Both the observations of the foreign historians and travellers and the recorded traditions from native sources have been treated with scant courtesy whenever they cannot be explained according to the views of each particular inquirer into the period to which they refer. They have been alternatively the subject of dispute or neglect by students for a long series of years. They consist of items which do not fit in with Celtic or Teutonic institutions as we know them from other and more detailed sources. They offend against the national pride because they tell of a condition of savagery. They do not appeal to the historian, because the historian knows little and cares nothing at all about the condition of savagery. If, therefore, they are not rejected as true history, they are purposely neglected. They are in any event never taken into consideration by the right method, and they stand over for examination by any one who will take the trouble to deal with them by the light and test of modern research.

It is not my purpose to deal with these matters now, but it is advisable that we should try to understand two things—first, how they have been dealt with by the historian; secondly, their true place in history.

The Greek and Latin authors who have stated of peoples living in Britain many characteristics which do not belong to civilisation or even to the borders of civilisation, range from Pytheas the Greek in the middle of the fourth century before our era down to the Latin poets of the early fifth century anno Domini. They all refer to the British savage. He is cannibalistic, incestuous, naked, possesses his wives in common, lives on wild fruits and not cultivated cereals, indulges in head-hunting, has no settled living-place which can be called a house, and generally betrays the characteristics of pure savagery.[162] Altogether there is a fairly substantial range of material for the formation of a reasonable conception of the condition of savagery in Britain.



We need not dwell long upon the earlier of our historians who have neglected or contested the statements of the authorities they use. They hardly possessed the material for scientific treatment, and personal predilections were the governing factors of any opinion which is expressed. John Milton, in his brave attempt to tell the story of early England, does not so much as allude to these disagreeable points. Hume disdainfully passes by the whole subject and practically begins with the Norman conquest. Lappenberg says of the group marriage of the Britons that it "is probably a mere Roman fable."[163] Innes accepts the views of the classical authorities and argues from them in his own peculiar way,[164] but Sullivan will have it that the materials afforded from classical sources are worthless: "they consist of mere hearsay reports without any sure foundation, and in many cases not in harmony with the results of modern linguistic and archaeological investigations."[165] Neither Turner nor Palgrave has any doubt as to the authority of these early accounts,[166] and Dr. Giles accepts the accounts which he so usefully collected from the original authorities.[167]

The modern historian cannot, however, be so incidentally treated. He lives in the age of the comparative sciences and of anthropological research. He sometimes uses, though in a half-hearted and incomplete fashion, the results of inquirers in these fields of research, but he nowhere deals with the problem fully. His sins are not general, but special. He agrees with one statement of his original authority and disagrees with another, and we are left with a chaos of opinion founded upon no accepted principle. If the earlier historians accepted or rejected historical records without much reason for either course, the later historians have no right to follow them. The terms "savage" and "barbarian," indulged in by the Greek and Roman writers, cannot be rejected by modern authorities simply because they are too harsh. They cannot be considered merely in the nature of accusations against the standing and position of our ancestors, made by advocates anxious to blacken the national character. Even scholars like Mr. Skene, Mr. Elton, and Sir John Rhys, though inclined to weigh these passages by the light of ethnographic research, throw something like doubt upon the exact extent to which they may be taken as evidence. Mr. Elton, though admitting that the early "romances of travel" afford some evidence as to the habits of our barbarian ancestors, cannot quite get as far in his belief as to think that the account of "the Irish tribes who thought it right to devour their parents" is much more than a traveller's tale.[168] Sir John Rhys is not quite sure that the account by Caesar of the communal marriages of the British is "not a passage from some Greek book of imaginary travels among imaginary barbarians which Caesar had in his mind,"[169] though he notes elsewhere that "the vocabulary of the Celts will be searched in vain for a word for son or daughter as distinguished from boy or girl" as a fact of no little negative importance in relation to Caesar's "ugly account;"[170] and he has similar doubts to express, noteworthy among them being the passage from Pliny which illustrates the Godiva story.[171] Mr. Skene lays stress upon the fact that Tacitus "neither alludes to the practice of their staining their bodies with woad nor to the supposed community of women among them;" and he offers some kind of excuse for the Roman evidence as to the tattooing with representations of animals,[172] evidence which Sir John Rhys, too, is chary of accepting in its full sense. Mr. Pearson reluctantly accepts Caesar's account of the group marriage and the human sacrifice of the Druids, but he ignores all else, including the attested cannibalism of the Atticotti, though he mentions that tribe in another connection.[173] Sir James Ramsay agrees that the Britons tattooed their bodies with woad, recognises the fact that their matrimonial customs were polyandric, and that brother-and-sister marriage obtained, and generally accepts the prevalent ideas as to Celtic Druidism with its sacrificial rites and the system of "state worship." He rests his views for much of this upon the anthropological evidence in support of it.[174] Mr. Lang on behalf of Scotland, and Dr. Joyce on behalf of Ireland, have their say on the evidence. Mr. Lang seems to accept Caesar's evidence "if correctly reported," throws doubts upon the ethnological value of such customs, and declares roundly that to found theories upon such evidence as archaeology provides "is the province of another science, not of history."[175] Dr. Joyce says that in early Greek and Roman writers there is not much reliable information about Ireland, though he believes them when they talk of students from Britain residing in Ireland and of books existing in Ireland in the fourth century.[176]

This meagre result from the historians seems to me to be most unfortunate. Even when the testimony of early writers is accepted, it is accepted without the necessary filling in which such an acceptance warrants. Bare acceptance does not tell us much. Each recorded fact has a relationship to surrounding facts, should lead us to associated facts which, escaping observation by early writers, can nevertheless be restored. In history they are isolated and unconnected, because of the faults of the historian who records them. Anthropologically they belong to a wider grouping, reveal a connection with each other which is otherwise unsuspected, and prepare themselves for treatment on a larger platform. The historian has used them for the unprofitable controversy ranging round the question of early Celtic civilisation, whereas they clearly belong to the history of early man, and even the folklorist does not disdain to cast them on one side when they do not suit his purpose.[177]

It is still more unfortunate that Sir Henry Maine should have sought to enhance the value of his Indian evidence by contrasting it with what he calls "the slippery testimony concerning savages which is gathered from travellers' tales,"[178] and that Mr. Herbert Spencer should have replied to this in an angry note, declaring that he was aware "that in the eyes of most, antiquity gives sacredness to testimony, and that so what were travellers' tales when they were written in Roman days have come in our days to be regarded as of higher authority than like tales written by recent or living travellers."[179] The scorn passed upon "travellers' tales," the application of the term "romance" to the early descriptions of voyages, have done the same amount of mischief to these early chapters of history as the constant disbelief in the value of tradition has done to the testimony of folklore.

Now I do not recall these controversies, or lay stress upon what appear to me to be the shortcomings of the historian and folklorist in their relationship to each other, for the purpose of reawakening old antagonisms. I have merely selected a few illustrations of the present position of the subject in order that it may be seen how essential it is to proceed on other lines. All the items which have formed the subject of dispute, together with others which have escaped attention—items which have found their way into history by accident, which are by nature fragmentary and isolated, which do not connect up with anything that is distinctively Celtic or Teutonic, and which do not apparently fit in with any standard common to themselves—must command attention if only because they alone cannot be cut out of history when items standing side by side with them are allowed to remain, and in the end it can, I think, be shown that they command attention because of their inherent value.

The method of investigation as to the importance and significance of these earliest historical records must be anthropological. They are in point of fact so much anthropological data relating to Britain. It is no use calling them history, and then defining that history as bad history simply because as history the recorded facts do not appear to be credible. As a matter of fact they belong to the prehistory period of Britain, and to test their value scientific methods are required.

In the first place, anthropology shows that there is no prima facie necessity for calling them Celtic, thus identifying them with that portion of our ancestry which is Celtic in race; for there is evidence of a non-Celtic race existing in prehistoric times, and existing down to within historic times, if not to modern times. Mr. Willis Bund has recently summarised the evidence from archaeology, philology, and tradition as it appears in a particularly valuable local study of ancient Cardiganshire, stating it "to be agreed that there was more than one race of early inhabitants, and two of the sources say that there was an original race and at least two distinct races of invaders," and further, "that whoever the original inhabitants were they were not Celts."[180] These original inhabitants, who were not Celts, have left their remains in the barrows and megalithic monuments which still exist in various parts of the country, and anthropologists show that they have not entirely disappeared from among the race distinctions observable among the people of these islands. If it is possible to proceed from this to another stage, and to show from the British evidence what Mr. Risley has so well illustrated from the Indian evidence, namely, that gradations of race types as shown by anthropometrical indices correspond with gradations of social precedence and social organisation,[181] it may yet be possible to prove that the people who were not Celts were the people with whom originated those recorded customs and beliefs which are rejected as too savage for the Celt. Unfortunately, we know nothing about them, except the isolated scraps which are to be picked up from the early historians. This compels us to turn to other sources of information, and when we do this we find that British folklore preserves in traditional custom, rite, belief, and folk-tale, parallels to each and every item of savagery mentioned by the early historians of Britain; and further, that anthropology shows clearly enough that among the customs and beliefs of primitive races there are to be found parallels to every item of custom and belief recorded of early Britain. This gets rid of one of our greatest difficulties, and disposes of Dr. Sullivan's unwarranted assertion to the contrary (ante, p. 113). The recorded customs and beliefs of early Britain are proved by this means not to be impossible or improbable factors in the elements of the British prehistoric race. It will not be possible to term them inventions of romance or of false testimony, simply on the ground that they are not found elsewhere. On the contrary it will, I think, be difficult to resist the conclusion that inventions such as these, covering a wide and ascertained area of sociological and early religious development, could hardly have been made by historians having the limited range of knowledge possessed by the native and classical writers who are responsible for the facts. It is an easy, but not a satisfactory method of criticism to declare what is not to one's liking to be invention and romance, and it has until late years been difficult to combat such an argument. The battle has raged round wordy disputes, the merits of which are governed by the abilities of the respective disputants; that this is no longer possible is due to the fact that there have entered into the fray the methods and results of folklore which prevent the terms invention and romance from being applied, except where there is good independent reason for their use.

* * * * *

I have now dealt with all the points which appear to be necessary in order to show the inherent relationship of folklore to history, and I have shown causes for resisting the claims of mythology to appropriate what it chooses of folklore, and then to reject all the rest from consideration. I have dealt (1) with examples of local traditions and hero-traditions, in their relation to history and historical conditions; (2) with the folk-tale in its retention of details of early historic conditions, and of the picture of early tribal organisation, and in that its structure is based upon the events of savage social conceptions; (3) with the early laws and rules of tribal society preserved by tradition and accepted in historical times; (4) with the claims of mythology to interpret the meaning of folk-tales, and the reasons for rejecting this claim; and (5) with the treatment by historians of statements by classical writers as to the condition of the peoples inhabiting Britain before the dawn of civilisation. I think it will be admitted that, without pretending in any way to have exhausted the evidence, or even to have thoroughly comprehended and satisfactorily stated it under each of these heads, a very considerable claim has been made out for the historical value of folklore. If so much has been gained it will rest with folklorists to pursue investigations on these lines, and it will remain with the historian to consider the results wherever his research leads him into domains where the evidence of folklore is obtainable.

It will be seen that the problems which the two sciences, history and folklore, have to solve in conjunction are not a few and that they are extremely complex. They cannot be solved if history and folklore are separated; they may be solved if the professors in each work together, both recognising what there is of value in the other. History in its earliest stages is either entirely dependent upon foreign authorities, or it has to follow the practice of the earlier and unscientific historian and to deny that there is any history, or at all events any history worth recording, before the advent, perhaps the accidental advent, of an historian on native ground. History in its later stages is dependent upon the personal tastes or ability of each historian for the record of events and facts. Folklore in its earliest stages has brought down from the most ancient times memories of ancient polity, faith, custom, rite, and thought. In its later stages it has preserved custom, rite, and belief amid the attacks of the progressive civilisation which has been developed, and it has clothed heroes of later times with the well-worn trappings of those of old. Combined history and folklore can restore much of the picture of early times, and can work through the fulness of later times with some degree of success. There is needed for this work, however, a clear conception of the position properly held by both sciences, together with established rules of research. This is more particularly needed in the department of folklore. I do not pretend to be able to formulate these rules. In the subjects dealt with in this chapter I have indicated a few of the points which must be raised, and my object will be in the remaining chapters to set forth some of the conditions which it appears to me necessary to consider in connection with the problems with which folklore is concerned as one of the historical sciences.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Mr. Kemble gives an important illustration of this proposition in his Saxons in England, i. 331.

[2] I would refer the reader to Prof. York Powell's brilliant lecture on "A Survey of Modern History," printed in his biography by Mr. Oliver Elton, ii. 1-13, for an admirable summary of this view.

[3] View of the State of Ireland, 1595, p. 478.

[4] Asser's Life of Alfred, by W. H. Stevenson, 262.

[5] It is not worth while unduly emphasising this point, but the peculiar habit of classing fictional literature as folklore and thereupon condemning the value of tradition is very prevalent. Mr. Nutt, in dealing with the Troy stories in British history, adopts this method, and denies the existence of historic tradition on the strength of it, Folklore, xii. 336-9.

[6] This expression was recently allowed in our old friend Notes and Queries in a singularly unsuitable case, 10th ser. vii. 344.

[7] I am not sure this is always the fault of those who are not folklorists. I recently came across a dictum of one of the most distinguished folklorists, Mr. Andrew Lang, which is certainly much in the same direction. "As a rule tradition is the noxious ivy that creeps about historical truth, and needs to be stripped off with a ruthless hand. Tradition is a collection of venerable and romantic blunders. But a tradition which clings to a permanent object in the landscape, a tall stone, a grassy, artificial tumulus, or even an old tree, may be unexpectedly correct."—Morning Post, 2 November, 1906.

[8] It is worth while referring to Mr. MacRitchie's article in Trans. International Folklore Congress on the historical aspect of Folklore; but Professor York Powell has said the strongest word in its favour in his all too short address as President of the Folklore Society, see Folklore, xv. 12-23.

[9] Chapter xi. of Tylor's Early History of Mankind.

[10] Spenser, View of the State of Ireland, 1595 (Morley reprint), 77.

[11] Perhaps the most remarkable testimony to the foundation of the folk-tale and ballad in the events of history is to be found in a statement made to the Tribune, 14 September, 1906, by Mr. Mitra, once proprietor and editor of the Deccan Post, with regard to the agitation against the partition of Bengal into two provinces. Mr. Mitra deliberately states that "the best test of finding out Hindu feeling towards the British Government is to see whether there are any ballads or nursery rhymes in the Bengali language against the British. You can have it from me, and I challenge contradiction, that there is no single ballad or nursery rhyme in the Bengali language which is against the British." This is where the soul of the people speaks out.

[12] It is printed, and I have used this print, in Blomefield's History of Norfolk (1769), iii. 506, from which source I quote the facts concerning it. Sir William Dugdale's account goes on to connect it with a monument in the church, but this part of the local version is to be considered presently.

[13] See the Diary printed by the Surtees Society, p. 220.

[14] The legend was also printed in that popular folk-book, New Help to Discourse, so often printed between 1619 and 1656, and Mr. Axon transcribed this version for the Antiquary, xi. 167-168; and see my notes in Gent. Mag. Lib. English Traditions, 332-336.

[15] I happen to possess the original cutting of this version preserved among my great-grandfather's papers.

[16] These words are, "I am not a Bigot in Dreams, yet I cannot help acknowledging the Relation of the above made a strong Impression on me."

[17] Leeds Mercury, January 3rd, 1885, communicated by Mr. Wm. Grainge of Harrogate.

[18] Mr. Axon says it is current in Lancashire and in Cornwall, Antiquary, xi. 168; Sir John Rhys gives two Welsh versions in his Celtic Folklore, ii. 458-462, 464-466; a Yorkshire version in ballad form is to be found in Castillo's Poems in the North Yorkshire Dialect (1878), under the title of "T' Lealholm Chap's lucky dreeam," Antiquary, xii. 121; an Ayrshire variant relates to the building of Dundonald Castle, and is given in Chambers's Pop. Rhymes of Scotland, 236.

[19] Blomefield, Hist. of Norfolk, iii. 507, suggests that the animal carving represents a bear. There is nothing to confirm this and readers may judge for themselves by reference to the illustrations, which are from photographs taken in Swaffham Church.

[20] I discussed the details in the Antiquary, vol. x. pp. 202-205.

[21] This story was communicated by "W.F." to the St. James's Gazette, March 15th, 1888. Its continuation, in order to point a moral, does not belong to the real story, which is contained in the part I have quoted.

[22] Saga Library, Heimskringla, iii. 126.

[23] These have been collected and commented upon with his usual learning and research, by Mr. Hartland in the Antiquary, xv. 45-48. Blomefield, in his History of Norfolk, iii. 507, points out that the same story is found in Johannes Fungerus' Etymologicon Latino-Graecum, pp. 1110-1111, though it is here narrated of a man at Dort in Holland, and in Histoires admirables de nostre temps, par Simon Goulart, Geneva, 1614, iii. p. 366. Professor Cowell, in the third volume of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society Transactions, p. 320, has printed a remarkable parallel of the story which is to be found in the great Persian metaphysical and religious poem called the Masnavi, written by Jalaluddin, who died about 1260. J. Grimm discussed these treasure-on-the-bridge stories in Kleinere Schriften, iii. 414-428, and did not attach much value to them.

[24] It is not unimportant in this connection to find that London itself assumes an exceptional place in tradition. Mr. Frazer notes a German legend about London, Golden Bough (2nd ed.), iii. 235; Pausanias, v. 292. Mr. Dale has drawn attention to the Anglo-Saxon attitude towards Roman buildings in his National Life in Early English Literature, 35.

[25] See Archaeologia, xxv. 600; xxix. 147; xl. 54; Arch. Journ., i. 112.

[26] I have worked this point out in my Governance of London.

[27] Bishop Kennett, quoted in Notes and Queries, fourth series, ix. 258.

[28] Mommsen's account of the Pontifex Maximus should be consulted, Hist. Rome, i. 178; and cf. Fowler, Roman Festivals, 114, 147, 214.

[29] Mrs. Gomme, Traditional Games, i. 347.

[30] Bingley, North Wales, 1814, p. 252.

[31] See my Folklore Relics of Early Village Life, 29; Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 97. This case was reported in the newspapers at the time of its occurrence. It came to England from the London and China Telegraph, from which the Newcastle Chronicle, 9 February, 1889, copied the following statement:—

"The boatmen on the Ganges, near Rajmenal, somehow came to believe that the Government required a hundred thousand human heads as the foundation for a great bridge, and that the Government officers were going about the river in search of heads. A hunting party, consisting of four Europeans, happening to pass in a boat, were set upon by the one hundred and twenty boatmen, with the cry 'Gulla Katta,' or cut-throats, and only escaped with their lives after the greatest difficulty."

[32] I have worked out this fact in my Governance of London, 46-68, 202-229.

[33] See Turner, Hist. of Anglo-Saxons, ii. 207-222; Y Cymmrodor, xi. 61-101.

[34] A passage in William of Malmesbury points to the fact of the Bretons in the time of Athelstan looking upon themselves as exiles from the land of their fathers. Radhod, a prefect of the church at Avranches, writes to King Athelstan as "Rex gloriose exultator ecclesiae ... deprecamur atque humiliter invocamus qui in exulatu et captivitate nostris meritis et peccatis, in Francia commoramur" etc., De Gestis Regum Anglorum (Rolls Ed.), i. 154.

[35] Rhys, Celtic Folklore, ii. 466. Sir John Rhys acknowledges his indebtedness to me for lending him my Swaffham notes, but at that time I had not formed the views stated above and Sir John Rhys confessed his difficulty in classifying and characterising these stories (p. 456).

[36] In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, anno 418, and in Ethelward's Chronicle, A.D. 418, it is recorded that "those of the Roman race who were left in Britain bury their treasures in pits, thinking that hereafter they might have better fortune, which never was the case."

[37] Buried treasure legends are worth examining carefully, especially with reference to their geographical distribution, with a view of ascertaining how far they follow the direction of the Roman, English, Danish and Norman Conquests. See Henderson, Folklore of Northern Counties, 320, for Yorkshire examples, and Folklore Record, i. 16, for an interesting Sussex example.

The Danish part of Lincoln, near Sleaford, has numerous treasure legends, see Rev. G. Oliver, Existing Remains of Ancient Britons between Lincoln and Sleaford, pp. 29 et seq.

Mr. W. J. Andrew has proved in the British Numismatic Journal (1st ser. i. 9-59) that traditions of buried treasure may be verified a thousand years after the laying down of the hoard. This has reference to the famous Cuerdale find of coins. The people of Walton-le-Dale, on the Ribble, had a legend that if you stood on a certain headland and looked up the valley to Ribchester "you would gaze over the greatest treasure that England had ever seen." The farmers tried excavations, and the divining rod is said to have been used.

The tradition was true. In May, 1840, the hoard was accidentally found, near Cuerdale Hall, within forty yards of the stream, by men who were repairing the southern bank. A willow tree, still in its prime, was planted to mark the spot. We do not know how much bullion was scattered by the finders, but there was recovered a mass of ingots, armlets, chains, rings, and so on, amounting to 1000 oz., with over 7000 silver coins. They lay in a crumbling leaden case, within a decomposed chest of wood. There were about 1060 English silver coins, whereof 919 were of the reign of King Alfred. There were 2020 from Northumbrian ecclesiastical mints, and 2534 of King Canute, with 1047 foreign coins, mainly French. The treasure had belonged to the Scandinavian invaders in the host of the Danish Kings of Northumbria, and very many bore the mark of York, the Danish capital. The chest was the treasure-chest of the Danes. The money had been seized in England, 890-897; on French coasts, 897-910; and collected among the Danes of Northumbria about 911. In that year, we know, the Danes raided Mercia, and were followed by the English King and thoroughly defeated. Their treasurer, Osberth, was killed, and it is argued that the Danes fell back by the Roman road, and were trying to cross into Northumbria by the ford at Cuerdale, but that, the ford being dangerous, they were obliged to bury their treasure-chest forty yards on the southern bank of the river. They were unable to cross, were cooped up in a bend of the stream, and were all put to the sword. Mr. Lang discussed this from the folklore point of view in the Morning Post, 2nd November, 1906, and concludes that "granting that none who knew the site of the deposit escaped, the theory marches well, and quite accounts for the presence of the hoard where it was found. The Danish rearguard defending the line of the Darwen would know that their treasure was hurried forward and probably concealed, but would not know the exact spot."

Another good example is recorded in the Antiquary, xiv. 228. Further Henderson notes that the Borderers of England and Scotland entrusted their buried treasure to the brownie (Folklore of Northern Counties, 248). This is exactly the same idea which exists throughout India. "Hidden treasures are under the special guardianship of supernatural beings. The Singhalese, however, divide the charge between demons and cobra capellas. Various charms are resorted to by those who wish to gain the treasures. A puja is sufficient with the cobras, but the demons require a sacrifice. Blood of a human being is the most important, but the Kappowas have hitherto confined themselves to a sacrifice of a white cock, combining its blood with their own, drawn by a slight puncture in the hand or foot. A Tamil, however, has resorted to human sacrifice as instanced by a case reported in the Ceylon Times."—Indian Antiquary, 1873. ii. p. 125.

[38] Morris, Heimskringla, ii. 13.

[39] Laing's Heimskringla, ii. 260.

[40] Rhys, The Arthurian Legend, 7. Squire, in his recent Mythology of the British Islands, states the case for "the mythological coming of Arthur" in cap. xxi. of his book.

[41] As, for instance, in the case of Taliesin and Ossian, see Squire, Mythology of the British Islands, 318; Rhys, Celtic Mythology, 551; Nutt's Notes to Mabinogion.

I suppose the most ancient example of the duplication process is that of Dion Cassius (iii. 5), who suggests an earlier Romulus and Remus in order to account for the early occupation of the Palatine Hill at Rome. Middleton's Anc. Rome, 45.

[42] It is interesting to find that, with independent investigation, Mr. Bury explains on the lines I adopt the traditional part of the life of St. Patrick. See his Life of St. Patrick, p. 111.

[43] Freeman, Hist. Norm. Conq., iv. 467.

[44] Wright, Essays, i. 244, notes this point; see also Freeman, Hist. Norm. Conq., iv. 828, and the preface to my edition of Macfarlane's Camp of Refuge (Historical Novels Series), where I have discussed this subject at length.

[45] Journ. Anthrop. Inst., iii. 52.

[46] Russell, Kett's Rebellion, p. 6.

[47] Kemble's Horae Ferales, 108.

[48] Perhaps the most interesting example in a minor way comes from Shrewsbury. In the Abbey Church, forming part of a font, is the upper stone of a cross (supposed to have been the Weeping Cross) which was discovered at St. Giles's churchyard. It had been immemorially fixed in the ditch bank, and all traces of its origin were quite lost, except that an old lady, who was born in 1724, remembered having seen in her youth, persons kneeling before this stone and praying. The transmission of the tradition through very nearly three centuries proved correct, for on its being loosened by the frosts of a severe winter, it fell, and its religious distinction became immediately apparent from the sculpture with which it was adorned.—Eddowes' Shrewsbury Journal, 5th October, 1889.

[49] Gent. Mag. Lib. Popular Superstitions, 121. The importance of this tradition may be tested by reference to my book on the Governance of London, 96-98.

[50] Archaeologia, xxvi. 369-370. One could give many additional examples from all parts of the country, and undoubtedly they are worth collecting. I cannot refrain from quoting the following, as it is from an out-of-the-way source. At Seagry, in Wilts, is an ancient farm, one field of which was known as "Peter's Orchard." The author of a local history records the following: "It has been handed down from generation to generation that in a field on this farm a church was built on the site of an ancient heathen burial ground. In order to test the accuracy of this tradition, in the autumn of 1882 I had excavations made on the spot, which I will now describe. The field contains about ten acres, and presents a very singular appearance. In removing the sods, about two feet from the surface we discovered extensive stone foundations, extending for a considerable distance over the field. From the charred appearance of the stones they had evidently suffered from fire, thus supporting the tradition of some of the oldest inhabitants that the ancient church had been destroyed by fire. On continuing the search we found, about two feet below these foundations, a quantity of early British pottery, the remains of broken urns, some charred bones, and heads of small spears. The following is an extract from a letter which I have received from a gentleman, whose family have been connected with this parish for over two hundred years, and who has given me great assistance. He says: My father was born at Startley in 1784, and remained there until about 1840. Both he and my grandfather were deeply imbued with old folklore. I well remember them constantly speaking of the firm belief handed down to them of the heathen burial places at Seagry, and of the supposed ruins of a church and some religious house at Seagry. I think the discoveries made (on the very spot mentioned by tradition) in August, 1882, are abundant proof that after the lapse of more than nine centuries actual verification of the carefully transmitted tradition has at last been found."—Bath Herald, 1st September, 1883. If references to other examples were needed I should like to note Sir William Wilde's illustration as to "how far the legend, the fairy tale, the local tradition, or the popular superstition may have been derived from absolute historic fact."—Lough Corrib, 121, 123.

[51] Echoes from the Counties (1880), p. 30.

[52] Grierson, The Silent Trade (1903).

[53] Pearson's Chances of Death, ii. 90. The reader should consult Dr. Pearson's entire study on this subject, chapters ix. and x., which may be compared with Mr. MacCulloch's Childhood of Fiction, 5-15, and more particularly with Mr. Hartland's Science of Fairy Tales.

[54] In 1881 I read a paper before the Folklore Society on "Some Incidents in the story of the Three Noodles by means of reference to facts," Folklore Record, iv. 211, and in 1883 I published in the Antiquary, two papers on "Notes on Incidents in Folk-tales," based upon the same idea.

[55] Introduction, p. lxix.

[56] Introduction, p. lxxvii.

[57] Page 12.

[58] Ibid., p. 26.

[59] Ibid., p. 5.

[60] Tales of the Highlands, i. p. 251.

[61] Kennedy, loc. cit., p. 77.

[62] Ibid., p. 90.

[63] See Beda, Hist. Ecclesia, lib. i. cap. 25.

[64] See vol. i. p. 253.

[65] Miss Frere's Old Deccan Days, p. 279.

[66] AElian, Var. Hist., lib. xiii. cap. xxxiii.

[67] Folklore Record, vol. iv. p. 57.

[68] Asiatic Researches, xvii. p. 502.

[69] Folklore Record, vol. iii. p. 284.

[70] Campbell's Popular Tales of the West Highlands, i. 308.

[71] Joyce, Old Celtic Romances, 38, 75, 153, 177, 270. In the Silva Gadelica, by Mr. Standish O'Grady, the assembly is described sitting in a circle, vol. ii. p. 159, and Tara is also described, vol. ii. 264, 358, 360, 384.

[72] Miss Cox's admirable study and analysis of the Cinderella group of stories includes the Catskin variants, which number seventy-seven.—Cinderella, pp. 53-79.

[73] Studies in Ancient History, p. 62.

[74] Sproat's Scenes and Studies of Savage Life, p. 96.

[75] See his Early Hebrew Life, p. 85.

[76] Frazer, Adonis, Attis, and Osiris, 27-28.

[77] Todd and Herbert, Irish Version of Nennius, p. 89.

[78] Indian Antiq., iii. 32.

[79] Laws of Manu (Buehler), ix. 127; Apastamba Gautama (Buehler), xxviii. 18.

[80] Sir Henry Maine in his Early Law and Custom, p. 91.

[81] A most remarkable instance of an actual case of running away from a marriage, resulting in adventures which might easily become folk-tale adventures if the story were once started on its traditional life, is to be found in Shooter's Kafirs of Natal and the Zulu Country, pp. 60-71.

[82] West Highland Tales, vol. i. p. lxix.

[83] Kennedy's Fireside Stories of Ireland, p. 64.

[84] Old Deccan Days, p. 52.

[85] Ibid., p. 233.

[86] "Standing-place."

[87] Journ. Ethnol. Soc., loc. cit.

[88] New Statistical Account of Scotland, xiv. 273.

[89] Ure's Agriculture of Kinross, 57.

[90] Archaeologia, l. 195-214.

[91] Du Chaillu's Land of the Midnight Sun, i. 393.

[92] Tupper, Punjab Customary Law, ii. 188.

[93] Cobden Club Essays—Primogeniture.

[94] Morris, Saga Library, ii. 194.

[95] Journ. Ethnol. Soc., ii. 336.

[96] Elton, Origins of English History, 91; cf. Du Chaillu, Land of the Midnight Sun, i. 393; Morris's Sagas, ii. 194.

[97] Breeks, Hill Tribes of India, 108.

[98] Mavor's Collection of Voyages, iv. 41.

[99] Anecdotes and Traditions (Camden Soc.), 85.

[100] Mythologie der Volkssagen und Volksmaerchen.

[101] Geiger, Hist. Sweden, 31, 32.

[102] Elton, Origins of English History, 92.

[103] Aubrey, Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme, 14.

[104] Nutt, Legend of the Holy Grail, 44.

[105] Gentleman's Magazine, 1850, i. 250-252.

[106] Journ. Ethnol. Soc., ii. 337.

[107] Elton's Origins, 92.

[108] Mr. Jacobs (Folklore, i. 405) objected to my interpretation of this story because—first, the Latin rhyme appearing in the Gaelic tale, the twelfth-century Latin story and the German inscription "tell for the origination of the story in one single place in historic times;" and, secondly, because a Kashmir story (Knowles' Folk-tales of Kashmir, 241), based on the same main incident, omits the minor incident of the mallet altogether. The answer to the first objection is that the Latin rhyme has been attached, in historic times, to the ancient folk-tale; and to the second objection, that the Kashmir story preserves the main incident of surrender of property upon reaching old age, and omits the more savage incident of killing, because the Kashmir people are in a stage of culture which still allowed of the surrender of property, but, like the Scandinavians, did not allow of the killing of the aged. Similarly, an English parallel to this form of the variant is preserved by De la Pryme in his Diary (Surtees Society), 162. It must be remembered that the Kashmiris occupy a land which is referred to by Herodotos (iii. 99-105) as in the possession of people who killed their aged (cf. Latham, Ethnology of India, 199); and if my reading of the evidence is correct, this is also the case of the Highland peasant.

[109] Dr. Pearson advocates statistical methods in his Chances of Death, ii. 58, 75-77, and shows by examples the value of them.

[110] MacCulloch, Childhood of Fiction: "Some of the things which in these old-world stories form their fascination, have had their origin in sordid fact and reality" (p. vii).

[111] Buehler, Laws of Manu, i.: "In Vedic mythology Manu is the heros eponymos of the human race and by his nature belongs both to gods and to men" (p. 57). Cf. Burnell and Hopkins, Ordinances of Manu, p. 25.

[112] Early Law and Custom, 5.

[113] Pausanias, iii. 2(4).

[114] Maine, Ancient Law, 4; Grote, Hist. of Greece, iii. 101.

[115] Ortolan, Hist. Roman Law, 50; Maine, Early Law and Custom, 6.

[116] Morris, Saga Library, i. p. xxx; Dasent, Burnt Njal, i. xlvi.

[117] Early Law and Custom, 162.

[118] Manx Society Publications, xviii. 21-22.

[119] Strabo, lib. xv. cap. 1, pp. 709, 717; J. D. Mayne, Hindu Law and Usage, 4, 13.

[120] Mackenzie, Roman Law, 11; cf. Pais, Anc. Legends of Roman Hist., 139.

[121] Dasent, Burnt Njal, i. p. lvii, and Vigfusson and Powell, Origines Islandicae, i. 348.

[122] Anc. Laws of Ireland, iv. p. vii.

[123] This appears very strongly in the famous twelfth-century law case which Longchamp pleaded so successfully. Rotuli curia Regis, i. p. lxii.

[124] Early Law and Custom, 9; cf. Burnell and Hopkins, Ordinances of Manu, pp. xx, xxxi. It is worth while quoting here the following interesting note from a letter from the Marquis di Spineto printed in Clarke's Travels, viii. 417:—

"From the most remote antiquity men joined together, and wishing either to amuse themselves or to celebrate the praises of their gods sang short poems to a fixed tune. Indeed, generally speaking, the laws by which they were governed, the events which had made the greatest impression on their minds, the praises which they bestowed upon their gods or on their heroes were all sung long before they were written, and I need not mention that according to Aristotle this is the reason why the Greeks gave the same appellation to laws and to songs."

[125] The references are all given in Smith's Dict. of Greek and Roman Antiquities sub [Greek: nomos]. Aristotle in the Problems, 19, 28, definitely says, "Before the use of letters men sang their laws that they might not forget them, as the custom continues yet among the Agathyrsoi."

[126] Lib. xii. cap. ii. 9.

[127] Hist. English Commonwealth, 43.

[128] Anc. Laws of Ireland, iv. pp. viii, x.

[129] Hampson's Origines Patriciae, 106-107; Kemble, line 5763 et seq.

[130] Proctor's History of the Book of Common Prayer, p. 410.

[131] Hist. Eng. Commonwealth, ii. p. cxxxvi. Littleton points out the legal antiquity and importance of these words: "no conveyance can be made without them." See Wheatley's Book of Common Prayer (quoting Littleton), p. 406.

[132] The York manual had the additional clause, "for fairer for fouler." See Wheatley, loc. cit., p. 406.

[133] Palgrave, loc. cit.

[134] Ibid.

[135] Manuale et processionale ad usum insiquis ecclesiae Evoracensis, Surtees Society, 1875. See also Gentleman's Magazine, 1752, p. 171; Proctor's History of the Book of Common Prayer, p. 409, for other examples.

[136] Palgrave, English Commonwealth, i. 43.

[137] Chambers, Popular Rhymes of Scotland, 115.

[138] Sinclair's Stat. Acc. of Scotland, x. 534.

[139] Chambers, Book of Days, January 19; Nichols, Fuller's Worthies, 494.

[140] Diary of De la Pryme (Surtees Society), 126. It may be noted here that Kelly, Curiosities of Indo-European Traditions, 179, notes the preservation of an ancient law for the preservation of the oak and the hazel in a traditional proverbial rhyme.

[141] Hazlitt, Tenures of Land, 80; other examples refer to the Hundred of Cholmer and Dancing, in Essex, 75; to Kilmersdon, in Somersetshire, 182; to Hopton, in Salop, 165. John of Gaunt is responsible for many of these curious and interesting remains of tribal antiquity. Bisley's Handbook of North Devon, 28, refers to one relating to the manor of Umberleigh, near Barnstaple, and I have a note from Mr. Edmund Wrigglesworth, of Hull, of a parallel to this being preserved by tradition only. There is a tradition respecting the estate of Sutton Park, near Biggleswade, Bedfordshire, which states that it formerly belonged to John of Gaunt, who gave it to an ancestor of the present proprietor, one Roger Burgoyne, by the following grant:—

"I, John of Gaunt, Do give and do grant, To Roger Burgoyne And the heirs of his loin Both Sutton and Potton Until the world's rotten."

Potton was a neighbouring village to Sutton. There is a moated site in the park called "John o' Gaunt's Castle," see Notes and Queries, tenth series, vi. 466. Cf. Aubrey, Collections for Wilts, 185, for an example at Midgehall; Cowell's Law Interpreter, 1607, and the Dictionarum Rusticum, 1704, for the custom of East and West Enborn, in Berks, which was made famous by Addison's Spectator in 1714.

[142] Sometimes these are called "burlesque conveyances." See an example quoted in Hist. MSS. Commission, v. 459.

[143] It is well to bear in mind the great force of ancient tribal law, which was personal, upon localities. Nottingham is divided into two parts, one having primogeniture and the other junior right as the rule of descent. Southampton and Exeter have also local divisions. But perhaps the most striking example is at Breslau, where there co-existed, until 1st January, 1840, five different particular laws and observances in regard to succession, the property of spouses, etc., the application of which was limited to certain territorial jurisdictions; not unfrequently the law varied from house to house, and it even happened that one house was situated on the borders of different laws, to each of which, therefore, it belonged in part; Savigny, Private Int. Law, cap. i. sect. iv.

[144] Academy, February, 1884; Percy Reliques, edit. Wheatley, i. 384.

[145] Trans. British. Association, 1847, p. 321.

[146] Series No. V., published in 1895.

[147] Philological Society Papers, 1870-2, pp. 18, 248; Dr. Murray gives the air in an appendix. See also a note by Mr. Danby Fry in the Antiquary, viii. 164-6, 269-70; and The Hawick Tradition, by R. S. Craig and Adam Laing, published at Hawick in 1898.

[148] Squire, Mythology of the British Islands, 69.

[149] Wilde, Lough Corrib, 210-248. Sir William Wilde has studied the details of this great fight with great care, and it is impossible to ignore his evidence as to the monuments of it being extant to this day among the recorded antiquities of Ireland. The battle lasted four days. The first day the Fir-Bolg had the best of the fighting, and pillar-stones erected to the heroes who fell are still in situ. Clogh-Fadha-Cunga, or long stone of Cong, which stood on the old road to the east of that village and a portion of which, six feet long, is still in an adjoining wall, being erected to Adleo of the Dananians, and Clogh-Fadha-Neal, or long stone of the Neale, at the junction of the roads passing northwards from Cross and Cong, commemorating the place where the king stood during the battle. After the battle each Fir-Bolg carried with him a stone and the head of a Danann to their king who erected a great cairn to commemorate the event, and this must be the cairn of Ballymagibbon which stands on the road passing from Cong to Cross. The well of Mean Uisge is identified as that mentioned in the MS. accounts of the battle, connected with a striking incident. After a careful examination of the locality, says Sir William Wilde, with a transcript of the ancient MS. in his hand, he was convinced of the identity of a stone heap standing within a circle as the place where the body of the loyal Fir-Bolg youth was burned. The second day's battle surged northwards, and at the western shores of Lough Mask, Slainge Finn, the king's son, pursuing the two sons of Cailchu and their followers, slew them there, and "seventeen flag stones were stuck in the ground in commemoration of their death," and by the margin of the lake in the island of Inish-Eogan there stands this remarkable monument to this hour. The line of the Fir-Bolg camp can still be traced with wonderful accuracy. Caher-Speenan, the thorny fort, was a part of this camp, and still exists. More to the south-east, on the hill of Tongegee, are the remains of Caher-na-gree, the pleasant fort, and still further to the east are Lisheen, or little earthen fort, and Caher-Phaetre, pewter fort. Other forts also exist to give evidence both of the Fir-Bolg and the Danann lines. The Danann monuments are situate in the fields opposite the glebes of Nymphsfield. Five remarkable stone circles still remain within the compass of a square mile, and there are traces of others. The Fir-Bolgs were defeated on the fourth day and their king Eochy fell fighting to the last. "A lofty cairn was raised over his body, and called Carn Eathach, from his name." On the grassy hill of Killower, or Carn, overlooking Lough Mask, stands to this hour the most remarkable cairn in the west of Ireland, and there is little doubt this is the one referred to in the ancient tradition as commemorating the death of the last Fir-Bolg king in Erin.

[150] Squire, op. cit., 76, 138.

[151] Squire, op. cit., 230.

[152] Squire, Mythology, 399.

[153] See Life and Writings by Oliver Elton, ii. 224.

[154] Governance of London, 110-113.

[155] Celtic Heathendom, 125-133.

[156] See Bathurst, Roman Antiquities of Lydney Park, plates viii., xiii., for the famous example dealt with by Sir John Rhys; and Stuart, Caledonia Romana, 309, plate ix. fig. 2, for a dedication to the "Deities of Britain."

[157] See his Stonehenge and Other British Stone Monuments, chap. xxii.

[158] See Folklore, xv. 306-311, for the Greek evidence; and xvii. 30, 164, for the Irish evidence.

[159] Frazer, Golden Bough (2nd ed.), iii. 236-316. Mr. Frazer, however, is inclined to review his explanation of bonfires as sun-charms; see his Adonis, Attis and Osiris, 151, note 4.

[160] The specialisation of the fire cult is illustrated by the Hindu myth of the Angiras, see Wilson, Rig Veda Sanhita, i. p. xxix.

[161] Gummere, Germanic Origins, 400-2.

[162] It will be convenient to give the references for the various details of savage life in Britain. The original extracts are all given in Monumenta Historica Britannica and in Giles' History of Ancient Britons, vol. ii. Ireland—cannibalism: Strabo, iv. cap. 5, 4, p. 201, Diodoros, v. 32; promiscuous intercourse: Strabo; birth ceremony: Solinus, xxii. Scotland—human sacrifice: Solinus, xxii.; promiscuous intercourse, Solinus, cap. xxii., Xiphilinus from Dio in Mon. Brit. Hist., p. lx., and St. Jerome adv. Jovin., v. ii. 201; nakedness, Herodian in Mon. Brit. Hist., p. lxiv, and Xiphilinus, ibid., p. lx. Britain—head-hunting, Strabo, iv. 1-4, pp. 199-201, Diodoros, v. 29; tattooing, Caesar, De bello Gallico, v. 12, Pliny, Nat. Hist., xxii. i. (2); promiscuous intercourse, Caesar, ibid., v. 14, Xiphilinus in Mon. Brit. Hist., p. lvii.

[163] History of England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings, i. 14.

[164] Innes' Critical Essay, 45, 51, 56, 240.

[165] O'Curry's Manners and Customs of Ancient Irish, i. p. vi. Dr. Whitley Stokes has criticised O'Curry's translations as bad, "not from ignorance, but to a desire to conceal a fact militating against theories of early Irish civilisation."—Revue Celtique, iii. 90-101.

[166] Turner, Hist. of Anglo-Saxons, i. 64-74; Palgrave, Eng. Com., i. 467-8.

[167] Giles' History of Anc. Britons, i. 231, referring to parallel customs among the Chinese.

[168] Elton, Origins of English History, 82.

[169] Rhys, Celtic Britain, 55.

[170] Celtic Heathendom, 320, note.

[171] I have dealt with this in my Ethnology in Folklore, 36-40.

[172] Skene, Celtic Scotland, i. 59, 84.

[173] Pearson, Hist. of England during the Early and Middle Ages, i. 15, 21, 35.

[174] Ramsay, Foundations of England, i. 9, 11, 30.

[175] Lang, Hist. of Scotland, i. 3-5.

[176] Joyce, Social Hist. of Ireland, i. 19.

[177] In addition to Mr. Lang and Dr. Joyce, who are folklorists as well as historians, and who as we have seen do deal with these records scientifically, the folklorist goes out of his way to reject these records. Thus Mr. Squire says that "the imputation" which Caesar makes as to polyandrous customs "cannot be said to have been proved," Mythology of the British Islands, 30.

[178] Village Communities, 17.

[179] Principles of Sociology, i. 714.

[180] Arch. Cambrensis, 6th ser. v. 3.

[181] Journ. Anthrop. Inst., xx. 259.



CHAPTER II

MATERIALS AND METHODS

The materials of folklore consist of traditional tales (so called) and traditional customs and superstitions (so called), the feature of both groups being that at the time of first being recorded and reduced to writing they existed only by the force of tradition. There is no fixed time for the record. It is sometimes quite early, as, for instance, the examples which come to us from historians; it is generally quite late, namely, the great mass of examples which, during the past century or so, have been collected directly from the lips or observances of the people, sometimes by the curious traveller or antiquary, lately by the professed folklorist.

The consideration of the relationship of history and folklore has cleared the ground for definitions and method. Before the material of which folklore consists can be considered by the light of method, we must get rid of definitions which are often applied to folklore in its attributed sense. Folk-tales are not fiction or art, were not invented for amusement, are not myth in the sense of being imaginative only.[182] Customs and superstitions are not the result of ignorance and stupidity. These attributes are true only if folk-tales, customs, and superstitions are compared with the literary productions and with the science and the culture of advanced civilisation; and this comparison is exactly that which should never be undertaken, though unfortunately it is that which is most generally adopted. The folk-tale may be lent on occasion to the artist—to Mr. Lang, to Mr. Jacobs, and their many copyists; and these artists may rejoice at the wonderful results of the unconscious art that resides in these products of tradition, but the folk-tale must not be wholly surrendered. It does not belong to them. It does not belong to art at all, but to science. That it is artistic in form is an addition to its characteristics, but has nothing whatever to do with its fundamental features. Similarly with legend. It may be lent to Malory, to Tennyson, to Longfellow, to the literary bards of the romance period, for the purpose of weaving together their story of the wonderful; but it must not be surrendered to the romancist, and, above all things, the romances must never be allowed to enter the domain of folklore. Romances may be stripped of their legends so that the source of legendary material may be fully utilised, but the romances themselves belong to literature, and must remain within their own portals. And so with customs. They may be pleasing and reveal some of the beauties of the older joyousness of life which has passed away, it is to be regretted, from modern civilisation; they may be revived in May-day celebrations, in pageants, in providing our schools with games which tell of the romance of living. But they do not belong to the lover of the beautiful or to the revivalists. Equally with the folk-tale they belong to science. And so also with superstitions. The Psychical Research Society, the spiritualists, the professional successors of the mediaeval witch and wizard, may turn their attention to traditional superstitions; but the folklorist refuses to hand them over, and claims them for science.

This use of traditional material for modern purposes is not the only danger to proper definitions. There is also its appearance in the earlier stages of literature. The traditional narrative, the myth, the folk-tale or the legend, is not dependent upon the text in which it appears for the first time. That text, as we have it, was not written down by contemporary or nearly contemporary authority. Before it had become a written document it had lived long as oral tradition.[183] In some cases the written document is itself centuries old, the record of some early chronicler or some early writer who did not make the record for tradition's sake. In other cases the written document is quite modern, the record of a professed lover of tradition. This unequal method of recording tradition is the main source of the difficulty in the way of those who cannot accept tradition as a record of fact. In all cases the test of its value and the interpretation of its testimony are matters which need special study and examination before the exact value of each tradition is capable of being determined. The date when and the circumstances in which a tradition is first reduced to literary form are important factors in the evidence as to the credibility of the particular form in which the tradition is preserved; but they are not all the factors, nor do they of themselves afford better evidence when they are comparatively ancient than forms of much later date and of circumstances far different. It cannot be too often impressed upon the student of tradition that the tradition itself affords the chief if not the only sure evidence of its age, its origin, and its meaning; for the preservation of tradition is due to such varied influences that the mere fact of preservation, or the particular method or date of preservation, cannot be relied upon to give the necessary authority for the authenticity of the tradition. Tradition can never assume the position of written history, because it does not owe its origin, but only its preservation, to writing.

Documentary material is examined as to its palaeographical features, as to the testimony afforded by its author or assumed author, as to its credibility in dealing with contemporary events or persons, as to its date, and in other ways according to the nature of the document. Traditional material has nothing to do with all this. It has no palaeography; it has no author, and if a personal author is assigned to any given fragment or element it is generally safe to ignore the tradition as the product of a later age; it does not deal with persons nor, as a rule, with specific events; it has no date. It has therefore to undergo a process of its own before it can be accepted as historical evidence, and this process, if somewhat tedious, is all the more necessary because of the tender material of which tradition is composed. This will be made clearer if we understand exactly what the different classes of tradition are and how they stand to each other.

Considering the materials of folklore in their true sense and not their attributed sense then, we may proceed to say something as to methods. Definitions and rules are needed. No student can attack so immense a subject without the aid of such necessary machinery, and it is because the attempt has been so often made ill-equipped in this respect, that the science of folklore has suffered so much and has remained so long unrecognised. Already, in dealing with the relationship of history and folklore, one or two necessary distinctions in terms have been anticipated. We have discovered that the impersonal folk-tale is distinguished in a fundamental manner from the personal or local legend, and that the growth of mythology is a later process than the growth of myth. These distinctions need, however, to be systematised and brought into relationship with other necessary distinctions. The myth and the folk-tale are near relations, but they are not identical, and it is clear that we need to know something more about myth. Because mythic tradition has been found to include many traditions, which of late years have been claimed to belong to a definitely historical race of people, it must not be identified with history. This claim is based upon two facts, the presence of myth in the shape of the folk-tale and the preservation of much mythic tradition beyond the stage of thought to which it properly belongs by becoming attached to an historical event, or series of events, or to an historical personage, and in this way carrying on its life into historic periods and among historic peoples. The first position has resulted in a wholesale appropriation of the folk-tale to the cause of the mythologists; the second position has hitherto resulted either in a disastrous appropriation of the entire tradition to mythology, or in a still more disastrous rejection both of the tradition and the historical event round which it clusters. Historians doubting the myth doubt too the history; mythologists doubting the history reject the myth from all consideration, and in this way much is lost to history which properly belongs to it, and something is lost to myth.

If, therefore, I have hitherto laid undue stress upon the foundation of tradition in the actual facts of life, and upon the close association of tradition with historic fact, it is because this side of the question has been so generally neglected. Everything has been turned on to the mythic side. Folk-tales have been claimed as the exclusive property of the mythologists, and those who have urged their foundation on the facts of real life have scarcely been listened to. There is, however, no ground for the converse process to be advocated. If tradition is not entirely mythology it is certainly not all founded on sociology, and the mythic tradition in the possession of a people advanced in culture has to be considered and accounted for. It is myth in contact with history, and the contact compels consideration of the result.

I

The first necessity is for definitions. Careful attention to what has already been said will reveal the fact that tradition contains three separate classes, and I would suggest definition of these classes by a precise application of terms already in use: The myth belongs to the most primitive stages of human thought, and is the recognisable explanation of some natural phenomenon, some forgotten or unknown object of human origin, or some event of lasting influence; the folk-tale is a survival preserved amidst culture-surroundings of a more advanced stage, and deals with events and ideas of primitive times in terms of the experience or of episodes in the lives of unnamed human beings; the legend belongs to an historical personage, locality, or event. These are new definitions, and are suggested in order to give some sort of exactness to the terms in use. All these terms—myth, folk-tale, and legend—are now used indiscriminately with no particular definiteness. The possession of three such distinct terms forms an asset which should be put to its full use, and this cannot be done until we agree upon a definite meaning for each.

The first place must be given to mythic tradition. This is not special to our own, or to any one branch of the human race. It belongs to all—to the Hindu, the Greek, the Slav, the Teuton, the Celt, the Semite, and the savage. It goes back to a period of human history which has only tradition for its authority, in respect of which no contemporary records exist, and which relates to a time when the ancestors of now scattered peoples lived together, and when they were struggling from the position of obedient slaves to all the fears which unknown nature inflicted on them, to that of observers of the forces of nature.

Traditions which are properly classed as myth are those which are too ancient to be identified with historical personages, and too little realistic to be a relation of historical episodes. They are rather the explanations given by primitive philosophers of events which were beyond their ken, and yet needed and claimed explanation. In this class of tradition we are in touch with the struggles of the earliest ancestors of man to learn about the unknown. Our own research in the realms of the unknown we dignify by the name and glories of science. The research of our remote ancestors was of like kind, though the domain of the unknown was so different from our own. It was primitive science.

The best type of this class of myth is, I think, the creation myth.[184] Everywhere, almost, man has for a moment stood apart and asked himself the question, Whence am I?—stood apart from the struggle for existence when that struggle was in its most severe stages. The answer he has given himself was the answer of the Darwin of his period. From the narrow observation of the natural man and his surroundings, governed by the enormous impressions of his own life, the answer has obviously not been scientific in our sense of the term. But it was scientific. It was the science of primitive man, and if we have to reject it as science not so good as our science, nay, as not science at all judged by our standard, we must not deny to primitive man the claim of having preceded modern man in his observation and interpretation of the world of nature.

The range of the creation myth is almost world-wide. It includes examples from all quarters, and examples of great beauty as well as of singular, almost grotesque hideousness; the New Zealand myth is surely the best type of the former, and perhaps the Fijian of the latter. As Mr. Lang says: "all the cosmogonic myths waver between the theory of construction, or rather of reconstruction and the theory of evolution very rudely conceived."[185]

It is not necessary to quote a large number of examples, because I am not concerned with their variety nor with their essentials. I am only anxious to point out their existence as evidence of the scientific character of primitive myth.[186] It is not to the point to say that the science was all wrong. What is to the point is to say that the attempt was made to get at the origin of man and his destiny. Mr. Lang thinks that "the origin of the world and of man is naturally a problem which has excited the curiosity of the least developed minds," but in the use of the term "naturally," I think the stupendous nature of the effort made by the least developed minds is entirely neglected, and we miss the opportunity of measuring what this effort might mean.

When savages ask themselves, as they certainly do ask themselves, whence the sky, whence the winds, the sun, moon, stars, sea, rivers, mountains and other natural objects, they reply in terms of good logic applied to deficient knowledge. All the knowledge they possess is that based upon their own material senses. And therefore, when they apply that knowledge to subjects outside their own personality, they deal with them in terms of their own personality. How did the sky get up there, above their heads—the sky evidently so lovingly fond of the earth, so intimately connected with the earth?

The New Zealand answer to these questions is a great one, by whatever standard it is measured. Heaven and earth, they say, were husband and wife, so locked in close embrace that darkness everywhere prevailed. Their children were ever thinking amongst themselves what might be the difference between darkness and light. At last, worn out by the continued darkness, they consulted amongst themselves whether they should slay their parents, Rangi and Papa, i.e. heaven and earth, or whether they should rend them apart. The fiercest of their children exclaimed, "Let us slay them!" but the forest, another of the sons, said, "Nay, not so. It is better to rend them apart, and to let heaven stand far above us and the earth to lie under our feet. Let the sky become as a stranger to us, but the earth remain close to us as our nursing-mother." The brothers consented to this proposal with the exception of Tawhiri-ma-tea, the father of winds and storms; thus five of the brothers consented and one would not agree. Then each of the brothers tries to rend his parents, heaven and earth, asunder. First the father of cultivated food tries and fails; then the father of fish and reptiles; then the father of uncultivated food; then the father of fierce human beings. Then at last slowly uprises Tane-mahuta, the father of forests, birds, and insects, and he struggles with his parents; in vain he strives to rend them apart with his hands and arms. Lo, he pauses; his head is now firmly planted on his mother, the earth; his feet he raises up and rests against his father, the skies; he strains his back and limbs with mighty effort, and at last are rent apart Rangi and Papa, who shriek aloud with cries and groans. But Tane-mahuta pauses not, he regards not their shrieks and cries; far, far beneath him he presses down the earth; far, far above him he thrusts up the sky. Then were discovered a multitude of human beings whom heaven and earth had begotten, and who had hitherto lain concealed. But Tawhiri-ma-tea, the wind and storm, the brother who had not consented, is angry at this rending apart of his parents, and he rises and follows his father, the sky, and fights fiercely with the earth and his brothers.[187]

The explanation of this myth is simple. Unaided by the facts of science, the New Zealand savages could only think of the facts of their own experience. Only two personalities could produce the various products of the world; therefore the earth was the mother and the sky the father. But they are now separated and apart. Only a personality could have separated, and the forest, root-sown in the earth, branch-up in the sky, is evidently the means of this separation. And so, satisfactorily to their own minds, these rude savages settled the question of the origin of heaven and earth.

The close similarity of this to the story of Kronos has frequently been pointed out; but a Greek story is always worth repeating. Near the beginning of things Earth gave birth to Heaven. Later, Heaven became the husband of Earth, and they had many children. Some of these became the gods of the various elements, among whom were Okeanos, and Hyperion, the sun. The youngest child was Kronos of crooked counsel, who ever hated his mighty sire. Now the children of Heaven and Earth were concealed in the hollows of Earth, and both the Earth and her children resented this. At last they conspired against their father, Heaven, and, taking their mother into the counsels, she produced Iron and bade her children avenge her wrongs. Fear fell upon all of them except Kronos, and he determined to separate his parents, and with his iron weapon he effected his object. All the brothers rejoiced except one, Okeanos, and he remained faithful to his father.[188]

It would be well for the sake of the story itself to give a creation myth from India, but I shall have other use for it than its particular charm.

"'In the beginning, when Twashtri came to the creation of woman, he found that he had exhausted his materials in the making of man, and that no solid elements were left. In this dilemma, after profound meditation, he did as follows. He took the rotundity of the moon, and the curves of creepers, and the clinging of tendrils, and the trembling of grass, and the slenderness of the reed, and the bloom of flowers, and the lightness of leaves, and the tapering of the elephant's trunk, and the glances of deer, and the clustering of rows of bees, and the joyous gaiety of sunbeams, and the weeping of clouds, and the fickleness of the winds, and the timidity of the hare, and the vanity of the peacock, and the softness of the parrot's bosom, and the hardness of adamant, and the sweetness of honey, and the cruelty of the tiger, and the warm glow of fire, and the coldness of snow, and the chattering of jays, and the cooing of the kokila, and the hypocrisy of the crane, and the fidelity of the chakrawaka, and compounding all these together, he made woman and gave her to man. But after one week, man came to him and said: Lord, this creature that you have given me makes my life miserable. She chatters incessantly and teases me beyond endurance, never leaving me alone; and she requires incessant attention, and takes all my time up, and cries about nothing, and is always idle; and so I have come to give her back again, as I cannot live with her. So Twashtri said: Very well; and he took her back. Then after another week, man came again to him and said: Lord, I find that my life is very lonely, since I gave you back that creature. I remember how she used to dance and sing to me, and look at me out of the corner of her eye, and play with me, and cling to me; and her laughter was music, and she was beautiful to look at, and soft to touch; so give her back to me again. So Twashtri said: Very well; and gave her back again. Then after only three days, man came back to him again and said: Lord, I know not how it is; but after all I have come to the conclusion that she is more of a trouble than a pleasure to me; so please take her back again. But Twashtri said: Out on you! Be off! I will have no more of this. You must manage how you can. Then man said: But I cannot live with her. And Twashtri replied: Neither could you live without her. And he turned his back on man, and went on with his work. Then man said: What is to be done? for I cannot live either with her or without her.'"[189]

Now this myth has, so far as its central fact is concerned, its counterpart in Celtic folklore. In the Welsh Mabinogi of Math, son of Mathonwy, it is related how Arianrod laid a destiny upon her son, whom she would not recognise, that he should never have a wife of the race that now inhabits the earth, and how Gwydion declared that he should have a wife notwithstanding. "They went thereupon unto Math, the son of Mathonwy, and complained unto him most bitterly of Arianrod. Well, said Math, we will seek, I and thou, by charms and magic, to form a wife for him out of flowers. So they took the blossoms of the oak, and the blossoms of the broom, and the blossoms of the meadow-sweet, and produced from them a maiden, the fairest and most graceful that man ever saw." No one can doubt that this interesting fragment of Welsh tradition takes us back to a creation legend of the same order as the Indian legend, and that the two widely separated parallels belong to the period when men were carving out for themselves theories as to the origin of women in relation to men.

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

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

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

If myth is correctly defined as primitive science, as I have ventured to suggest, it is important to know how it assumes a place among the traditions of a people. Primitive science was also primitive belief. If it accounted for the origin of mankind, of the sun, moon, and stars, of the earth and the trees, it accounted for them as creations of a higher power than man, or, at all events, of a great and specially endowed man, and higher powers than man were of the unknown realm. The unknown was the awful. Primitive science and primitive belief were therefore on one and the same plane.[192] They were subjects to be treated with reverence and with awe. The story into which the myth was so frequently woven is not a story to those who believe in the truth of the myth. It assumes the personal shape, because the personal is the only machinery by which primitive man is capable of expressing himself. It was held only by tradition, because tradition was the only means of transmitting it, and it was of a sacred character, because sacred things and beliefs were the only forces which influenced primitive thought. When it was repeated to new generations of learners, it was not a case of story-telling—it was a matter of the profoundest importance. Everywhere among the lowest savagery we find the secrets of the group kept from all but the initiated, and these secrets are the traditions which have become sacred, traditions expressed sometimes in ceremonial, sometimes in rites, sometimes in narratives. Thus the mythological and religious knowledge of the Bushmen is imparted in dances, and when a man is ignorant of some myth, he will say, "I do not dance that dance," meaning that he does not belong to the group which preserves that particular sacred chapter.[193] The Ashantees have an interesting creation myth which is stated to be the foundation of all their religious opinions.[194] Mr. Howitt, in his important chapter on "Beliefs and Burial Practices,"[195] seems to me to exactly interpret the savage mind. The first thing he notes is the belief—a belief that "the earth is flat, surmounted by the solid vault of the sky," that "there is water all round the flat earth," that the sun is a woman, and that the moon was once a man who lived on earth, and so on. Then, secondly, he notes the manner in which these beliefs are translated to and held by the people, the myth in point of fact—unfortunately, Mr. Howitt calls it a legend—wherein it is perfectly obvious that the Australian is interpreting the facts of nature in the only language known to him to be applicable, namely, that of his own personality. Messrs. Spencer and Gillen produce much the same kind of evidence,[196] and describe a ceremony among the northern tribes connected with the myth of the sun, which ends in a newly initiated youth being brought up, "shown the decorations, and had everything explained to him."[197] Among the central tribes the same authorities describe minutely the initiation ceremonies, during which the initiate boy "is instructed for the first time in any of the sacred matters referring to totems, and it is by means of the performances which are concerned with certain animals, or rather, apparently with the animals, but in reality with Alcheringa individuals who were the direct transformations of such animals, that the traditions dealing with this subject, which is of the greatest importance in the eyes of the natives, are firmly impressed upon the mind of the novice, to whom everything which he sees and hears is new and surrounded with an air of mystery."[198] Sir George Grey, speaking of the traditions of the Maori which he collected, says his reader will be in "the position of one who listens to a heathen and savage high priest, explaining to him in his own words and in his own energetic manner, the traditions in which he earnestly believes, and unfolding the religious opinions upon which the faith and hopes of his race rest."[199] This "school of mythology and history," as it is significantly termed in John White's Ancient History of the Maori, was "Whare-Kura, the sacred school in which the sons of high priests were taught our mythology and history," and it "stood facing the east in the precincts of the sacred place of Mua." The school was opened by the priests in the autumn, and continued from sunset to midnight every night for four or five months in succession. The chief priest sat next to the door. It was his duty to commence the proceedings by repeating a portion of history; the other priests followed in succession, according to rank. On the south side sat the old and most accomplished priests, "whose duty it was to insist on a critical and verbatim rehearsal of all the ancient lore."[200] The American-Indian account, by the Iroquois, of how myths were told to an ancient chief and an assembly of the people on a circular open space in a deep forest, wherein was a large wheel-shaped stone, from beneath which came a voice which told the tale of the former world, and how the first people became what they are at present,[201] is in exact accord with this evidence. The priestly novice among the Indians of British Guiana is taught the traditions of the tribe, while the medicine man of the Bororo in Brazil has to learn certain ritual songs and the languages of birds, beasts, and trees.[202]

I do not want to press the point too far, because evidence is not easy to get on account of the incomplete fashion in which it has been collected and presented to the student. The records of native life are divided off into chapters arranged, not on the basis of native ideas, but on the basis of civilised ideas, and from this cause we get myth and belief in different chapters as if they had no connection with each other; we get myths treated as if they were but the fancy-begotten amusements of the individual, instead of the serious ideas of the collective people about the elements of nature to which they have directed their attention. Mr. J. A. Farrer comes practically to this correct conclusion,[203] while Mr. Jevons seems to me to have arrived at the same result in spite of some false intermediate steps, due to his failure to discriminate between myth and mythology.[204] Failures of this kind are of almost infinite loss to scientific research. They stop the results which might flow from the stages correctly reached, and hide the full significance which arises from the fact that man's aspirations are always so much in excess of his accomplished acts. Poetry, philosophy, prayer, worship, are all short of the ideal; and the question may surely arise whether the actual accomplishments of man in civilisation, as compared with those of man in savagery, afford any sort of indication of the distance between man's accomplishment and his aspiration at any age. If man has never travelled at one moment of time, or at one definite period of life, all this distance in thought, it may still be possible to use this distance between savage and cultured accomplishment as a standard of measurement between accomplishment and ideal, wherever the material for such a purpose is available. If folklorists will keep such a possibility in mind, whenever they are called upon to investigate myth, it will at all events save them from proceeding upon lines which cannot lead to progress in the investigation of human history.

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

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

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

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

It is in this way that we come upon the folk-tale. The folk-tale is secondary to the myth. It is the primitive myth dislodged from its primitive place. It has become a part of the life of the people, independently of its primary form and object and in a different sense. The mythic or historic fact has been obscured, or has been displaced from the life of the people. But the myth lives on through the affections of the people for the traditions of their older life. They love to tell the story which their ancestors revered as myth even though it has lost its oldest and most impressive significance. The artistic setting of it, born of the years through which it has lived, fashioned by the minds which have handed it down and embellished it through the generations, has helped its life. It has become the fairy tale or the nursery tale. It is told to grown-up people, not as belief but as what was once believed; it is told to children, not to men; to lovers of romance, not to worshippers of the unknown; it is told by mothers and nurses, not by philosophers or priestesses; in the gathering ground of home life, or in the nursery, not in the hushed sanctity of a great wonder.[209]

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

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

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