches lie in quite a different direction to my own. * Irish Nennius, cap. 40. O'Curry mentions this as evidence for the differentiation of Irish and British Druidism. — Manners and Customs, ii, 222. f Stokes's Three Middle Irish Homilies, p. 119; Rev. Celt., ii, 200 ; Stat. Ace. of Scotland, vii, 321 ; Pennant's Tour, \i, 298. X Boole of Leinster, quoted by Rhys, Hibbert Lectures, p. 201. *Rhys, Celtic Britain, pp. 67-75 ; Lectures on Welsh Philology, p. 32 ; compare Celtic Ueathendom, p. 216 et seq. ; I have dealt •with the institutional side of Druidism in its non- Aryan origin in my Village Community, p. 104 et seq. THE MYTHIC INFLUENCE OF A CONQUEKED RACE. 63 Whether, therefore, we rest our argument ui)on the parallels to be found between witch practices and beliefs and non- Aryan practices and beliefs, or upon the hy- pothesis that the initiation necessary to the performance of witchcraft is in reality the method of continuing Druidic beliefs and practices when the possibilities of continuing them by race descent had died out, there is proof enough that in witchcraft is contained the survival of non-Aryan practices and beliefs — practices and be- liefs, that is, which the non- Aryan peoples possessed con- cerning themselves and their own powers. We next have to meet the question as to the race origin of fairy beliefs, in so far as they are parallel to witch beliefs. If witchcraft represents ancient aborigi- nal belief in direct descent by the channels just ex- amined, what part of the same aboriginal belief does fairycraft represent, and how is its separation from witchcraft to be accounted for ? The theory that fairies are the traditional represent- atives of an ancient pygmy race has met with consider- able support from folklorists. It is needless to repeat all the arguments in support of this theory which have been advanced during the past twenty years, because they are contained in works easily accessible and well knowTi. But it is important to note that these beliefs must have originated not with the aboriginal pygmy race themselves, but with the conquering race who over- powered them and drove them to the hills and out-parts of the land. The influence of the despised, out-driven 64 ETHNOLOGY L\ FOLKLORE. aborigines did not cease after th