■r 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH 
 
APKRDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
 
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CUSTOM AND MYTH 
 
 A N 
 
 L O N G M . 
 
 I5Y 
 
 DREW LANG, M.A. 
 
 MON. KEI.LOW OK MERTON COLI.EtiK 
 OXKOKO 
 
 NEW EDITION 
 
 LONDON 
 
 \NS, GREEN, AND 
 
 1893 
 
 
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 AUTHOR OK ‘primitive CULTURE’ 
 THESE STUDIES OF THE OLDEST 
 
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 STORIE S 
 
P R p: V A C E. 
 
 Since the first publication of Custom and Myth, many 
 other works have appeared, dealing on the same prin- 
 ciples with matters of belief, fable and ritual. Were 
 the book to be re-written, numerous fresh pieces of 
 evidence might be adduced in support of its conclu- 
 sions. In Mr. Frazer’s Golden Bough (Macmillan) 
 the student will find a carefully conceived argument, 
 and a large collection of testimonies, bearing on the 
 wide diffusion, among savages and civilised peoples, 
 of ancient rites and ancient ideas. The works of 
 Mannhardt have practically been introduced to the 
 English reader by Mr. Frazer, with much new matter 
 of his own. The main topics are the worship of 
 human gods and the superstitions connected with 
 vegetation. To push a theory too far is the common 
 temptation of mythologists, and perhaps Mr. Frazer’s 
 cornstalk does rather threaten to overshadow the 
 whole earth and exclude the light of sun and sky. 
 Put the reader, whatever his opinions, will find 
 great pleasure and profit in Mr. Frazer’s remarkable 
 studies, and in those of Mannhardt, which were 
 unknown to myself when I wrote Custom and Myth. 
 
 In Miss Harrison’s volume on Athenian Myths 
 the student will find the aetiological theory (namely, 
 that many myths were invented to explain obscure 
 points of ritual) applied in a number of classical 
 instances. A singularly ingenious study of Roman 
 myths is presented in Mr. Jevons’s edition of 
 
Vlll 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 Plutarch’s Romaine Questions (Nutt). These are re- 
 cent instances of the use of the ‘ anthropological ’ 
 method, first firmly established by Mr. Tylor’s 
 Primitive Culture, and now holding its own as a 
 recognised instrument in the study of the historical 
 development of the imagination. In Rosscher’s 
 AusfuhrlicJies Lexikon of Greek and Roman mytho- 
 logy, the earlier method of the philologists is 
 usually adopted, and the work, still in course of 
 publication, is most useful for its recondite learning. 
 
 These notes are meant for the guidance of any 
 reader who may care to push his studies further 
 than the sketches of the present volume. 
 
 On one or two points some remarks may be neces- 
 sary. The author has been not unnaturally accused 
 of seeing Totems everywhere. He would therefore 
 protest that he does not regard every beast and bird 
 which appears in myths or in religious art as neces- 
 sarily a Totem. But he inclines to think that where 
 Celts or Greeks claim descent from a god who 
 pursued his amours in animal shape, or where a 
 tribe bears the name of an animal, regards that 
 animal with religious respect, and places its effigy 
 beside that of a god, the Totemistic hypothesis 
 colligates the phenomena, and deserves considera- 
 tion. These and other early features of religion 
 occur mainly in Greece after the Homeric age. It 
 has been suggested, for example, by Mr. Walter 
 Leaf, that Homer’s people, the Achseans, were free 
 from all such ideas as Totemism, worship of the dead, 
 ritual of purification for homicide, the mysteries, and 
 so forth. These were notions held by the Pelasgi, 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 IX 
 
 and revived or retained by the lonians, an older and 
 distinct stock of Pelasgian origin. I am unable to 
 convince myself in this matter, not knowing how 
 much of the refinement in the Homeric poems is due 
 to the genius of the poet, who might ignore practices 
 with which he was familiar. They may have been 
 Pelasgo-Ionians, who derived Helen’s birth from the 
 Swan, or Homer may have chosen to slur over an 
 Achaean legend, and so on in other cases ; for 
 example, as to the descent of the Myrmidons from 
 Zeus in the shape of an Ant. On another point a 
 word may be said. One has been accused of believ- 
 ing that identical popular tales, the same incident 
 in the same sequence of plot, might arise simul- 
 taneously in savage imaginations in all parts of the 
 world. In Custom and Myth it will be plain that I 
 vsay nothing of the sort. ‘The Far-Travelled Tale’ 
 ks one instance chosen to show that such a story must 
 probably have drifted, somehow, round the world. On 
 the other hand, in ‘ Cupid and Psyche,’ it is asserted 
 that the central incident might be invented wherever 
 the nuptial taboo on which it is ba?ed was recognised. 
 The exact sequence of incidents in the ‘ Cupid and 
 Psyche ’ of Apuleius, on the other hand, could pro- 
 bably only be invented once for all. But we find the 
 central incident where we do not find the sequence 
 of incidents which make up ‘ Cupid and Psyche.’ A 
 full statement of my ideas is prefixed to Miss 
 Roalfe Cox’s Cinderella (Folklore Society). As a 
 rule, the incidents in Mdrchen are common to all 
 races ; an artistic combination of many of these in a 
 plot must probably be due to a single imagination, 
 
X 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 and the plot must have been diffused in the ways 
 described in Custom and Myth. Independently 
 evolved myths may closely resemble each other 
 when they account for some natural phenomenon, or 
 are based on some common custom. Wherever a 
 sequence of such incidents is found in a distinct and 
 artistic plot, we may provisionally assign diffusion 
 from an original centre as that cause. Singular as 
 are the coincidences of fancy, it is unlikely that they 
 ever produced exactly the same tale in lands which 
 have never been in communication with each other. 
 I am unable to conjecture why Mr. Jacobs, M. 
 Cosquin, and probably other critics, regard me as 
 maintaining that all similar tales in all countries 
 have been independently evolved. I have always 
 allowed for the possibility both of diffusion and, to 
 a certain extent, of coincidence, as in the Red Indian 
 forms of ‘ Cupid and Psyche ’ and of ‘ The Dead 
 Bride,’ a shape of the story of Eurydice. Discussion 
 would be simpler, if controversialists took the trouble 
 to understand each other. 
 
 In the Report qf the Folklore Congress of 1891 
 (p. 65) I hnd that I said ‘ the suggestion that 
 exactly the same plot, in exactly the same shape, 
 and with exactly the same incidents, can have been 
 invented by several persons independently, seems to 
 me inconceivable,’ and on p. 74 I find M. Cosquin 
 alleging that my opinion is the very reverse, followed 
 by Mr. Jacobs (p. 85). I have tried to explain that 
 I believe in no such exact coincidences of imagination, 
 though how far precisely coincidence may go is a 
 delicate question. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Introduction 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I 
 
 The Method of Folklore 
 
 lO 
 
 The Bull-Roarer 
 
 . 29 
 
 The Myth of Cronus 
 
 45 
 
 Cupid, Psyche, and the ‘ Sun-Frog ’ . 
 
 . 64 
 
 A Far-Travelled Tale .... 
 
 00 
 
 Apollo and the Mouse ..... 
 
 . 103 
 
 Star Myths . 
 
 I 2 I 
 
 Moly and Mandragora 
 
 • 143 
 
 The ‘ Kalevala ’ ..... 
 
 156 
 
 The Divining Rod 
 
 . 180 
 
 Hottentot Mythology .... 
 
 197 
 
 Fetichism and the Infinite 
 
 . 212 
 
 The Early History of the Family . 
 
 245 
 
 The Art of Savages .... 
 
 . 276 
 
 INDEX 
 
 305 
 
Custom and Myth. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Though some of the essays in this volume have 
 appeared in various serials, the majority of them were 
 written expressly for their present purpose, and they 
 are now arranged in a designed order. During some 
 years of study of Greek, Indian, and savage mytho- 
 logies, I have become more and more impressed 
 with a sense of the inadequacy of the prevalent 
 method of comparative mythology. That method is 
 based on the belief that myths are the result of a 
 disease of language, as the pearl is the result of a 
 disease of the oyster. It is argued that men at some 
 period, or periods, spoke in a singular style of coloured 
 and concrete language, and that their children re- 
 tained the phrases of this language after losing hold 
 of the original meaning. The consequence was the 
 growth of myths about supposed persons, whose 
 names had originally been mere ‘ appellations.’ In 
 conformity with this hypothesis the method of com- 
 parative mythology examines the proper names which 
 occur in myths. The notion is that these names con- 
 tain a key to the meaning of the story, and that, in 
 
 B 
 
 
2 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 fact, of the story the names are the germs and the 
 oldest surviving part. 
 
 The objections to this method are so numerous 
 that it is difficult to state them briefly. The attempt, 
 how’ever, must be made. To desert the path opened 
 by the most eminent scholars is in itself presump- 
 tuous ; the least that an innovator can do is to 
 give his reasons for advancing in a novel direction. 
 If this were a question of scholarship merely, it 
 would be simply foolhardy to differ from men like 
 Max Muller, Adalbert Kuhn, Breal, and many 
 others. But a revolutionary mythologist is en- 
 couraged by finding that these scholars frequently 
 differ from each other. Examples will be found chiefly 
 in the essays styled ‘The Myth of Cronus,’ ‘A Far- 
 Travelled Tale,’ and ‘ Cupid and Psyche.’ Why, then, 
 do distinguished scholars and mythologists reach 
 such different goals ? Clearly because their method 
 is so precarious. They all analyse the names in 
 myths ; ^ but, where one scholar decides that the name 
 is originally Sanskrit, another holds that it is purely 
 Greek, and a third, perhaps, is all for an Accadian 
 etymology, or a Semitic derivation. Again, even 
 when scholars agree as to the original root from 
 which a name springs, they differ as much as ever as 
 to the meaning of the name in its present place. The 
 inference is that the analysis of names, on which the 
 whole edifice of philological ‘ comparative mythology ’ 
 
 ^ Some of the names in Greek myths are Greek, and intelligible. 
 A few others (such as Zeus) can be interpreted by aid of Sanskrit. 
 But even when the meaning of the name is known, we are little 
 advanced in interpretation of the myth. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 3 
 
 rests, is a foundation of shifting sand. The method 
 is called ‘ orthodox,’ but, among those who practise 
 it, there is none of the beautiful unanimity of ortho- 
 doxy. 
 
 These objections are not made by the unscholarly 
 anthropologist alone. Curtius has especially remarked 
 the difficulties which beset the ‘ etymological opera- 
 tions ’ in the case of proper names. ‘ Peculiarly 
 dubious and perilous is mythological etymology. Are 
 we to look for the sources of the divine names in as- 
 pects of nature, or in moral conceptions; in special 
 Greek geographical conditions, or in natural circum- 
 stances which are everywhere the same : in dawn with 
 her rays, or in clouds with their floods ; are we to seek 
 the origin of the names of heroes in things historical 
 and human, or in physical phenomena ? ’ ^ Professor 
 Tiele, of Leyden, says much the same thing : ‘The un- 
 certainties are great, and there is a constant risk of 
 taking jeux d' esprit iov scientific results.’ Every 
 
 name has, if we can discover or conjecture it, a mean- 
 ing. That meaning — be it ‘ large ’ or ‘ small,’ ‘ loud ’ 
 or ‘ bright,’ ‘ wise ’ or ‘ dark,’ ‘ swift ’ or ‘ slow ’ — is 
 always capable of being explained as an epithet of 
 the sun, or the cloud, or of both. Whatever, then, 
 a name may signify, some scholars will find that it 
 originally denoted the cloud, if they belong to one 
 school, or the sun or dawn, if they belong to another 
 faction. Obviously this process is a mere jeu d' esprit. 
 This logic would be admitted in no other science, 
 
 ^ Compare De Cara: Essainc Critico. 
 Revue de VHist. dcs Kel., ii. 136. 
 
4 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 and, by similar arguments, any name whatever might 
 be shown to be appropriate to a solar hero. 
 
 The scholarly method has now been applied for 
 many years, and what are the results ? The ideas 
 attained by the method have been so popularised that 
 they are actually made to enter into the education of 
 children, and are published in primers and catechisms 
 of mythology. But what has a discreet scholar to 
 say to the whole business ? ‘ The difficult task of 
 
 interpreting mythical names has, so far, produced few 
 certain results’ — so writes Otto Schrader.^ Though 
 Schrader still has hopes of better things, it is admitted 
 that the present results are highly disputable. In 
 England, where one set of these results has become 
 an article of faith, readers chiefly accept the opinions 
 of a single etymological school, and thus escape the 
 difficulty of making up their minds when scholars 
 differ. But differ scholars do, so widely and so often, 
 that scarcely any solid advantages have been gained 
 in mythology from the philological method. 
 
 The method of philological mythology is thus 
 discredited by the disputes of its adherents. The 
 system may be called orthodox, but it is an ortho- 
 doxy which alters with every new scholar who enters 
 the sacred enclosure. Even were there more har- 
 mony, the analysis of names could throw little light 
 on myths. In stories the names may well be, and 
 often demonstrably are, the latest, not the original, 
 feature. Tales, at first told of ‘ Somebody,’ get new 
 names attached to them, and obtain a new local 
 habitation, wherever they wander. ‘ One of the 
 
 - SpracJivcrglcicInnifr uud Urgcschichtc, p. 431. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 5 
 
 leading personages to be met in the traditions of the 
 world is really no more than — Somebody. There is 
 nothing this wondrous creature cannot achieve ; one 
 only restriction binds him at all — that the name he 
 assumes shall have some sort of congruity with the 
 office he undertakes, and even from this he oftentimes 
 breaks loosed^ We may be pretty sure that the ad- 
 ventures of Jason, Perseus, Q^dipous, were originally 
 told only of ‘ Somebody.’ The names are later addi- 
 tions, and vary in various lands. A glance at the 
 essay on ‘ Cupid and Psyche ’ will show that a history 
 like theirs is known, where neither they nor their 
 counterparts in the Veda, Urvasi and Pururavas were 
 ever heard of ; while the incidents of the Jason legend 
 are familiar where no Greek word was ever spoken. 
 Finally, the names in common use among savages 
 are usually derived from natural phenomena, often 
 from clouds, sky, sun, dawn. If, then, a name in a 
 myth can be proved to mean cloud, sky, sun, or what 
 not (and usually one set of scholars find clouds 
 where others see the dawn), we must not instantly 
 infer that the myth is a nature-myth. Though, 
 doubtless, the heroes in it were never real people, 
 the names are as much common names of real people 
 in the savage state, as Smith and Brown are names 
 of civilised men. 
 
 For all these reasons, but chiefly because of the 
 fact that stories are usually anonymous at first, that 
 names are added later, and that stories naturally 
 crystallise round any famous name, heroic, divine, or 
 human, the process of analysis of names is most pre- 
 
 ^ Prim. Cult., i. 394. 
 
6 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 carious and untrustworthy. A story is told of Zeus : 
 Zeus means sky, and the story is interpreted by 
 scholars as a sky myth. The modern interpreter 
 forgets, first, that to the myth-maker sky did not at 
 all mean the same thing as it means to him. Sky 
 meant, not an airy, infinite, radiant vault, but a person, 
 and, most likely, a savage person. Secondly, the 
 interpreter forgets that the tale (say the tale of Zeus, 
 Demeter, and the mutilated Ram) may have been 
 originally anonymous, and only later attributed to 
 Zeus, as unclaimed jests are attributed to Sheridan or 
 Talleyrand. Consequently no heavenly phenomena 
 will be the basis and explanation of the story. If 
 one thing in mythology be certain, it is that myths 
 are always changing masters, that the old tales are 
 always being told with new names. Where, for ex- 
 ample, is the value of a philological analysis of the 
 name of Jason ? As will be seen in the essay ‘ A Far- 
 Travelled Tale,’ the analysis of the name of Jason is 
 fanciful, precarious, disputed, while the essence of his 
 myth is current in Samoa, Finland, North America, 
 Madagascar, and other lands, where the name was 
 never heard, and where the characters in the story 
 have other names or are anonymous. 
 
 For these reasons, and others too many to be ad- 
 duced here, I have ventured to differ from the current 
 opinion that myths must be interpreted chiefly by 
 philological analysis of names. The system adopted 
 here is explained in the first essay, called ‘ The 
 Method of Folklore.’ The name. Folklore, is not 
 a good one, but ‘ comparative mythology ’ is usually 
 claimed exclusively by the philological interpreters. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 7 
 
 The second essay, ‘ The Bull- Roarer,’ is intended 
 to show that certain peculiarities in the Greek mys- 
 teries occur also in the mysteries of savages, and that 
 on Greek soil they are survivals of savagery. 
 
 ‘ The Myth of Cronus ’ tries to prove that the first 
 part of the legend is a savage nature-myth, surviving 
 in Greek religion, while the sequel is a set of ideas 
 common to savages. 
 
 ‘ Cupid and Psyche ’ traces another Aryan myth 
 among savage races, and attempts to show that the 
 central incident of the tale may have had its origin 
 in a rule of barbarous etiquette. 
 
 ‘A Far-Travelled Tale’ examines a part of the Jason 
 myth. This myth appears neither to be an explana- 
 tion of natural phenomena (like part of ‘The Myth 
 of Cronus ’), nor based on a widespread custom (like 
 ‘ Cupid and Psyche’). The question is asked whether 
 the story may have been diffused by slow filtration 
 from race to race all over the globe, as there seems 
 no reason why it should have been invented separately 
 (as a myth explanatory of natural phenomena or of 
 customs might be) in many different places. 
 
 ‘ Apollo and the Mouse ’ suggests hypothetically, 
 as a possible explanation of the tie between the God 
 and the Beast, that Apollo-worship superseded, but 
 did not eradicate, Totemism. The suggestion is little 
 more than a conjecture. 
 
 ‘ Star Myths ’ points out that Greek myths of stars 
 are a survival from the savage stage of fancy in which 
 such stories are natural. 
 
 ‘ Moly and Mandragora ’ is a study of the Greek, 
 the modern, and the Hottentot folklore of magical 
 
8 
 
 CUvSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 herbs, with a criticism of a scholarly and philological 
 hypothesis, according to which Moly is the dog-star 
 and Circe the moon. 
 
 ‘The Kalevala’ is an account of the Finnish 
 national poem; of all poems that in which the popular, 
 as opposed to the artistic, spirit is strongest. The 
 Kalevala is thus a link between Mdrchcn and Volks- 
 licder on one side, and epic poetry on the other. 
 
 ‘ The Divining Rod ’ is a study of a European and 
 civilised superstition, which is singular in its compara- 
 tive lack of copious savage analogues. 
 
 ‘ Hottentot Mythology ’ is a criticism of the philo- 
 logical method, applied to savage myth. 
 
 ‘ Fetichism and the Infinite ’ is a review of Mr. 
 Max Muller’s theory that a sense of the Infinite is 
 the germ of religion, and that Fetichism is secondary,, 
 and a corruption. This essay also contains a defence of 
 the evidence on which the anthropological method relies. 
 
 The remaining essays are studies of the ‘ History 
 of the Family,’ and of ‘ Savage Art.’ 
 
 The essay on ‘Savage Art’ is reprinted, by the kind 
 permission of M^srs. Cassell & Co., from two num- 
 bers (April and May, 1882) of the Magazine of Art. 
 I have to thank the editors and publishers of the 
 Contemporary Review, the Cornhill Magazine, Fraser's 
 Magazine, and Mind, for leave to republish ‘ The 
 Early History of the Family,’ ‘ The Divining Rod,’ 
 and ‘ Star Myths,’ ‘ The Kalevala,’ and ‘ Fetichism.’ 
 A few sentences in ‘ The Bull-Roarer,’ and ‘ Hot- 
 tentot Mythology,’ appeared in essays in the Satur- 
 day Review, and some lines of ‘ The Method of 
 Folklore ’ in the Guardian, To the editors of those 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 9 
 
 journals also I owe thanks for their courteous per- 
 mission to make this use of my old articles. 
 
 I must apologise for the controversial matter in the 
 volume. Controversy is always a thing to be avoided, 
 but, in this particular case, when a system opposed 
 to the prevalent method has to be advocated, con- 
 troversy is unavoidable. My respect for the learning 
 of my distinguished adversaries is none the less great 
 because I am not convinced by their logic, and because 
 my doubts are excited by their differences. 
 
10 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 THE METHOD OF FOLKLORE. 
 
 After the heavy rain of a thunderstorm has washed 
 the soil, it sometimes happens that a child, or a rustic, 
 finds a wedge-shaped piece of metal or a few tri- 
 angular flints in a field or near a road. There was 
 no such piece of metal, there were no such flints, lying 
 there yesterday, and the finder is puzzled about the 
 origin of the objects on which he has lighted. He 
 carries them home, and the village wisdom determines 
 that the wedge-shaped piece of metal is a ‘ thunder- 
 bolt,’ or that the bits of flint are ‘ elf-shots,’ the heads 
 of fairy arrows. Such things are still treasured in 
 remote nooks of England, and the ‘ thunder-bolt ’ is 
 applied to cure certain maladies by its touch. 
 
 As for the fairy arrows, we know that even in 
 ancient Etruria they were looked on as magical, for 
 we sometimes see their points set, as amulets, in the 
 gold of Etruscan necklaces. In Perugia the arrow- 
 heads are still sold as charms. All educated people, 
 of course, have long been aware that the metal wedge 
 is a celt, or ancient bronze axe-head, and that it was 
 not fairies, but the forgotten peoples of this island, 
 who used the arrows with the tips of flint. Thunder is 
 only so far connected with them that the heavy rains 
 
THE METHOD OF FOLKLORE. 
 
 II 
 
 loosen the surface soil, and lay bare its long-hidden 
 secrets. 
 
 There is a science, Archaeology, which collects and 
 compares the material relics of old races, the axes and 
 arrow-heads. There is a form of study, Folklore, which 
 collects and compares the similar but immaterial relics 
 of old races, the surviving superstitions and stories, 
 the ideas which are in our time but not of it. Pro- 
 perly speaking, folklore is only concerned with the 
 legends, customs, beliefs, of the Folk, of the people, of 
 the classes which have least been altered by education, 
 which have shared least in progress. But the stu- 
 dent of folklore soon finds that these unprogressive 
 classes retain many of the beliefs and ways of savages, 
 just as the Hebridean people used spindle-whorls of 
 stone, and bake clay pots without the aid of the 
 wheel, like modern South Sea Islanders, or like their 
 own prehistoric ancestors.^ The student of folklore is 
 thus led to examine the usages, myths, and ideas of 
 savages, which are still retained, in rude enough shape, 
 by the European peasantry. Lastly, he observes that 
 a few similar customs and ideas survive in the most 
 conservative elements of the life of educated peoples, 
 in ritual, ceremonial, and religious traditions and 
 myths. Though such remains are rare in England, 
 we may note the custom of leading the dead soldier’s 
 horse behind his master to the grave, a relic of days 
 when the horse would have been sacrificed.^ We may 
 
 ^ A study of the contemporary stone age in Scotland will be found 
 in Mitchell’s Past and Present. 
 
 About twenty years ago, the widow of an Irish farmer, in Derry, 
 killed her deceased husband’s horse. When remonstrated with by her 
 
12 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 observe the persistence of the ceremony by which the 
 monarch, at his coronation, takes his seat on the sacred 
 stone of Scone, probably an ancient fetich stone. Not 
 to speak, here, of our own religious traditions, the old 
 vein of savage rite and belief is found very near the 
 surface of ancient Greek religion. It wants but some 
 stress of circumstance, something answering to the 
 storm shower that reveals the flint arrow-heads, to 
 bring savage ritual to the surface of classical religion. 
 In sore need, a human victim was only too likely to 
 be demanded ; while a feast-day, or a mystery, set the 
 Greeks dancing serpent-dances or bear-dances like 
 Red Indians, or swimming with sacred pigs, or leaping 
 about in imitation of wolves, or holding a dog-feast, 
 and offering dog’s flesh to the gods.^ Thus the student 
 of folklore soon finds that he must enlarge his field, 
 and examine, not only popular European story and 
 practice, but savage ways and ideas, and the myths 
 and usages of the educated classes in civilised races. 
 In this extended sense the term ‘folklore’ will fre- 
 quently be used in the following essays. The idea 
 of the writer is that mythology cannot fruitfully be 
 studied apart from folklore, while some knowledge 
 of anthropology is required in both sciences. 
 
 The science of Folklore, if we may call it a science, 
 finds everywhere, close to the surface of civilised life, 
 the remains of ideas as old as the stone elf-shots, older 
 than the celt of bronze. In proverbs and riddles, and 
 
 landlord, she said, ‘ Would you have my man go about on foot in the 
 next world ? ’ She was quite in the savage intellectual stage. 
 
 ^ ‘ At the solemn festival suppers, ordained for the honour of the 
 gods, they forget not to serve up certain dishes of young whelp’s flesh ’ 
 (Pliny, H. iV., xxix. 4). 
 
THE METHOD OF FOLKLORE. 
 
 13 
 
 nursery tales and superstitions, we detect the relics 
 of a stage of thought, which is dying out in Europe, 
 but which still exists in many parts of the world. 
 Now, just as the flint arrow-heads are scattered every- 
 where, in all the continents and isles, and everywhere 
 are much alike, and bear no very definite marks of 
 the special influence of race, so it is with the habits 
 and legends investigated by the student of folklore. 
 The stone arrow-head buried in a Scottish cairn is 
 like those which were interred with Algonquin chiefs. 
 The flints found in Egyptian soil, or beside the 
 tumulus on the plain of Marathon, nearly resemble 
 the stones which tip the reed arrow of the modern 
 Samoyed. Perhaps only a skilled experience could 
 discern, in a heap of such arrow-heads, the specimens 
 which are found in America or Africa from those 
 which are unearthed in Europe. Even in the pro- 
 ducts of more advanced industry, we see early pottery, 
 for example, so closely alike everywhere that, in the 
 British Museum, Mexican vases have, ere now, been 
 mixed up on the same shelf with archaic vessels from 
 Greece. In the same way, if a superstition or a riddle 
 were offered to a student of folklore, he would have 
 much difficulty in guessing its provenance, and naming 
 the race from which it was brought. Suppose you 
 tell a folklorist that, in a certain country, when any one 
 sneezes, people say ‘ Good luck to you,’ the student 
 cannot say a priori what country you refer to, what 
 race you have in your thoughts. It may be Florida, 
 as Florida was when first discovered ; it may be Zulu- 
 land, or West Africa, or ancient Rome, or Homeric 
 Greece, or Palestine. In all these, and many other 
 
14 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 regions, the sneeze was welcomed as an auspicious 
 omen. The little superstition is as widely distributed 
 as the flint arrow-heads. Just as the object and use 
 of the arrow-heads became intelligible when we found 
 similar weapons in actual use among savages, so the 
 salutation to the sneezer becomes intelligible when 
 we learn that the savage has a good reason for it. 
 He thinks the sneeze expels an evil spirit. Proverbs, 
 again, and riddles are as universally scattered, and 
 the Wolufs puzzle over the same devinettes as the 
 Scotch schoolboy or the Breton peasant. Thus, for 
 instance, the Wolufs of Senegal ask each other, ‘ What 
 flies for ever, and rests never ?’ — Answer, ‘ The Wind.’ 
 ‘ Who are the comrades that always fight, and never 
 hurt each other?’ — ‘The Teeth.’ In France, as we 
 read in the ‘ Recueil de Calembours,’ the people ask, 
 ‘ What runs faster than a horse, crosses water, and is 
 not wet?’ — Answer, ‘The Sun.’ The Samoans put 
 the riddle, ‘ A man who stands between two ravenous 
 fishes ? ’ — Answer, ‘ The tongue between the teeth.’ 
 Again, ‘ There are twenty brothers, each with a hat on 
 his head ? ’ — Answer, ‘ Fingers and toes, with nails for 
 hats.’ This is like the French ‘ tm perc a douze fils ? ’ — 
 ‘ Fafid ^ A comparison of M. Rolland’s ‘ Devinettes ’ 
 with the Woluf conundrums of Boilat, the Samoan 
 examples in Turner’s ‘ Samoa,’ and the Scotch enigmas 
 collected by Chambers, will show the identity of 
 peasant and savage humour. 
 
 A few examples, less generally known, may be 
 given to prove that the beliefs of folklore are not 
 peculiar to any one race or stock of men. The first 
 ^ Compare Cleobulus, Fr. 2 : Bergk, Lj-r. Gr., iii. 201. Ed. 4. 
 
THK METHOD OF FOLKLORE. 
 
 15 
 
 case is remarkable : it occurs in Mexico and Ceylon, 
 and has been found in other regions. In Maonillan's 
 Ma^azine'^ is published a paper by Mrs. Edwards, 
 called ‘ The Mystery of the Pezazi.’ The events 
 described in this narrative occurred on August 
 28, 1876, in a bungalow some thirty miles from 
 Badiella. The narrator occupied a new house on 
 an estate called Allagalla. Her native servants 
 soon asserted that the place was haunted by a 
 Pezazi. The Pmglish visitors saw and heard no- 
 thing extraordinary till a certain night : an abridged 
 account of what happened then may be given in the 
 words of Mrs. Edwards : — 
 
 Wrap[)ed in dreams, I lay on the night in c}uestion 
 tranquilly sleeping, but gradually roused to a perce[)tion that 
 discordant sounds disturbed the serenity of my slumber. 
 Loth to stir, I still dosed on, the sounds, however, becoming, 
 as it seemed, more determined to make themselves heard ! 
 and I awoke to the consciousness that they proceeded 
 from a belt of adjacent jungle, and resembled the noise that 
 would he produced by some person felling timber. 
 
 Shutting my ears to the disturbance, 1 made no sign, 
 
 until, with an expression of impatience, E suddenly 
 
 started up, when I laid a detaining grasp upon his arm, 
 murmuring that there was no need to think of rising at 
 present — it must be quite early, and the kitchen cooly was 
 
 doubtless cutting firewood in good time. E responded, 
 
 in a tone of slight contempt, that no one could be cutting 
 firewood at that hour, and the sounds were more suggestive 
 of felling jungle ; and he then inquired how long 1 had 
 been listening to them. Now thoroughly aroused I replied 
 that I had heard the sounds for some time, at first confusing 
 ’ Nov., 1880. 
 
i6 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 them with my dreams, but soon sufficiently awakening to 
 the fact that they were no mere phantoms of my imagina- 
 tion, but a reality. During our conversation the noises 
 became more distinct and loud ; blow after blow resounded, 
 as of the axe descending upon the tree, followed by the 
 crash of the falling timber. Renewed blows announced 
 the repetition of the operations on another tree, and con- 
 tinued till several were devastated. 
 
 It is unnecessary to tell more of the tale. In 
 spite of minute examinations and close search, no 
 solution of the mystery of the noises, on this or 
 any other occasion, was ever found. The natives, of 
 course, attributed the disturbance to the Pezazi or 
 goblin. No one perhaps has asserted that the Aztecs 
 were connected by ties of race with the people of 
 Ceylon. Yet when the Spaniards conquered Mexico, 
 and when Sahagun (one of the earliest missionaries) 
 collected the legends of the people, he found them, 
 like the Cingalese, strong believers in the mystic 
 tree-felling. We translate Sahagun’s account of the 
 ‘ midnight axe ’ : — 
 
 When so any man heareth the sound of strokes in the 
 night as if one were felling trees, he reckons it an evil 
 boding. And this sound they call youaltepuztli {yoiialli, 
 night ; and tepuztli^ copper), which signifies ‘ the midnight 
 hatchet.’ This noise cometh about the time of the first 
 sleep, when all men slumber soundly, and the night is still. 
 The sound of strokes smitten was first noted by the temple- 
 servants, called tlamacazque^ at the hour when they go in 
 the night to make their offering of reeds or of boughs of 
 pine, for so was their custom, and this penance they did on 
 the neighbouring hills, and that when the night was far spent. 
 Whenever they heard such a sound as one makes when he 
 
THE METHOD OF FOLKLORE. 17 
 
 k ' 
 
 splits wood with an axe (a noise that may be heard afar 
 off), they drew thence an omen of evil, and were afraid 
 and said that the sounds were part of the witchery of 
 Tezcatlipoca, that often thus dismayeth men who journey in 
 the night. Now, when tidings of these things came to a 
 certain brave man, one exercised in war, h.e drew near, being 
 guided by the sound, till he came to the very cause of the 
 hubbub. And when he came upon it, with difficulty he 
 caught it, for the thing was hard to catch ; natheless at last 
 he overtook that which ran before him ; and behold, it was 
 a man without a heart, and, on either side of the chest, two 
 holes that opened and shut, and so made the noise. Then the 
 man put his hand within the breast of the figure and grasped 
 tlie breast and shook it hard, demanding some grace or gift. 
 
 As a rule,' the grace demanded was power to make 
 captives in war. The curious coincidence of the 
 ‘ midnight axe,’ occurring in lands so remote as 
 Ceylon and Mexico, and the singular attestation by 
 an English lady of the actual existence of the dis- 
 turbance, makes \\\\^ yoiialtcpuztli one of the quaintest 
 things in the province of the folklorist. But, what- 
 ever the cause of the noise, or of the beliefs connected 
 with the noise, may be, no one would explain them as 
 the result of community of race between Cingalese 
 and Aztecs. Nor would this explanation be offered 
 to account for the Aztec and English belief that the 
 creaking of furniture is an omen of death in a house. 
 Obviously, these opinions are the expression of a 
 common state of superstitious fancy, not the signs of 
 an original community of origin.^ 
 
 ’ Mr. Leslie Stephen points out to me that De Quincey’s brother 
 heard ‘ the midnight axe’ in the Galapagos Islands {Autobiographical 
 Sketches^ ‘ My Brother ’). 
 
 C 
 
i8 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 Let US take another piece of folklore. All 
 North-country English folk know the Kcrnababy. 
 The custom of the ‘ Kernababy ’ is commonly ob- 
 served in England, or, at all events, in Scotland, 
 where the writer has seen many a kernababy. The 
 last gleanings of the last field are bound up in a 
 rude imitation of the human shape, and dressed 
 in some tag-rags of finery. The usage has fallen 
 into the conservative hands of children, but of old 
 ‘ the Maiden ’ was a regular image of the harvest 
 goddess, which, with a sickle and sheaves in her 
 arms, attended by a crowd of reapers, and accom- 
 panied with music, followed the last carts home to 
 the farm.^ It is odd enough that ‘ the Maiden ’ should 
 exactly translate Kopr], the old Sicilian name of the 
 daughter of Demeter. ‘ The Maiden ’ has dwindled, 
 then, among us to the rudimentary kernababy ; but 
 ancient Peru had her own Maiden, her Harvest 
 Goddess. Here it is easy to trace the natural idea at 
 the basis of the superstitious practice which links the 
 shores of the Pacific with our own northern coast. 
 Just as a portion of the yule-log and of the Christ- 
 mas bread were kept all the year through, a kind of 
 nest-egg of plenteous food and fire, so the kerna- 
 baby, English or Peruvian, is an earnest that corn 
 will not fail all through the year, till next harvest 
 comes. For this reason the kernababy used to be 
 treasured from autumn’s end to autumn’s end, though 
 now it commonly disappears very soon after the 
 
 ^ ‘ Ah, once again may I plant the great fan on her corn-heap, 
 while she stands smiling by, Demeter of the threshing floor, with 
 sheaves and poppies in her hands ’ (Theocritus, vii. 155-157). 
 
THE METHOD OE FOLKLORE. 
 
 19 
 
 harvest home. It is thus that Acosta describes in 
 Grimston’s old translation (1604) the Peruvian ker- 
 nababy and the Peruvian harvest home : — 
 
 This feast is made comming from the chacra or farme unto 
 the house, saying certaine songs, and praying that the Mays 
 (maize) may long continue, the which they call Mama cora. 
 
 What a chance this word offers to etymologists 
 of the old school : how promptly they would recog- 
 nise, in mama mother — Mrrjp, and in cora — Koprj, the 
 Mother and the Maiden, the feast of Demeter and 
 Persephone ! However, the days of that old school 
 of antiquarianism are numbered. To return to the 
 Peruvian harvest home : — 
 
 They take a certaine portion of the most fruitefull of the 
 Mays that growes in their farmes, the which they put in a 
 certaine granary which they do calle Pirua, with certaine 
 ceremonies, watching three nightes ; they put this Mays in 
 the richest garments they have, and, being thus wrapped and 
 dressed, they worship this Pirua, and hold it in great venera- 
 tion, saying it is the Mother of the Mays of their inheritances, 
 and that by this means the Mays augments and is preserved. 
 In this moneth they make a j)articular sacrifice, and the 
 witches demand of this Pirua, ‘ if it hath strength sufficient 
 to continue until the next yeare,’ and if it answers ‘ no,’ then 
 they carry this Mays to the farme to burne, whence they 
 brought it, according to every man’s power, then they make 
 another Pirua, with the same ceremonies, saying that they 
 renue it, to the ende that the seedeof the Mays may not perish. 
 
 The idea that the maize can speak need not surprise 
 us ; the Mexican held much the same belief, accord- 
 ing to Sahagun : — 
 
 It was thought that if some grains of maize fell on the 
 
20 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 ground he who saw them lying there was bound to lift them, 
 wherein, if he failed, he harmed the maize, which plained 
 itself of him to God, saying, ‘ Lord, punish this man, who 
 saw me fallen and raised me not again ; punish him with 
 famine, that he may learn not to hold me in dishonour.’ 
 
 Well, in all this affair of the Scotch kernababy, 
 and the Peruvian Mama cora, we need no explanation 
 beyond the common simple ideas of human nature. 
 We are not obliged to hold, either that the Peruvians 
 and Scotch are akin by blood, nor that, at some for- 
 gotten time, they met each other, and borrowed each 
 other’s superstitions.’ Again, when we find Odysseus 
 sacrificing a black sheep to the dead,^ and when we 
 read that the Ovahereroes in South Africa also 
 appease with a black sheep the spirits of the de- 
 parted, we do not feel it necessary to hint that the 
 Ovahereroes are of Greek descent, or have borrowed 
 their ritual from the Greeks. The connection be- 
 tween the colour black, and mourning for the dead, 
 is natural and almost universal. 
 
 Examples like these might be adduced in any 
 number. We might show how, in magic, negroes of 
 Barbadoes make clay effigies of their enemies, and 
 pierce them, just as Greeks did in Plato’s time, or the 
 men of Accad in remotest antiquity. We might re- 
 mark the Australian black putting sharp bits of quartz 
 in the tracks of an enemy who has gone by, that the 
 enemy may be lamed ; and we might point to Boris 
 Godunof forbidding the same practice among the 
 Russians. We might watch Scotch, and Australians, 
 
 ^ In Mr. Frazer’s Golden Bough is a very large collection of 
 similar harvest rites. 
 
 - Odyssey, xi. 32. 
 
THE METHOD OF FOLKLORE. 
 
 21 
 
 and Jews, and French, and Aztecs spreading dust 
 round the body of a dead man, that the footprints of 
 his ghost, or of other ghosts, may be detected next 
 morning. We might point to a similar device in a 
 modern novel, where the presence of a ghost is sus- 
 pected, as proof of the similar workings of the 
 Australian mind and of the mind of Mrs. Riddell. 
 We shall later turn to ancient Greece, and show how 
 the serpent-dances, the habit of smearing the body 
 with clay, and other odd rites of the mysteries, were 
 common to Hellenic religion, and to the religion of 
 African, Australian, and American tribes. 
 
 Now, with regard to all these strange usages, 
 what is the method of folklore ? The method is, 
 when an apparently irrational and anomalous custom 
 is found in any country, to look for a country where 
 a similar practice is found, and where the practice is 
 no longer irrational and anomalous, but in harmony 
 with the manners and ideas of the people among 
 whom it prevails. That Greeks should dance about 
 in their mysteries with harmless serpents in their 
 hands looks quite unintelligible. When a wild tribe 
 of Red Indians does the same thing, as a trial of 
 courage, with real rattlesnakes, we understand the 
 Red Man’s motives, and may conjecture that similar 
 motives once existed among the ancestors of the 
 Greeks. Our method, then, is to compare the seem- 
 ingly meaningless customs or manners of civilised 
 races with the similar customs and manners which 
 exist among the uncivilised and still retain their 
 meaning. It is not necessary for comparison of this 
 sort that the uncivilised and the civilised race should 
 be of the same stock, nor need we prove that they 
 
22 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 were ever in contact with each other. Similar con- 
 ditions of mind produce similar practices, apart from 
 identity of race, or borrowing of ideas and manners. 
 
 Let us return to the example of the flint arrow- 
 heads. Everywhere neolithic arrow-heads are pretty 
 much alike. The cause of the resemblance is no more 
 than this, that men, with the same needs, the same 
 materials, and the same rude instruments, everywhere 
 produced the same kind of arrow-head. No hypo- 
 thesis of interchange of ideas nor of community of 
 race is needed to explain the resemblance of form in 
 the missiles. Very early pottery in any region is, for 
 the same causes, like very early pottery in any other 
 region. The same sort of similarity was explained by 
 the same resemblances in human nature, when we 
 touched on the identity of magical practices and of 
 superstitious beliefs. This method is fairly well es- 
 tablished and orthodox when we deal with usages 
 and superstitious beliefs ; but may we apply the same 
 method when we deal with myths ? 
 
 Here a difficulty occurs. Mythologists,asarule, are 
 averse to the method of folklore. They think it scientific 
 to compare only the myths of races which speak lan- 
 guages of the same family, and of races which have, 
 in historic times, been actually in proved contact with 
 each other. Thus, most mythologists hold it correct 
 to compare Greek, Slavonic, Celtic, and Indian stories, 
 because Greeks, Slavs, Celts, and Hindoos all speak 
 languages of the same family. Again, they hold it 
 correct to compare Chaldsean and Greek myths, be- 
 cause the Greeks and the Chaldfeans were brought 
 into contact through the Phoenicians, and by other 
 
THE METHOD OF FOLKLORE. 
 
 23 
 
 intermediaries, such as the Hittites. But the same 
 mythologists will vow that it is unscientific to com- 
 pare a Maori or a Hottentot or an Eskimo myth with 
 an Aryan story, because Maoris and Eskimo and 
 Hottentots do not speak languages akin to that of 
 Greece, nor can we show that the ancestors of 
 Greeks, Maoris, Hottentots, and Eskimo were ever 
 in contact with each other in historical times. 
 
 Now the peculiarity of the method of folklore is 
 that it will venture to compare (with due caution and 
 due examination of evidence) the myths of the most 
 widely severed races. Holding that myth is a pro- 
 duct of the early human fancy, working on the most 
 rudimentary knowledge of the outer world, the stu- 
 dent of folklore thinks that differences of race do not 
 much affect the early mythopceic faculty. He will 
 not be surprised if Greeks and Australian blacks are 
 in the same tale. 
 
 In each case, he holds, all the circumstances of 
 the case must be examined and considered. Eor 
 instance, when the Australians tell a myth about the 
 Pleiades very like the Greek mytl^of the Pleiades, 
 we must ask a number of questions. Is the Austra- 
 lian version authentic ? Can the people who told it 
 have heard it from a European ? If these questions 
 are answered so as to make it apparent that the 
 Australian Pleiad myth is of genuine native origin, 
 we need not fly to the conclusion that the Australians 
 are a lost and forlorn branch of the Aryan race, 
 Two other hypotheses present themselves. Eirst, 
 the human species is of unknown antiquity. In the 
 moderate allowance of 250,000 years, there is time 
 
24 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 for stories to have wandered all round the world, as 
 the Aggry beads of Ashanti have probably crossed 
 the continent from Egypt, as the Asiatic jade (if 
 Asiatic it be) has arrived in Swiss lake-dwellings, as 
 an African trade-cowry is said to have been found 
 in a Cornish barrow, as an Indian Ocean shell has 
 been discovered in a prehistoric bone-cave in Poland. 
 This slow filtration of tales is not absolutely out of the 
 question. Two causes would especially help to trans- 
 mit myths. The first is slavery and slave-stealing, 
 the second is the habit of capturing brides from alien 
 stocks,and the law which forbids marriage with a woman 
 of a man’s own family. Slaves and captured brides 
 would bring their native legends among alien peoples. 
 
 But there is another possible way of explaining 
 the resemblance (granting that it is proved) of the 
 Greek and Australian Pleiad myth. The object of 
 both myths is to account for the grouping and other 
 phenomena of the constellations. May not similar 
 explanatory stories have occurred to the ancestors of 
 the Australians, and to the ancestors of the Greeks, 
 however remote their home, while they were still in 
 the savage condition ? The best way to investigate 
 this point is to collect all known savage and civilised 
 stellar myths, and see what points they have in 
 common. If they all agree in character, though the 
 Greek tales are full of grace, while those of the 
 Australians or Brazilians are rude enough, we may 
 plausibly account for the similarity of myths, as we 
 accounted for the similarity of Hint arrow-heads. 
 The myths, like the arrow-heads, resemble each other 
 because they were originally framed to meet the same 
 
THE METHOD OE EOLKLORE. 
 
 25 
 
 needs out of the same material. In the case of the 
 arrow-heads, the need was for something hard, heavy, 
 and sharp - the material was flint. In the case of the 
 myths, the need was to explain certain phenomena — 
 the material (so to speak) was an early state of the 
 human mind, to which all objects seemed equally 
 endowed with human personality, and to which no 
 metamorphosis appeared impossible. 
 
 In the following essays, then, the myths and 
 customs of various peoples will be compared, even 
 when these peoples talk languages of alien families, 
 and have never (so far as history shows us) been in 
 actual contact. Our method throughout will be to 
 place the usage, or myth, which is unintelligible when 
 found among a civilised race, beside the similar myth 
 which is intelligible enough when it is found among 
 savages. A mean term will be found in the folklore 
 preserved by the non-progressive classes in a progres- 
 sive people. This folklore represents, in the midst of a 
 civilised race, the savage ideas out of which civilisation 
 has been evolved. The conclusion will usually be that 
 the fact which puzzles us by its presence in civilisation 
 is a relic surviving from the time when the ancestors 
 of a civilised race were in the state of savagery. By 
 this method it is not necessary that ‘ some sort of 
 genealogy should be established ’ between the Aus- 
 tralian and the Greek narrators of a similar myth, nor 
 between the Greek and Australian possessors of a 
 similar usage. The hypothesis will be that the myth, 
 or usage, is common to both races, not because of 
 original community of stock, not because of contact 
 and borrowing, but because the ancestors of the 
 
26 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 Greeks passed through the savage intellectual con- 
 dition in which we find the Australians. 
 
 The questions may be asked, Has race nothing, 
 then, to do with myth ? Do peoples never consciously 
 borrow myths from each other ? The answer is, that 
 race has a great deal to do with the development 
 of myth, if it be race which confers on a people its 
 national genius, and its capacity of becoming civilised. 
 If race does this, then race affects, in the most powerful 
 manner, the ultimate development of myth. No one is 
 likely to confound a Homeric myth with a myth from 
 the Edda, nor either with a myth from a Brahmana, 
 though in all three cases the substance, the original 
 set of ideas, may be much the same. In all three you 
 have anthropomorphic gods, capable of assuming ani- 
 mal shapes, tricky, capricious, limited in many undivine 
 ways, yet endowed with magical powers. So far the 
 mythical gods of Homer, of the Edda, of any of 
 the Brahmanas, are on a level with each other, and 
 not much above the gods of savage mythology. This 
 stuff of myth is quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab 
 omnibus, and is the original gift of the savage intellect. 
 But the final treatment, the ultimate literary form of 
 the myth, varies in each race. Homeric gods, like Red 
 Indian, Thlinkeet, or Australian gods, can assume the 
 shapes of birds. But when we read, in Homer, of the 
 arming of Athene, the hunting of Artemis, the vision 
 of golden Aphrodite, the apparition of Hermes, like a 
 young man when the dower of youth is loveliest, then 
 we recognise the effect of race upon myth, the effect of 
 the Greek genius at work on rude material. Between 
 the Olympians and a Thlinkeet god there is all the 
 difference that exists between the Demeter of Cnidos 
 
THE METHOD OF FOLKLORE. 
 
 27 
 
 and an image from Easter Island. Again, the Scan- 
 dinavian gods, when their tricks are laid aside, when 
 Odin is neither assuming the shape of worm nor of 
 raven, have a martial dignity, a noble enduring spirit 
 of their own. Race comes out in that, as it does in the 
 endless sacrifices, soma drinking, magical austerities, 
 and puerile follies of Vedic and Brahmanic gods, the 
 deities of a people fallen early into its sacerdotage and 
 priestly second childhood. Thus race declares itself in 
 the ultimate literary form and character of mythology, 
 while the common savage basis and stuff of myths may 
 be clearly discerned in the horned, and cannibal, and 
 shape-shifting, and adulterous gods of Greece, of India, 
 of the North. They all show their common savage 
 origin, when the poet neglects Freya’s command and 
 tells of what the gods did ‘ in the morning of Time.’ 
 As to borrowing, we have already shown that in 
 prehistoric times there must have been much trans- 
 mission of myth. The migrations of peoples, the 
 traffic in slaves, the law of exogamy, which always 
 keeps bringing alien women into the families — all 
 these things favoured the migration of myth. But the 
 process lies behind history : we can only guess at it, we 
 can seldom trace a popular legend on its travels. In the 
 case of the cultivated ancient peoples, we know that 
 they themselves believed they had borrowed their re- 
 ligions from each other. When the Greeks first found 
 the Egyptians practising mysteries like their own, 
 they leaped to the conclusion that their own rites had 
 been imported from h-gypt. We, who know that both 
 Greek and Egyptian rites had many points in common 
 with those of Mandans, Zunis, Bushmen, Australians 
 — people quite unconnected with Egypt — feel less 
 
28 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 confident about the hypothesis of borrowing. We 
 may, indeed, regard Adonis, and Zeus Bagaeus, and 
 Melicertes, as importations from Phoenicia. In later 
 times, too, the Greeks, and still more the Romans, 
 extended a free hospitality to alien gods and legends, 
 to Serapis, Isis, the wilder Dionysiac revels, and so 
 forth. But this habit of borrowing was regarded with 
 disfavour by pious conservatives, and was probably, 
 in the width of its hospitality at least, an innovation. 
 As Tiele remarks, we cannot derive Dionysus from 
 the Assyrian Daian nisi ‘judge of men,’ a name of 
 the solar god Samas, without ascertaining that the 
 wine-god exercised judicial functions, and was a god 
 of the sun. These derivations, ‘ shocking to common- 
 sense,’ are to be distrusted as part of the intoxication 
 of new learning. Some Assyrian scholars actually 
 derive Hades from Bit Edi or Bit Hadi — ‘ though 
 unluckily,’ says Tiele, ‘there is no such word in the 
 Assyrian text.’ On the whole topic Tide’s essay ^ 
 deserves to be consulted. Granting, then, that ele- 
 ments in the worship of Dionysus, Aphrodite, and 
 other gods, may have been imported with the strange 
 ZEgypto- Assyrian vases and jewels of the Sidonians, 
 we still find the same basis of rude savage ideas. We 
 may push back a god from Greece to Phoenicia, from 
 Phoenicia to Accadia, but, at the end of the end, we 
 reach a legend full of myths like those which Bush- 
 men tell by the camp fire, Eskimo in their dark huts, 
 and Australians in the shade of the gunyeJi — myths 
 cruel, puerile, obscene, like the fancies of the savage 
 myth-makers from which they sprang. 
 
 ^ Rev. dc VHist. dcs Kel., vol. ii. 
 
29 
 
 THE BULL-ROARER. 
 
 A STUDY OF THE MYSTERIES. 
 
 As the belated traveller makes his way through the 
 monotonous plains of Australia, through the Bush, 
 with its level expanses and clumps of grey-blue gum 
 trees, he occasionally hears a singular sound. Begin- 
 ning low, with a kind of sharp tone thrilling through 
 a whirring noise, it grows louder and louder, till it 
 becomes a sort of buttering windy roar. If the 
 traveller be a new-comer, he is probably puzzled to 
 the last degree. If he be an Ihiglishman, country- 
 bred, he says to himself, ‘ Why, that is the bull-roarer.’ 
 If he knows the colony and the ways of the natives, 
 he knows that the blacks are celebrating their tribal 
 mysteries. The roaring noise is made to warn all 
 women to keep out of the way. Just as Pentheus 
 was killed (with the approval of Theocritus) because 
 he profaned the rites of the women-worshippers of 
 Dionysus, so, among the Australian blacks, men must, 
 at their peril, keep out of the way of female, and 
 women out of the way of male, celebrations. 
 
 The instrument which produces the sounds that 
 warn women to remain afar is a toy familiar to 
 English country lads. They call it the bull-roarer. 
 The common bull-roarer is an inexpensive toy which 
 
30 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 any one can make. I do not, however, recommend 
 it to families, for two reasons. In the first place, 
 it produces a most horrible and unexampled din, 
 which endears it to the very young, but renders it 
 detested by persons of mature age. In the second 
 place, the character of the toy is such that it will 
 almost infallibly break all that is fragile in the house 
 where it is used, and will probably put out the eyes 
 of some of the inhabitants. Having thus, I trust, 
 said enough to prevent all good boys from inflicting 
 bull-roarers on their parents, pastors and masters, I 
 proceed (in the interests of science) to show how the 
 toy is made. Nothing can be less elaborate. You 
 take a piece of the commonest wooden board, say 
 the lid of a packing-case, about a sixth of an inch 
 in thickness, and about eight inches long and three 
 broad, and you sharpen the ends. When finished, 
 the toy may be about the shape of a large bay-leaf, 
 or a ‘ fish ’ used as a counter (that is how the New 
 Zealanders make it), or the sides miay be left plain in 
 the centre, and only sharpened towards the extremi- 
 ties, as in an Australian example lent me by Mr. Tylor. 
 Then tie a strong piece of string, about thirty inches 
 long, to one end of the piece of wood, and the bull- 
 roarer (the Australian natives call it turndun, and the 
 Greeks call it pu/x^of;) is complete. Now twist the 
 end of the string tightly about your finger, and whirl 
 the bull-roarer rapidly round and round. For a few 
 moments nothing will happen. In a very interesting 
 lecture delivered at the Royal Institution, Mr. Taylor 
 once exhibited a bull-roarer. At first it did nothing 
 particular when it was whirled round, and the audience 
 
THE BULL- ROARER. 
 
 31 
 
 began to fear that the experiment was like those 
 chemical ones often exhibited at institutes in the 
 country, which contribute at most a disagreeable 
 odour to the education of the populace. Hut when 
 the bull-roarer warmed to its work, it justified its 
 name, producing what may best be described as a 
 mighty rushing noise, as if some supernatural being 
 ‘ fluttered and buzzed his wings with fearful roar.’ 
 Grown-up people, of course, are satisfied with a very 
 brief experience of this din, but boys have always 
 known the bull-roarer in England as one of the most 
 efficient modes of making the hideous and unearthly 
 noises in which it is the privilege of youth to delight. 
 
 The bull-roarer has, of all toys, the widest diffusion, 
 and the most extraordinary history. To study the 
 bull-roarer is to take a lesson in folklore. The in- 
 strument is found among the most widely severed 
 peoples, savage and civilised, and is used in the cele- 
 bration of savage and civilised mysteries. There are 
 students who would found on this a hypothesis that 
 the various races that use the bull-roarer all descend 
 from the same stock. Hut the bull-roarer is intro- 
 duced here for the very purpose of showing that 
 similar minds, working with simple means towards 
 similar ends, might evolve the bull-roarer and its 
 mystic uses anywhere. There is no need for a hypo- 
 thesis of common origin, or of borrowing, to account 
 for this widely diffused sacred object. 
 
 The bull-roarer has been, and is, a sacred and 
 magical instrument in many and widely separated 
 lands. It is found, always as a sacred instrument, 
 employed in religious mysteries, in New Mexico, in 
 
32 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 Australia, in New Zealand, in ancient Greece, and in 
 Africa ; while, as we have seen, it is a peasant boy’s 
 plaything in England. A number of questions are 
 naturally suggested by the bull-roarer. . Is it a thing 
 invented once for all, and carried abroad over the 
 world by wandering races, or handed on from one 
 people and tribe to another ? Or is the bull-roarer 
 a toy that might be accidentally hit on in any country 
 where men can sharpen wood and twist the sinews 
 of animals into string ? Was the thing originally a 
 toy, and is its religious and mystical nature later ; or 
 was it originally one of the properties of the priest, or 
 medicine-man, which in England has dwindled to a 
 plaything ? Lastly, was this mystical instrument at 
 first employed in the rites of a civilised people like 
 the Greeks, and was it in some way borrowed or 
 inherited by South Africans, Australians, and New 
 Mexicans ? Or is it a mere savage invention, surviv- 
 ing (like certain other features of the Greek mysteries) 
 from a distant state of savagery ? Our answer to all 
 these questions is that in all probability the presence 
 of the poyL6ySo9, or bull-roarer, in Greek mysteries was 
 a survival from the time when Greeks were in the 
 social condition of Australians. 
 
 In the first place the bull-roarer is associated with 
 mysteries and initiations. Now mysteries and initia- 
 tions are things that tend to dwindle and to lose 
 their characteristic features as civilisation advances. 
 The rites of baptism and confirmation are not secret 
 and hidden ; they are common to both sexes, they 
 are publicly performed, and religion and morality of 
 the purest sort blend in these ceremonies. There are 
 
THE BULL-ROAKEK. 
 
 33 
 
 no other initiations or mysteries that civilised modern 
 man is expected necessarily to pass through. On 
 the other hand, looking widely at human history, we 
 find mystic rites and initiations numerous, stringent, 
 severe, and magical in character, in proportion to the 
 lack of civilisation in those who practise them. The 
 less the civilisation, the more mysterious and the more 
 cruel are the rites. The more cruel the rites, the less 
 is the civilisation. The red hot poker with which 
 Mr. Bouncer terrified Mr. \Trdant Green at the sham 
 masonic rites would have been quite in place, a 
 natural instrument of probationary torture, in the 
 Freemasonry of Australians, Mandans, or Hottentots. 
 In the mysteries of Demeter or Bacchus, in the mys- 
 teries of a civilised people, the red-hot poker, or any 
 other instrument of torture, would have been out of 
 place. But in the Greek mysteries, just as in those 
 of South Africans, Red Indians, and Australians, the 
 disgusting practice of bedaubing the neophyte with 
 dirt and clay was preserved. We have nothing quite 
 like that in modern initiations, h.xcept at Sparta, 
 Greeks dropped the tortures inflicted on boys and 
 girls in the initiations superintended by the cruel 
 Artemis.^ But Cireek mysteries retained the daub- 
 ing with mud and the use of the bull-roarer. On the 
 whole, then, and on a general view of the subject, we 
 
 ^ Pausanias, iii. 15. When the boys were being cruelly scourged, 
 the priestess of Artemis Orthia held an ancient barbaric wooden image 
 of the goddess in her hands. If the boys were spared, the image grew 
 heavy ; the more they were tortured, the lighter grew the image. In 
 Samoa the image (shark’s teeth) of the god Taema is consulted before 
 battle. ‘ If it felt heavy, that was a bad omen ; if light, the sign was 
 good ’—the god was pleased (Turner’s Samoa, p. 55). 
 
 I) 
 
34 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 prefer to think that the bull-roarer in Greece was a 
 survival from savaj^e mysteries, not that the bull- 
 roarer in New Mexico, New Zealand, Australia, and 
 South Africa is a relic of civilisation. 
 
 Let us next observe a remarkable peculiarity of 
 the turndun, or Australian bull-roarer. The bull- 
 roarer in England is a toy. In Australia, according 
 to Howitt and Fison,^ the bull-roarer is regarded with 
 religious awe. ‘ When, on lately meeting with two of 
 the surviving Kurnai, I spoke to them of the turndun, 
 they first looked cautiously round them to see that 
 no one else was looking, and then answered me in 
 undertones.’ The chief peculiarity in connection with 
 the turndun is that women may never look upon it. 
 The Chepara tribe, who call it hribbiin, have a custom 
 that, ‘ if seen by a woman, or shown by a man to a 
 woman, the punishment to both is death.' 
 
 Among the Kurnai, the sacred mystery of the 
 turndun is preserved by a legend, which gives a super- 
 natural sanction to secrecy. When boys go through 
 the mystic ceremony of initiation they are shown 
 turnduns, or bull-roarers, and made to listen to their 
 hideous din. They are then told that, if ever a 
 woman is allowed to see a turndun, the earth will 
 open, and water will cover the globe. The old men 
 point spears at the boy’s eyes, saying : ' If you tell 
 this to any woman you will die, you will see the 
 ground broken up and like the sea ; if you tell this 
 to any woman, or to any child, you will be killed ! ’ 
 As in Athens, in Syria, and among the Mandans, 
 the deluge-tradition of Australia is connected with the 
 
 ^ Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 268. 
 
THE HULL- ROARER. 
 
 35 
 
 mysteries. In Gippsland there is a tradition of the 
 deluge. ‘ Some children of the Kurnai in playing 
 about found a turndun, which they took home to 
 the camp and showed the women. Immediately the 
 earth crumbled away, and it was all water, and the 
 Kurnai were drowned.’ 
 
 In consequence of all this mummery the Aus- 
 tralian women attach great sacredness to the very 
 name of the turndun. They are much less instructed 
 in their own theology than the men of the tribe. 
 One woman believed she had heard Pundjel, the 
 chief supernatural being, descend in a mighty rushing 
 noise, that is, in the sound of the turndun, when boys 
 were being ‘ made men,’ or initiated.^ On turnduns 
 the Australian sorcerers can Hy up to heaven. .Turn- 
 duns carved with imitations of water-Howers are 
 used by medicine-men in rain- 
 making. New Zealand also 
 has her bull-roarers ; some of 
 them, carved in relief, are in 
 the Christy Museum, and one 
 is engraved here. I have no 
 direct evidence as to the use 
 of these Maori bull-roarers in 
 the Maori mysteries. Their em- 
 ployment, however, may per- 
 haps be provisionally inferred. 
 
 One can readily believe that the New Zealand 
 bull- roarer may be whirled by any man who is re- 
 peating a Karakia, or ‘ charm to raise the wind ’ : — 
 
 ^ Fison, Journal Anthrup. Soc., Nov., 1883. 
 
 D 2 
 
36 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 l.oud wind, 
 
 Lasting wind, 
 
 Violent whistling wind, 
 
 Dig up the calm reposing sky, 
 
 Come, come. 
 
 In New Zealand^ ‘the natives regarded the wind as 
 an indication of the presence of their god,’ a super- 
 stition not peculiar to Maori religion. The ‘ cold 
 wind ’ felt blowing over the hands at spiritualistic 
 seances is also regarded (by physical researchers) as 
 an indication of the presence of supernatural beings. 
 The windy roaring noise made by the bull-roarer 
 might readily be considered by savages, either as an 
 invitation to a god who should present himself in 
 storm, or as a proof of his being at hand. We have 
 seen that this view was actually taken by an Austra- 
 lian woman. The hymn called ‘ breath ’ or haha, a 
 hymn to the mystic wind, is pronounced by Maori 
 priests at the moment of the initiation of young men 
 in the tribal mysteries. It is a mere conjecture, and 
 possibly enough capable of disproof, but we have a 
 suspicion that the use of the mystica vannus lacchi 
 was a mode of raising a sacred wind analogous to that 
 employed by whirlers of the turndun.- 
 
 Servius, the ancient commentator on Virgil, men- 
 
 ^ Taylor’s New Zealand, p. i8i. 
 
 - This is not the view of le Pere Lafitau, a learned Jesuit mission- 
 ary in North America, who wrote (1724) a work on savage manners, 
 compared with the manners of heathen antiquity. Lafitau, who was 
 greatly struck with the resemblances between Greek and Iroquois or 
 Carib initiations, takes Servius’s other explanation of the mystica 
 vanntis, ‘an osier vessel containing rural offerings of first fruits.’ 
 This exactly answers, says Lafitau, to the Carib Matoutuii, on which 
 they offer sacred cassava cakes. 
 
THE BULL-ROARER. 
 
 37 
 
 tions, amon^ other opinions, this — that the vannus was 
 a sieve, and that it symbolised the purifying effect of 
 the mysteries. But it is clear that Servius was only 
 guessing ; and he offers other explanations, among 
 them that the vannus was a crate to hold offerings, 
 primitias frugum. 
 
 We have studied the bull-roarer in Australia, we 
 have caught a glimpse of it in England. Its exist- 
 ence on the American continent is proved by letters 
 from New Mexico, and by the passage in Mr. Frank 
 Cushing’s Adventures in Zunid In Zuni, too, among 
 a semi-civilised Indian tribe, or rather a tribe which 
 has left the savage for the barbaric condition, we 
 find the bull-roarer.- Here, too, the instrument — 
 a ‘ slat,’ Mr. Cushing calls it — is used as a call to 
 the ceremonial observance of the tribal ritual. The 
 Zunis have various ‘ orders of a more or less sacred 
 and sacerdotal character.’ Mr. Cushing writes: — 
 
 These orders were engaged in their annual ceremonials, 
 of which little was told or shown me ; but, at the end of 
 four days, I heard one morning a deep ivhirring noise. 
 Running out, I saw a procession of three priests of the bow, 
 in plumed helmets and closely-fitting cuirasses, both of thick 
 buckskin — gorgeous and solemn with sacred embroideries 
 and war-paint, begirt with bow's, arrow’s, and w’ar-clubs, and 
 each distinguished by his badge of degree — coming dowm 
 one of the narrow streets. The principal priest carried in 
 his arms a w’ooden idol, ferocious in aspect, yet beautiful 
 w'ith its decorations of shell, turquoise, and brilliant paint. 
 
 ^ The Century Magazine, May, 1883. 
 
 -A minute account of the mysteries of Pueblo Indians, and their 
 use of the bull-roarer, will be found in Captain Bourke’s Snake Dance 
 of the Moqnis. 
 
38 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 It was nearly hidden by symbolic slas and prayer-sticks most 
 elaborately plumed. He was preceded by a guardian with 
 drawn bow and arrows, while another followed, tivirling the 
 soundmg slat, which had attracted alike my attention and 
 that of hundreds of the Indians, who hurriedly flocked to 
 the roofs of the adjacent houses, or lined the street, bowing 
 their heads in adoration, and scattering sacred prayer-meal 
 on the god and his attendant priests. Slowly they wound 
 their way down the hill, across the river, and off toward 
 the mountain of d'hunder. Soon an identical procession 
 followed and took its way toward the western hills. I 
 watched them long until they disappeared, and a few hours 
 afterward there arose from the top of ‘Thunder Mountain ’ 
 a dense column of smoke, simultaneously with another from 
 the more distant western me.sa of ‘ U-ha-na-mi,’ or ‘ Mount 
 of the Beloved.’ 
 
 I'hen they told me that for four days I must neither 
 touch nor eat flesh or oil of any kind, and for ten days 
 neither throw any refuse from my doors nor permit a spark 
 to leave my house, for ‘ This was the season of the year 
 when the “ grandmother of men ’’ (fire) was precious.’ 
 
 Here then, in Zuni, we have the bull-roarer again, 
 and once more we find it employ'ed as a summons to 
 the mysteries. W e do not learn, however, that women 
 in Zuni are forbidden to look upon the bull-roarer. 
 Finally, the South African evidence, which is supplied 
 by letters from a correspondent of Mr. Tylor’s, proves 
 that in South Africa, too, the bull-roarer is em- 
 ployed to call the men to the celebration of secret 
 functions. A minute description of the instrument, 
 and of its magical power to raise a wind, is given 
 in Theal’s Kaffir Folklore, p. 209. The bull-roarer 
 has not been made a subject of particular research ; 
 
THE EULL-ROAREK. 
 
 39 
 
 very probably later investigations will find it in other 
 parts of the modern world besides America, Africa, 
 New Zealand, and Australia. I have myself been 
 fortunate enough to encounter the bull-roarer on the 
 soil of ancient Greece and in connection with the 
 Dionysiac mysteries. Clemens of Alexandria, and 
 Arnobius, an early Christian father who follows 
 Clemens, describe certain toys of the child Dionysus 
 which were used in the mysteries. Among these 
 are turbines, kmvol and pofi^ot. The ordinary dic- 
 tionaries interpret all these as whipping-tops, adding 
 that is sometimes ‘ a magic wheel.’ The 
 
 ancient scholiast on Clemens, however, writes : ‘ The 
 Kcbvo<; is a little piece of wood, to which a string is 
 fastened, and in the mysteries it is whirled round to 
 make a roaring noise.’ ^ Here, in short, we have a 
 brief but complete description of the bull-roarer of 
 the Australian turndun. No single point is omitted. 
 The KMvo'^, like the turndun, is a small object of wood, 
 it is tied to a string, when whirled round it produces 
 a roaring noise, and it is used at initiations. This is 
 not the end of the matter. 
 
 In the part of the Dionysiac mysteries at which 
 the toys of the child Dionysus were exhibited, and 
 during which (as it seems) the kmvo^, or bull-roarer, 
 was whirred, the performers daubed themselves all 
 over with clay. This we learn from a passage in 
 which Demosthenes describes the youth of his hated 
 adversary, yKschines. The mother of. H^^schines, he 
 says, was a kind of ‘ wise woman,’ and dabbler in 
 
 ^ Keevos ^vKapiov ou e^rjiTTai rh (TirapTlov Ka\ eV rats reXerals iSovelro 
 'iva poiCf. Lobeck, AglaopJimniis (i. p. 700). 
 
40 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 mysteries. i5i^schines used to aid her by bedaubing 
 the initiate over with clay and bran.^ The word 
 dTToiidTTMv, here used by Demosthenes, is explained 
 by Harpocration as the ritual term for daubing the 
 initiated. A story was told as usual, to explain this 
 rite. It was said that, when the Titans attacked 
 Dionysus and tore him to pieces, they painted them- 
 selves first with clay, or gypsum, that the}^ might 
 not be recognised. Nonnus shows, in several places, 
 that down to his time the celebrants of the Bacchic 
 mysteries retained this dirty trick. Precisely the 
 same trick prevails in the mysteries of savage peoples. 
 Mr. Winwood Reade “ reports the evidence of Mongi- 
 lomba. When initiated, Mongilomba was ‘ severely 
 flogged in the Fetich House ’ (as young Spartans were 
 flogged before the animated image of Artemis), and 
 then he was ‘plastered over with goat-dung.’ Among 
 the natives of Victoria,^ the ‘ body of the initiated is 
 bedaubed with clay, mud, charcoal powder, and filth 
 of every kind. ’ The girls are plastered with charcoal 
 powderand white clay, answering to the Greek gypsum. 
 Similar daubings were performed at the mysteries by 
 the Mandans, as described by Gatlin : and the Zunis 
 made raids on Mr. Cushing’s black paint and Chinese 
 ink for like purposes. On the Congo, Mr. Johnson 
 found precisely the same ritual in the initiations. 
 Here, then, not to multiply examples, we discover 
 
 ^ De Coyonn, p. 313. 
 
 - Savage Africa. Captain Smith, the friend of Pocahontas, men- 
 tions the custom in his work on Virginia, pp. 245-248. 
 
 3 Brough Smyth, i. 60, using evidence of Howitt, Taplin, Thomas 
 and Wilhelmi. 
 
THE BULL-ROARER. 
 
 41 
 
 two singular features in common between Greek and 
 savage mysteries. Both Greeks and savages employ 
 the bull-roarer, both bedaub the initiated with dirt or 
 with white paint or chalk. As to the meaning of the 
 latter very un-Aryan practice, one has no idea, unless it 
 represents the impure uninitiated condition, cleansed 
 later by ceremonies of initiation. It is only certain that 
 war parties of Australian blacks bedaub themselves 
 with white clay to alarm their enemies in night attacks. 
 The Phocians, according to Herodotus (viii. 27), adop- 
 ted the same ‘ aisy stratagem,’ as Captain Costigan 
 has it. Tellies, the medicine-man chalked 
 
 some sixty Phocians, whom he sent to make a night 
 attack on the Thessalians. The sentinels of the latter 
 were seized with supernatural horror, and fled, ‘ and 
 after the sentinels went the army.’ In the same way, in 
 a night attack among the Australian Kurnai,^ ‘ they all 
 rapidly painted themselves with pipe-clay : red ochre is 
 no use, it cannot frighten the enemy.’ If, then, Greeks 
 in the historic period kept up Australian tactics, it is 
 probable that the ancient mysteries of Greece might 
 retain the habit of daubing the initiated which occurs 
 in savage rites. 
 
 ‘ Come now,’ as Herodotus would say, ‘ I will show 
 once more that the mysteries of the Greeks resemble 
 those of Bushmen.’ In Lucian’s Treatise on Dancing,^ 
 we read, ‘ I pass over the fact that you cannot find a 
 single ancient mystery in which there is not dancing. 
 . . . To prove this I will not mention the secret acts 
 of worship, on account of the uninitiated. But this 
 
 ^ Kamilaroi and Knriiai, p. 241. 
 “ Ufpl dpx'fio-ecos, c. 15. 
 
42 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 much* all men know, that most people say of those 
 who reveal the mysteries, that they“ dance them out.” ’ 
 Here Liddel and Scott write, rather weakly, ‘ to dance 
 out, let out, betray, probably of some dance which 
 burlesqued these ceremonies.’ It is extremely im- 
 probable that, in an age when it was still forbidden 
 to reveal the opyia, or secret rites, those rites would 
 be mocked in popular burlesques. Lucian obviously 
 intends to say that the matter of the mysteries was 
 set forth in ballets d'actio7i. Now this is exactly the 
 case in the surviving mysteries of the Bushmen. 
 Shortly after the rebellion of Langalibalele’s tribe, 
 Mr. Orpen, the chief magistrate in St. John’s Territory, 
 made the acquaintance of Qing, one of the last of an 
 all but exterminated tribe. Qing ‘ had never seen a 
 white man, except fighting,’ when he became Mr. 
 Orpen’s guide. He gave a good deal of information 
 about the myths of his people, but refused to answer 
 certain questions. ‘ You are now asking the secrets 
 that are not spoken of.’ Mr. Orpen asked, ‘ Do you 
 know the secrets ? ’ Qing replied, ‘No, only the initiated 
 men of that dance know these things.’ To ‘ dance ’ 
 this or that means, ‘ to be acquainted with this or that 
 mystery ; ’ the dances were originally taught by Cagn, 
 the mantis, or grasshopper god. In many mysteries, 
 Qing, as a young man, was not initiated. He could 
 not ‘ dance them out.’ ^ 
 
 There are thus undeniably close resemblances 
 between the Greek mysteries and those of the lowest 
 contemporary races. 
 
 As to the bull-roarer, its recurrence among Greeks, 
 
 ^ Cape Monthly Magazine, July, 1874. 
 
THE BULL-ROAKEK. 
 
 43 
 
 Zunis, Kamilaroi, Maoris, and South African races, 
 would be regarded by some students as a proof that 
 all these tribes had a common origin, or had borrowed 
 the instrument from each other. But this theory is 
 quite unnecessary. The bull-roarer is a very simple 
 invention. Any one might find out that a bit of 
 sharpened wood, tied to a string, makes, when 
 whirred, a roaring noise. Supposing that discovery 
 made, it is soon turned to practical use. All tribes 
 have their mysteries. All want a signal to summon 
 the right persons together, and warn the wrong persons 
 to keep out of the way. The church bell does as much 
 for us, so did the shaken seistrum for the Egyptians. 
 People with neither bells nor seistra find the bull- 
 roarer, with its mysterious sound, serve their turn. 
 The hiding of the instrument from women is natural 
 enough. It merely makes the alarm and absence of 
 the curious sex doubly sure. The stories of super- 
 natural consequences to follow if a woman sees the 
 turndun lend a sanction. This is not a random theory, 
 without basis. In Brazil the natives have no bull- 
 roarer, but they have mysteries, and the presence of 
 the women at the mysteries of the men is a terrible 
 impiety. To warn away the women the Brazilians 
 make loud ‘ devil-music ’ on what are called ‘ jurupari 
 pipes.’ Now, just as in Australia, the vuomen may not 
 see the jurupari pipes on pain of death. When the 
 sound of the jurupari pipes is heard, as when the 
 turndun is heard in Australia, every woman flees and 
 hides herself. The women are always executed if 
 they see the pipes. Mr. Alfred Wallace bought a 
 pair of these pipes, but he had to embark them at 
 
44 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 a distance from the village where they were procured. 
 The seller was afraid that some unknown misfortune 
 would occur if the women of his village set eyes on 
 the juruparis.^ 
 
 The conclusion from all these facts seems obvious. 
 The bull -roarer is an instrument easily invented by 
 savages, and easily adopted into the ritual of savage 
 mysteries. If we find the bull-roarer used in the 
 mysteries of the most civilised of ancient peoples, 
 the most probable explanation is, that the Greeks 
 retained both the mysteries, the bull-roarer, the habit 
 of bedaubing the initiate, the torturing of boys, the 
 sacred obscenities, the antics with serpents, the dances, 
 and the like, from the time when their ancestors were 
 in the savage condition. That more refined and 
 religious ideas were afterwards introduced into the 
 mysteries seems certain, but the rites were in many 
 cases simply savage. Unintelligible (except as sur- 
 vivals) when found among Hellenes, they become 
 intelligible enough among savages, because they cor- 
 respond to the intellectual condition and magical 
 fancies of the lower barbarism. The same sort 
 of comparison, the same kind of explanation, will 
 account, as we shall see, for the savage myths as well 
 as for the savage customs which survived among the 
 Greeks. 
 
 ^ Wallace, Travels on the Amazon, p. 349. 
 
45 
 
 THE MYTH OF CRONUS. 
 
 In a Maori pah, when a little boy behaves rudely to 
 his parents, he is sometimes warned that he is ‘ as 
 bad as cruel Tutenganahau.’ If he asks who Tuten- 
 ganahau was, he is told the following story : — 
 
 ‘ In the beginning, the Heaven, Rangi, and the 
 Earth, Papa, were the father and mother of all things. 
 “In these days the Heaven lay upon the Earth, and 
 all was darkness. They had never been separated.” 
 Heaven and Earth had children, who grew up and 
 lived in this thick night, and they were unhappy 
 because they could not see. Between the bodies of 
 their parents they were imprisoned, and there was no 
 light. The names of the children were Tumatuenga, 
 Tane Mahuta, Tutenganahau, and some others. So 
 they all consulted as to what should be done with their 
 parents, Rangi and Papa. “ Shall we slay them, or 
 shall we separate them ? ” “ Go to,” said Tumatuenga, 
 “ let us slay them.” “ No,” cried Tane Mahuta, “ let us 
 rather separate them. Let one go upwards, and be- 
 come a stranger to us ; let the other remain below, 
 and be a parent to us.” Only Tawhiri Matea (the 
 wind) had pity on his own father and mother. Then 
 
46 
 
 CUvSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 the fruit-"ods, and the war-god, and the sea-god (for 
 all the ehildren of Papa and Rangi were gods) tried 
 to rend their parents asunder. Last rose the forest- 
 god, cruel Tutenganahau. He severed the sinews 
 which united Heaven and Earth, Rangi and Papa. 
 Then he pushed hard with his head and feet. Then 
 wailed Heaven and exclaimed Earth, “ Wherefore this 
 murder ? Why this great sin ? Why destroy us ? 
 Why separate us? ” But Tane pushed and pushed : 
 Rangi was driven far away into the air. “ They be- 
 came visible, who had hitherto been concealed between 
 the hollows of their parents' breasts." Only the storm- 
 god differed from his brethren : he arose and fol- 
 
 lowed his father, Rangi, and abode with him in the 
 open spaces of the sky.’ 
 
 This is the Maori story of the severing of the 
 wedded Heaven and Earth. The cutting of them 
 asunder was the work of Tutenganahau and his 
 brethren, and the conduct of Tutenganahau is still 
 held up as an example of filial impiety.^ The story 
 is preserved in sacred hymns of very great antiquity, 
 and many of the myths are common to the other 
 peoples of the Pacific.'^ 
 
 Now let us turn from New Zealand to Athens, as 
 she was in the days of Pericles. Socrates is sitting 
 in the porch of the King Archon, when Euthyphro 
 comes up and enters into conversation with the philo- 
 sopher. After some talk, Euthyphro says, ‘You will 
 
 ^ New Zealand, Taylor, pp. 119-121. Die Iieiligc Sage der Poly- 
 nesier, Bastian, pp. 36-39. 
 
 - crowd of similar myths, in one of which a serpent severs 
 Heaven and Earth, are printed in Turner’s Samoa. 
 
THE MYTH OF CRONUS. 
 
 47 
 
 think me mad when I tell you whom I am pro- 
 secuting and pursuing ! ’ ‘ Why, has the fugitive 
 
 wings ? ’ asks Socrates. ‘ Nay, he is not very volatile 
 at his time of life ! ’ ‘ Who is he ? ’ ‘ My father.’ 
 
 ‘ Good heavens ! you don’t mean that. What is he 
 accused of ? ’ ‘ Murder, Socrates.’ Then Euthyphro 
 
 e.xplains the case, which quaintly illustrates Greek 
 civilisation. Euthyphro’s father had an agricultural 
 labourer at Naxos. One day this man, in a drunken 
 passion, killed a slave. Euthyphro’s father seized the 
 labourer, bound him, threw him into a ditch, ‘ and 
 then sent to Athens to ask a diviner what should be 
 done with him.’ Before the answer of the diviner 
 arrived, the labourer literally ‘ died in a ditch ’ of 
 hunger and cold. Eor this offence, Euthyphro was 
 prosecuting his own father. Socrates shows that he 
 disapproves, and Euthyphro thus defends the piety of 
 his own conduct : ‘ The impious, whoever he may be, 
 ought not to go unpunished. Eor do not men regard 
 Zeus as the best and most righteous of gods ? Yet 
 even they admit that Zeus bound his own father 
 Cronus, because he wickedly devoured his sons ; and 
 that Cronus, too, had punished his own father, Ura- 
 nus, for a similar reason, in a nameless manner. And 
 yet when I proceed against my father, people are 
 angry with me. This is their inconsistent way of 
 talking, when the gods are concerned, and when I 
 am concerned.’ 
 
 Here Socrates breaks in. He ‘ cannot away with 
 these stories about the gods,’ and so he has just 
 been accused of impiety, the charge for which he died. 
 Socrates cannot believe that a god, Cronus, mutilated 
 
48 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 his father Uranus, but Euthyphro believes the whole 
 affair : ‘ I can tell you many other things about the 
 gods which would quite amaze you.’ ^ 
 
 We have here a typical example of the way in 
 which mythology puzzled the early philosophers of 
 Greece. Socrates was anxious to be pious, and to 
 respect the most ancient traditions of the gods. Yet 
 at the very outset of sacred history he was met by 
 tales of gods who mutilated and bound their own 
 parents. Not only were such tales hateful to him, 
 but they were of positively evil example to people 
 like Euthyphro. The problem remained, how did 
 the fathers of the Athenians ever come to tell such 
 myths ? 
 
 Let us now examine the myth of Cronus, and the 
 explanations which have been given by scholars. 
 Near the beginning of things, according to Hesiod 
 (whose cosmogony was accepted in Greece), Earth 
 gave birth to Heaven. Later, Heaven, Uranus, be- 
 came the husband of Gaea, Earth. Just as Rangi 
 and Papa, in New Zealand, had many children, so 
 had Uranus and Gaea. As in New Zealand, some 
 of these children were gods of the various elements. 
 Among them were Oceanus, the deep, and Hyperion, 
 the sun — as among the children of Earth and Heaven, 
 in New Zealand, were the Wind and the Sea. The 
 youngest child of the Greek Heaven and Earth was 
 ‘ Cronus of crooked counsel, who ever hated his 
 mighty sire.’ Now even as the children of the Maori 
 
 1 The translation used is Jowett’s. 
 
THE MYTH OF CRONUS. 
 
 49 
 
 Heaven and Earth were ‘ concealed between the 
 hollows of their parents’ breasts,’ so the Greek Heaven 
 used to ‘hide his children from the light in the hollows 
 of Earth.’ Both Earth and her children resented this, 
 and, as in New Zealand, the children conspired against 
 Heaven, taking hearth, however, into their counsels. 
 Thereupon Earth produced iron, and bade her children 
 avenge their wrongs.^ Now fear fell on all of them, 
 except Cronus, who, like Tutenganahau, was all for 
 action. Cronus determined to end the embraces of 
 Heaven and Earth. But, while the Maori myth con- 
 ceives of Heaven and Earth as of two beings which 
 have never been separated before, Hesiod makes 
 Heaven amorously approach his wife from a distance. 
 Then Cronus stretched out his hand, armed with a 
 sickle of iron, or steel, and mutilated Uranus. Thus 
 were Heaven and I^varth practically divorced. l)Ut 
 as in the Maori myth one of the children of Heaven 
 clave to his sire, so, in (jreek, Oceanus remained 
 faithful to his father.- 
 
 This is the first portion of the myth of Cronus. 
 Can it be denied that the story is well illustrated and 
 explained by the New Zealand parallel, the m}'th of 
 the cruelty of Tutenganahau ? By means of this com- 
 parison, the meaning of the myth is made clear enough. 
 Just as the New Zealanders had conceived of Heaven 
 and Earth as at one time united, to the prejudice of 
 their children, so the ancestors of the Greeks had 
 believed in an ancient union of Heaven and Earth. 
 Both by Greeks and Maoris, Heaven and Earth were 
 thought of as living persons, with human parts and 
 ^ Theog.y i66. - Apollodorus, i. 15. 
 
 E 
 
50 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 passions. Their union was prejudicial to their children, 
 and so the children violently separated the parents. 
 This conduct is regarded as impious, and as an awful 
 example to be avoided, in Maori pahs. In Naxos, 
 on the other hand, Euthyphro deemed that the con- 
 duct of Cronus deserved imitation. If ever the Maoris 
 had reached a high civilisation, they would probably 
 have been revolted, like Socrates, by the myth which 
 survived from their period of savagery. Mr. Tylor 
 well says,^ ‘ Just as the adzes of polished jade, and the 
 cloaks of tied flax-fibre, which these New Zealanders 
 were using but yesterday, are older in their place in 
 history than the bronze battle-axes and linen mummy- 
 cloths of ancient Egypt, so the Maori poet’s shaping 
 of nature into nature-myth belongs to a stage of in- 
 tellectual history which was passing away in Greece 
 five-and-twenty centuries ago. The myth-maker’s 
 fancy of Heaven and Earth as father and mother of 
 all things naturally suggested the legend that they 
 in old days abode together, but have since been torn 
 asunder.’ 
 
 That this view of Heaven and Earth is natural to 
 early minds, Mr. Tylor proves by the presence of the 
 myth of the union and violent divorce of the pair in 
 China. Puang-ku is the Chinese Cronus, or Tuten- 
 ganahau. In India, ^ Dyaus and Prithivi, Heaven 
 and Earth, were once united, and were severed by 
 Indra, their own child. 
 
 1 Primitive Culture, i. 325. 
 
 - Pauthier, Livres sucres cic VOrient, p. ig. 
 
 Muir’s Sanskrit Texts, v. 23. Aitareya Brahmana. 
 
THE MYTH OF CRONUS. 
 
 51 
 
 This, then, is our interpretation of the exploit of 
 Cronus. It is an old surviving nature-myth of the 
 severance of Heaven and Earth, a myth found in 
 China, India, New Zealand, as well as in Greece. 
 Of course it is not pretended that Chinese and Maoris 
 borrowed from Indians and Greeks, or came originally 
 of the same stock. Similar phenomena, presenting 
 themselves to be explained by human minds in a 
 similar stage of fancy and of ignorance, will account 
 for the parallel myths. 
 
 The second part of the myth of Cronus was, like 
 the first, a stumbling-block to the orthodox in Greece. 
 Of the second part we offer no explanation beyond 
 the fact that the incidents in the myth are almost 
 universally found among savages, and that, therefore, 
 in Greece they are probably survivals from savagery. 
 The sequel of the myth appears to account for 
 nothing, as the first part accounts for the severance 
 of Heaven and Earth. In the sequel a world-wide 
 Mdrchen, or tale, seems to have been attached to 
 Cronus, or attracted into the cycle of which he is 
 centre, without any particular reason, beyond the 
 law which makes detached myths crystallise round 
 any celebrated name. To look further is, perhaps, 
 chercher raison oil il n'y en a pas. 
 
 The conclusion of the story of Cronus runs thus : 
 He wedded his sister, Rhea, and begat children — 
 Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and, lastly, Zeus. 
 
 ‘ And mighty Cronus swallowed down each of them, 
 each that came to their mother’s knees from her holy 
 womb, with this intent, that none other of the proud 
 children of Uranus should hold kingly sway among 
 
 E 2 
 
52 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 the Immortals.’ Cronus showed a ruling father’s usual 
 jealousy of his heirs. It was a case of Friedrich 
 Wilhelm and Friedrich. But Cronus (acting in a way 
 natural in a story perhaps first invented by cannibals) 
 swallowed his children instead of merely imprisoning 
 them. Heaven and Earth had warned him to beware 
 of his heirs, and he could think of no safer plan than 
 that which he adopted. When Rhea was about to 
 become the mother of Zeus, she fled to Crete. Here 
 Zeus was born, and when Cronus (in pursuit of his 
 usual policy) asked for the baby, he was presented 
 with a stone wrapped up in swaddling bands. After 
 swallowing the stone, Cronus was easy in his mind ; 
 but Zeus grew up, administered a dose to his father, 
 and compelled him to disgorge. ‘ The stone came 
 forth first, as he had swallowed it last.’ ^ The other 
 children also emerged, all alive and well. Zeus 
 fixed the stone at Delphi, where, long after the 
 Christian era, Pausanias saw it.'^ It was not a large 
 stone, Pausanias tells us, and the Delphians used to 
 anoint it with oil and wrap it up in wool on feast-days. 
 All Greek temples had their fetich-stones, and each 
 stone had its legend. This was the story of the 
 Delphian stone, and of the fetichism which survived 
 the early years of Christianity. A very pretty story 
 it is. Savages more frequently smear their fetich- 
 stones with red paint than daub them with oil, but 
 the latter, as we learn from Theophrastus’ account 
 of the ‘ superstitious man,’ was the Greek ritual. 
 
 This anecdote about Cronus was the stumbling- 
 
 ^ Hesiod, Thcog., 497. - Paus., x. 24. 
 
THE MYTH OF CRONUS. 
 
 53 
 
 block of the orthodox Greek, the jest of the sceptic, 
 and the butt of the early Christian controversialists. 
 Found among Bushmen or Australians the narrative 
 might seem rather wild, but it astonishes us still more 
 when it occurs in the holy legends of Greece. Our 
 explanation of its presence there is simple enough. 
 Like the erratic blocks in a modern plain, like the 
 flint-heads in a meadow, the story is a relic of a very 
 distant past. The glacial age left the boulders on 
 the plain, the savage tribes of long ago left the arrow- 
 heads, the period of savage fancy left the story of 
 Cronus and the rites of the fetich-stone. Similar 
 rites are still notoriously practised in the South Sea 
 Islands, in Siberia, in India and Africa and Mela- 
 nesia, by savages. And by savages similar tales are 
 still told. 
 
 We cannot go much lower than the Bushmen, and 
 among Bushman divine myths is room for the ‘ swal- 
 lowing trick’ attributed to Cronus by Hesiod. The 
 chief divine character in Bushman myth is the Mantis 
 insect. His adopted daughter is the child of Kwai 
 Hemm, a supernatural character, ‘ the all-devourer.’ 
 The Mantis gets his adopted daughter to call the 
 swallower to his aid ; but Kwai Hemm swallows the 
 Mantis, the god-insect. As Zeus made his own wife 
 change herself into an insect, for the convenience of 
 swallowing her, there is not much difference between 
 Bushman and early Greek mythology. Kwai Hemm 
 is killed by a stratagem, and all the animals whom he 
 has got outside of, in a long and voracious career, 
 troop forth from him alive and well, like the swallowed 
 
54 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 "ods from the maw of Cronus.^ Now, story for story, 
 the Bushman version is much less offensive than that 
 of Hesiod. But the Bushman story is just the sort 
 of story we expect from Bushmen, whereas the 
 Hesiodic story is not at all the kind of tale we look 
 for from Greeks. The explanation is, that the Greeks 
 had advanced out of a savage state of mind and 
 society, but had retained their old myths, myths 
 evolved in the savage stage, and in harmony with 
 that condition of fancy. Among the Kaffirs we find 
 the same ‘ swallow-myth.’ The Igongqongqo swal- 
 lows all and sundry ; a woman cuts the swallower with 
 a knife, and ‘ people came out, and cattle, and dogs.’ 
 In Australia, a god is swallowed. As in the myth 
 preserved by Aristophanes in the ‘ Birds,’ the Austra- 
 lians believe that birds were the original gods, and 
 the eagle, especially, is a great creative power. The 
 Moon was a mischievous being, who walked about 
 the world, doing what evil he could. One day he 
 swallowed the eagle-god. The wives of the eagle 
 came up, and the Moon asked them where he might 
 find a well. They pointed out a well, and, as he 
 drank, they hit the Moon with a stone tomahawk, and 
 out flew the eagle. ^ This is oddly like Grimm’s tale 
 of ‘The Wolf and the Kids.’ The wolf swallowed 
 the kids, their mother cut a hole in the wolf, let out 
 the kids, stuffed the wolf with stones, and sewed him 
 up again. The wolf went to the well to drink, the 
 weight of the stones pulled him in, and he was 
 
 ^ Bleek, Bushman Folklore, pp. 6-8. 
 
 - Theal, Kaffir Folklore, pp. 161-167. 
 
 ^ Brough Smith, i. 432-433. 
 
THE MYTH OF CRONUS. 
 
 55 
 
 drowned. Similar stories are common among the 
 Red Indians, and Mr. Im Thurn has found them in 
 Guiana. How savages all over the world got the 
 idea that men and beasts could be swallowed and 
 disgorged alive, and why they fashioned the idea 
 into a divine myth, it is hard to say. Mr. Tylor, in 
 Primitive Culture,'^ adds many examples of the 
 narrative. The Basutos have it ; it occurs some five 
 times in Callaway’s Ziila Nursery Tales. In Green- 
 land the Eskimo have a shape of the incident, and we 
 have all heard of the escape of Jonah. 
 
 It has been suggested that night, covering up the 
 world, gave the first idea of the swallowing myth. 
 Now in some of the stories the night is obviously 
 conceived of as a big beast which swallows all things. 
 The notion that night is an animal is entirely in har- 
 mony with savage metaphysics. In the opinion of the 
 savage speculator, all things are men and animals. 
 ‘ Ils se persuadent que non seulement les hommes et 
 les autres animaux, mais aussi que toutes les autres 
 choses sont animees,’ says one of the old Jesuit mis- 
 sionaries in Canada.- ‘ The wind was formerly a 
 person ; he became a bird,’ say the Bushmen. 
 G’ 00 ka ! Kui (a very respectable Bushman, whose 
 name seems a little hard to pronounce) once saw the 
 wind-person at Haarfontein. 
 
 Savages, then, are persuaded that night, sky, cloud, 
 fire, and so forth, are only the schein, or sensuous 
 appearance, of things that, in essence, are men or 
 animals. A good example is the bringing of Night to 
 Vanua Lava, by Qat, the ‘culture-hero ’ of Melanesia. 
 
 ^ i. 338. - Rel dc la Noitvclle-France (1636), p. 114. 
 
56 
 
 CITSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 At lirst it was always day, and people tired of it. 
 Qat heard that Night was at the Torres Islands, and 
 he set forth to get some. Qong (Night) received Qat 
 well, blackened his eyebrows, showed him Sleep, and 
 sent him off with fowls to bring Dawn after the arrival 
 of Night should make Dawn a necessity. Next day 
 Qat’s brothers saw the sun crawl away west, and 
 presently N ight came creeping up from the sea. ‘ What 
 is this ?’ cried the brothers. ‘ It is Night,’ said Qat ; 
 
 ‘ sit down, and when you feel something in your eyes, 
 lie down and keep quiet ’ So they went to sleep. ‘When 
 Night had lasted long enough, Qat took a piece of red 
 obsidian, and cut the darkness, and theDawn came out.’^ 
 
 Night is more or less personal in this tale, and 
 solid enough to be cut, so as to let the Dawn out. 
 This savage conception of Night, as the swallower 
 and disgorger, might start the notion of other swal- 
 lowing and disgorging beings. Again the Bushmen, 
 and other savage peoples, account for certain celestial 
 phenomena by saying that ‘ a big star has swallowed 
 his daughter, and spit her out again.’ While natural 
 phenomena, explained on savage principles, might 
 give the data of the swallow-myth, we must not con- 
 clude that all beings to whom the story is attached 
 are, therefore, the Night. On this principle Cronus 
 would be the Night, and so would the wolf in Grimm. 
 
 1 Codrington, in journal Anthrop. Inst., Feb,, i88i. There is a 
 Breton Mdrchcn of a land where people had to ‘bring the Dawn’ 
 daily with carts and horses. A boy, whose sole property was a 
 cock, sold it to the people of this country for a large sum, and now 
 the cock brings the Dawn, with a great saving of trouble and ex- 
 pense. The Mcirchcn is a survival of the state of mind of the Solomon 
 Islanders. 
 
THE MYTH OF CRONUS. 
 
 57 
 
 For our purposes it is enough that the feat of Cronus 
 is a feat congenial to the savage fancy and repug- 
 nant to the civilised Greeks who found themselves 
 in possession of the myth. Beyond this, and beyond 
 the inference that the Cronus myth was first evolved 
 by people to whom it seemed quite natural, that is, 
 by savages, we do not pretend to go in our inter- 
 pretation. 
 
 To end our examination of the myth of Cronus, 
 we may compare the solutions offered by scholars. 
 As a rule, these solutions are based on the philo- 
 logical analysis of the names in the story. It will be 
 seen that very various and absolutely inconsistent 
 etymologies and meanings of Cronus are suggested 
 by philologists of the highest authority. These con- 
 tradictions are, unfortunately, rather the rule than 
 the exception in the etymological interpretation of 
 myths. 
 
 The opinion of Mr. Max Muller has always a 
 right to the first hearing from English inquirers. 
 Mr. Muller, naturally, examines first the name of the 
 god whose legend he is investigating. He writes : 
 ‘ There is no such being as Kronos in Sanskrit. 
 Kronos did not exist till long after Zeus in Greece. 
 Zeus was called by the Greeks the sun of Time 
 (Kp6vo<;). This is a very simple and very common 
 form of mythological expression. It meant originally, 
 not that time was the origin or source of Zeus, but 
 Kpoviwv or KpoviBr]^ was used in the sense of ‘‘ con- 
 nected with time, representing time, existing through 
 
58 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 all time.” Derivatives in -lmu and took, in later 
 times, the more exclusive meaning of patronymics, 
 . . . When this (the meaning of KpovlSr]<; as equivalent 
 to Ancient of Days) ceased to be understood, . . . 
 people asked themselves the question. Why is Zeu? 
 called Kpovihr]<=; ? And the natural and almost inevit- 
 able answer was. Because he is the son, the offspring 
 of a more ancient god, Kpouo^. This may be a very 
 old myth in Greece ; but • the misunderstanding 
 which gave rise to it could have happened in Greece 
 only. We cannot expect, therefore, a god Kpovo^ in 
 the Veda.’ To expect Greek in the Veda would 
 certainly be sanguine. ‘ When this myth of Kpovo^ 
 had once been started, it would roll on irresistibly. 
 If Zev^ had once a father called Kp6vo<^, Kp6vo<; must 
 have a wife.’ It is added, as confirmation, that ‘the 
 name of KpovL^-q^ belongs originally to Zeus only, 
 and not to his later ’ (in Hesiod elder) ‘ brothers, 
 Poseidon and Hades.’ ^ 
 
 Mr. Muller says, in his famous essay on ‘ Com- 
 parative Mythology ’ ^ ‘ How can we imagine that a 
 few generations before that time ’ (the age of Solon) 
 
 ‘ the highest notions of the Godhead among the Greeks 
 were adequately expressed by the story of Uranos 
 maimed by Kronos, — of Kronos eating his children, 
 swallowing a stone, and vomiting out alive his whole 
 progeny ? Among the lowest tribes of Africa and 
 America, we hardly find anything more hideous and 
 revolting.’ We have found a good deal of the sort 
 in Africa and America, where it seems not out of 
 place. 
 
 ^ Selected Essays, i. 460, 
 
 -Ibid,, i. 3 1 1. 
 
THE MYTH OF CRONUS. 
 
 59 
 
 One objection to Mr. Muller’s theory is, that it 
 makes the mystery no clearer. When Greeks were 
 so advanced in Hellenism that their own early lan- 
 guage had become obsolete and obscure, they invented 
 the god Kp6vo<;, to account for the patronymic (as 
 they deemed it) Kpovl^rj^, son of Kpovo^. But why 
 did they tell such savage and revolting stories about 
 the god they had invented ? Mr. Muller only says 
 the myth ‘ would roll on irresistibly.’ But why did 
 the rolling myth gather such very strange moss ? 
 That is the problem ; and while Mr. Muller’s hypo- 
 thesis accounts for the existence of a god called 
 Kpovo^, it does not even attempt to show how full- 
 blown Greeks came to believe such hideous stories 
 about the god. 
 
 This theory, therefore, is of no practical service. 
 The theory of Adalbert Kuhn, one of the most 
 famous of Sanskrit scholars, and author of Die 
 Herabkiiuft des Feiiers, is directly opposed to the ideas 
 of Mr. Muller. In Cronus, Mr. Muller recognises a 
 god who could only have come into being among 
 Greeks, when the Greeks had begun to forget the 
 original meaning of ‘ derivatives in -ioyv and 
 Kuhn, on the other hand, derives Kpovo^ from the 
 same root as the Sanskrit Krmia} Krdna means, it 
 appears, der fiir sick schajfende, he who creates for 
 himself, and Cronus is compared to the Indian 
 Pragapati, about whom even more abominable stories 
 are told than the myths which circulate to the pre- 
 judice of Cronus. According to Kuhn, the ‘ swallow- 
 
 ^ Ueber Entwicklungsstufcn der Mythenbildung (1874), 1 . 148. 
 
6o 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 myth ’ means that Cronus, the lord of light and dark 
 powers, swallows the divinities of light. But in place 
 of Zeus (that is, according to Kuhn, of the day- 
 light sky) he swallows a stone, that is the sun. When 
 he disgorges the stone (the sun), he also disgorges 
 the gods of light whom he had swallowed. 
 
 I confess that I cannot understand these distinc- 
 tions between the father and lord of light and dark 
 (Cronus) and the beings he swallowed. Nor do I 
 find it easy to believe that myth-making man took 
 all those distinctions, or held those views of the 
 Creator. However, the chief thing to note is that 
 Mr. Muller’s etymology and Kuhn’s etymology of 
 Cronus can hardly both be true, which, as their sys- 
 tems both depend on etymological analysis, is some- 
 what discomfiting. 
 
 The next etymological theory is the daring 
 speculation of Mr. Brown. In The Great Dionysiak 
 MytJG Mr. Brown writes: ‘I regard Kronos as the 
 equivalent of Karnos, Karnaios, Karnaivis, the Horned 
 God ; Assyrian, KaRNu ; Hebrew, KeReN, horn ; 
 Hellenic, KRoNos, or KaRNos.’ Mr. Brown seems 
 to think that Cronus is ‘ the ripening power of 
 harvest,’ and also ‘ a wily savage god,’ in which 
 opinion one quite agrees with him. Why the name 
 of Cronus should mean ‘ horned,’ when he is never re- 
 presented with horns, it is hard to say. But among 
 the various foreign gods in whom the Greeks recog- 
 nised their own Cronus, one Hea, ‘ regarded by 
 Berosos as Kronos,’ seems to have been ‘ horn- 
 wearing.’^ Horns are lacking in Seb and II, if not 
 
 ^ ii. 127. 
 
 - G. D. M., ii. 127, 129. 
 
THE MYTH OF CRONUS. 
 
 6l 
 
 in Baal Hamon, though Mr. Brown would like to 
 behorn them. 
 
 Let us now turn to Preller.^ According to 
 Preller, Kpovo^ is connected with Kpau^o, to fulhl, to 
 bring to completion. The harvest month, the month 
 of ripening and fulfilment, was called Kpoviwv in 
 vSome parts of Greece, and the jolly harvest-feast, with 
 its memory of Saturn’s golden days, was named 
 Kpovta. The sickle of Cronus, the sickle of harvest- 
 time, works in well with this explanation, and we 
 have a kind of pun in Homer which points in the 
 direction of Preller's derivation from Kpai'vw : — 
 
 ovK apa 7T0) ot iiriKpataLve K.povL(DV, 
 
 and in Sophocles (‘ Tr.’ 126) : — 
 
 6 irdvra Kpaivuiv jSacTLXev^; K.povL?)a<;. 
 
 Preller illustrates the mutilation of Uranus by 
 the Maori tale of Tutenganahau. The child-swallow- 
 ing he connects with Punic and Phoenician influence, 
 and Semitic sacrifices of men and children. Por- 
 phyry “ speaks of human sacrifices to Cronus in 
 Rhodes, and the Greeks recognised Cronus in the 
 Carthaginian god to whom children were offered up. 
 
 Hartung^ takes Cronus, when he mutilates 
 Uranus, to be the fire of the sun, scorching the sky 
 of spring. This, again, is somewhat out of accord 
 with Schwartz’s idea, that Cronus is the storm-god, 
 the cloud-swallowing deity, his sickle the rainbow, 
 and the blood of Uranus the lightning."* According 
 
 ^ Gr. My., i. 144, 
 
 - Dc Abst., ii. 202, 197. ^ Rcl. nnd Myth., ii. 3. 
 
 ^ Ursprung dcr Myth., pp. 133, i, 5, 139, 149. 
 
62 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 to Prof. Sayce, again, ^ the blood-drops of Uranus are 
 rain-drops. Cronus is the sun-god, piercing the dark 
 cloud, which is just the reverse of Schwartz’s idea. 
 Prof. Sayce sees points in common between the 
 legend of Moloch, or of Baal under the name of 
 Moloch, and the myth of Cronus. But Moloch, he 
 thinks, is not a god of Phoenician origin, but a deity 
 borrowed from ‘ the primitive Accadian population 
 of Babylonia.’ Mr. Isaac Taylor, again, explains 
 Cronus as the sky which swallows and reproduces 
 the stars. The story of the sickle may be derived 
 from the crescent moon, the ‘ silver sickle,’ or from a 
 crescent-shaped piece of meteoric iron — for, in this 
 theory, the fetich-stone of Delphi is a piece of that 
 substance. 
 
 It will be observed that any one of these theories, 
 if accepted, is much more ‘ minute in detail ’ than 
 our humble suggestion. He who adopts any one of 
 them, knows all about it. He knows that Cronus is 
 a purely Greek god, or that he is connected with the 
 Sanskrit Krana, which Tiele,'^ unhappily, says is ‘a very 
 dubious word.’ Or the mythologist may be quite 
 confident that Cronus is neither Greek nor, in any 
 sense, Sanskrit, but Phoenician. A not less adequate 
 interpretation assigns him ultimately to Accadia. 
 While the inquirer who can choose a system and 
 stick to it knows the exact nationality of Cronus, he 
 is also well acquainted with his character as a nature- 
 god. He may be Time, or perhaps he is the Summer 
 Heat, and a horned god ; or he is the harvest-god, or 
 
 - Rev. dc I'Hist. ReL, i. 179. 
 
 * Contemporary Review, Sept., 18S3. 
 
THE MYTH OF CRONUS. 
 
 63 
 
 the god of storm and darkness, or the midnight sky, 
 — the choice is wide ; or he is the lord of dark and 
 light, and his children are the stars, the clouds, the 
 summer months, the light-powers, or what you will. 
 The mythologist has only to make his selection. 
 
 The system according to which we tried to inter- 
 pret the myth is less ondoyant et divers. We do not 
 even pretend to explain everything. We do not 
 guess at the meaning and root of the word Cronus. 
 We only find parallels to the m-yth among savages, 
 whose mental condition is fertile in such legends. 
 And we only infer that the myth of Cronus was 
 originally evolved by persons also in the savage intel- 
 lectual condition. The survival we explain as, in a 
 previous essay, we explained the survival of the bull- 
 roarer, by the conservatism of the religious instinct. 
 
64 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 ■CUPID, PSYCHE, AND THE ^ SUN-EROG: 
 
 ‘ Once upon a time there lived a king and a queen,’ 
 says the old woman in Apuleius, beginning the tale 
 of Cupid and Psyche with that ancient formula which 
 has been dear to so many generations of children. In 
 one shape or other the tale of Cupid and Psyche, of 
 the woman who is forbidden to see or to name her 
 husband, of the man with the vanished fairy bride, 
 is known in most lands, ‘ even among barbarians.’ 
 According to the story the mystic prohibition is always 
 broken : the hidden face is beheld ; light is brought 
 into the darkness ; the forbidden name is uttered ; 
 the bride is touched with the tabooed metal, iron, and 
 the union is ended. Sometimes the pair are re-united, 
 after long searchings and wanderings ; sometimes 
 they are severed for ever. Such are the central 
 situations in tales like that of Cupid and Psyche. 
 
 In the attempt to discover how the ideas on which 
 this myth is based came into existence, we may 
 choose one of two methods. We may confine our 
 investigations to the Aryan peoples, among whom 
 the story occurs both in the form of myth and of 
 household tale. Again, we may look for the shapes 
 of the legend which hide, like Peau d’Ane in disguise. 
 
CUPID, PSYCHE, AND THE ‘ SUN-FROG.’ 
 
 65 
 
 among the rude kraals and wigwams, and in the 
 strange and scanty garb of savages. If among savages 
 we find both narratives like Cupid and Psyche, and 
 also customs and laws out of which the myth might 
 have arisen, we may provisionally conclude that 
 similar customs once existed among the civilised 
 races who possess the tale, and that from these 
 sprang the early forms of the myth. 
 
 In accordance with the method hitherto adopted, 
 we shall prefer the second plan, and pursue our quest 
 beyond the limits of the Aryan peoples. 
 
 The oldest literary shape of the tale of Psyche 
 and her lover is found in the Rig Veda (x. 95). The 
 characters of a singular and cynical dialogue in that 
 poem are named Urvasi and Pururavas. The former 
 is an Apsaras, a kind of fairy or sylph, the mistress 
 (and a folle maUrcsse, too) of Pururavas, a mortal 
 man.^ In the poem Urvasi remarks that when she 
 dwelt among men she ‘ ate once a day a small piece 
 of butter, and therewith well satisfied went away.’ 
 This slightly reminds one of the common idea 
 that the living may not eat in the land of the dead, 
 and of Persephone’s tasting the pomegranate in 
 Hades. 
 
 Of the dialogue in the Rig Veda it may be 
 said, in the words of Mr. Toots, that ‘ the language is 
 coarse and the meaning is obscure.’ We only gather 
 that Urvasi, though she admits her sensual content 
 in the society of Pururavas, is leaving him ‘ like the 
 
 ^ That Pururavas is regarded as a mortal man, in relations with 
 some sort of spiritual mistress, appears from the poem itself (v. 8, 9, 
 18). The human character of Pururavas also appears in R. V., i. 31, 4. 
 
66 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 first of the dawns ’ ; that she ‘goes home again, hard 
 to be caught, like the winds.’ She gives her lover 
 some hope, however — that the gods promise immor- 
 tality even to him, ‘ the kinsman of Death ’ as he is. 
 ‘ Let thine offspring worship the gods with an obla- 
 tion ; in Heaven shalt thou too have joy of the 
 festival.’ 
 
 In the Rig Veda, then, we dimly discern a part- 
 ing between a mortal man and an immortal bride, 
 and a promise of reconciliation. 
 
 The story, of which this Vedic poem is a partial 
 dramatisation, is given in the Brahmana of the Yajur 
 Veda. Mr. Max Muller has translated the passage.^ 
 According to the Brahmana, ‘ Urvasi, a kind of fairy, 
 fell in love with Pururavas, and when she met him 
 she said : Embrace me three times a day, but never 
 against my will, and let me never see you without 
 your royal garments, /or this»is the manner of women.' 
 The Gandharvas, a spiritual race, kinsmen of Urvasi, 
 thought she had lingered too long among men. They 
 therefore plotted some way of parting her from Puru- 
 ravas. Her covenant with her lord declared that she 
 was never to see him naked. If that compact were 
 broken she would be compelled to leave him. To 
 make Pururavas break this compact the Gandharvas 
 stole a lamb from beside Urvasi’s bed : Pururavas 
 sprang up to rescue the lamb, and, in a flash of light- 
 
 ^ Selected Essays, i. 408. 
 
 “The Apsaras is an ideally beautiful fairy woman, something 
 ‘ between the high gods and the lower grotesque beings,’ with ‘ lotus 
 eyes ’ and other agreeable characteristics. A list of Apsaras known 
 by name is given in Meyer’s Gandharven-Kentauren, p. 2S. They are 
 often regarded as cloud-maidens by mythologists. 
 
CUPID, PSYCHE, AND THE ‘ SUN-FROG.’ 67 
 
 ning, Urvasi saw him naked, contrary to the planner 
 of women. She vanished. He sought her long, and 
 at last came to a lake where she and her fairy friends 
 were playing in the shape of birds. Urvasi saw Puru- 
 ravas, revealed herself to him, and, according to the 
 Brahmana, part of the strange Vedic dialogue was 
 now spoken. Urvasi promised to meet him on the 
 last night of the year : a son was to be the result 
 of the interview. Next day, her kinsfolk, the Gand- 
 harvas, offered Pururavas the wish of his heart. He 
 wished to be one of them. They then initiated him 
 into the mode of kindling a certain sacred fire, after 
 which he became immortal and dwelt among the 
 Gandharvas. 
 
 It is highly characteristic of the Indian mind that 
 the story should be thus worked into connection with 
 ritual. In the same way the Bhagavata Purana has 
 a long, silly, and rather obscene narrative about the 
 sacrifice offered by Pururavas, and the new kind of 
 sacred fire. Much the same ritual tale is found in 
 the Vishnu Purana (iv. 6, ig). 
 
 Before attempting to offer our own theory of the 
 legend, we must examine the explanations presented 
 by scholars. The philological method of dealing with 
 myths is well known. The hypothesis is that the 
 names in a myth are ‘ stubborn things,’ and that, as the 
 whole narrative has probably arisen from forgetfulness 
 of the meaning of language, the secret of a myth 
 must be sought in analysis of the proper names of 
 the persons. On this principle Mr. Max Muller 
 interprets the myth of Urvasi and Pururavas, their 
 loves, separation, and reunion. Mr. Muller says that 
 
68 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 the story ‘ expresses the identity of the morning dawn 
 and the evening twilight.’ ^ To prove this, the names 
 are analysed. It is Mr. Muller’s object to show that 
 though, even in the Veda, Urvasi and Pururavas are 
 names of persons, they were originally ‘ appellations ’ ; 
 and that Urvasi meant ‘dawn,’ and Pururavas ‘sun.’ 
 Mr. Muller’s opinion as to the etymological sense of 
 the name would be thought decisive, naturally, by lay 
 readers, if an opposite opinion were not held by that 
 other great philologist and comparative mythologist, 
 Adalbert Kuhn. Admitting that ‘ the etymology of 
 Urvasi is difficult,’ Mr. Muller derives it from ^ uru, 
 wide (evpv), and a root as = to pervade.’ Now the 
 dawn is ‘ widely pervading,’ and has, in Sanskrit, the 
 epithet uruki, ‘ far-going.’ Mr. Muller next assumes 
 that ‘ Eurykyde,’ ‘ Eurynome,’ ‘ Eurydike,’ and other 
 heroic Greek female names, are ‘ names of the dawn’ ; 
 but this, it must be said, is merely an assumption of 
 his school. The main point of the argument is that 
 Urvasi means ‘ far-going,’ and that ‘the far and wide 
 splendour of dawn ’ is often spoken of in the Veda. 
 
 ‘ However, the best proof that Urvasi was the dawn is 
 the legend told of her and of her love to Pururavas, 
 a story that is true only of the sun and the dawn ’ 
 (i. 407). 
 
 We shall presently see that a similar story is 
 told of persons in whom the dawn can scarcely be 
 recognised, so that ‘ the best proof ’ is not very good. 
 
 The name of Pururavas, again, is ‘ an appropriate 
 name for a solar hero.’ . . . Pururavas meant the 
 same as noXvS 6 v/c 7 )<;, ‘ endowed with much light,’ for 
 
 ^ Selected Essays, i. 405. 
 
CUPID, PSYCHE, AND THE ‘ SUN-FROG.’ 6g 
 
 though rava is generally used of sound, yet the root 
 ru, which means originally ‘ to cry,’ is also applied to 
 colour, in the sense of a loud or crying colour, that 
 is, red.^ It is interesting to learn that our Aryan 
 fathers spoke of ‘ loud colours,’ and were so sensi- 
 tive as to think violet ‘ loud.’ Besides, Pururavas 
 calls himself Vasistha, which, as we know, is a name 
 of the sun ; and if he is called Aido, the son of Ida, 
 the same name is elsewhere given ^ to Agni, the fire. 
 ‘ The conclusion of the argument is that antiquity 
 spoke of the naked sun, and of the chaste dawn 
 hiding her face when she had seen her husband. Yet 
 she says she will come again. And after the sun has 
 travelled through the world in search of his beloved, 
 when he comes to the threshold of Death and is going 
 to end his solitary life, she appears again, in the 
 gloaming, the same as the dawn, as Eos in Homer, 
 begins and ends the day, and she carries him away to 
 the golden seats of the Immortals.’^ 
 
 Kuhn objects to all this explanation, partly on 
 what we think the inadequate ground that there is 
 no necessary connection between the story of Urvasi 
 (thus interpreted) and the ritual of sacred hre- 
 lighting. Connections of that sort were easily in- 
 vented at random by the compilers of the Brahmanas 
 in their existing form. Coming to the analysis of 
 names, Kuhn finds in Urvasi ‘a weakening of 
 Urvanki {urn + anc), like yuvaca from ynvanka, 
 
 ^ Cf. ruber, rufus, O.H.G. rot, rudhira, ipvdpos ; also Sanskrit, 
 rtwi, sun. - R. V., iii. 29, 3. 
 
 ^ The passage alluded to in Homer does not mean that dawn 
 ‘ ends ’ the day, but ‘ when the fair-tressed Dawn brought the full 
 light of the third day ’ {Od., v. 390). 
 
70 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 Latin jnvencus ; . . . the accent is of no decisive 
 weight.’ Kuhn will not be convinced that Pururavas is 
 the sun, and is unmoved by the ingenious theory of ‘ a 
 crying colour,’ denoted by his name, and the inference, 
 supported by such words as rufus, that crying colours 
 are red, and therefore appropriate names of the red 
 sun. The connection between Pururavas and Agni, 
 fire, is what appeals to Kuhn — and, in short, where 
 Mr. Muller sees a myth of sun and dawn, Kuhn 
 recognises a fire-myth. Roth, again (whose own 
 name means red), far from thinking that Urvasi is 
 ‘ the chaste dawn,’ interprets her name as die geile, 
 that is, ‘ lecherous, lascivious, lewd, wanton, obscene ’ ; 
 while Pururavas, as ‘the Roarer,’ suggests ‘ the Bull 
 in rut.’ In accordance with these views Roth 
 explains the myth in a fashion of his own.^ 
 
 Here, then, as Kuhn says, ‘ we have three 
 essentially different modes of interpreting the myth,’^ 
 all three founded on philological analysis of the names 
 in the story. No better example could be given to 
 illustrate the weakness of the philological method. 
 In the first place, that method relies on names as the 
 primitive relics and germs of the tale, although the 
 tale may occur where the names have never been 
 heard, and though the names are, presumably, late 
 additions to a story in which the characters were 
 originally anonymous. Again, the most illustrious 
 etymologists differ absolutely about the true sense 
 of the names. Kuhn is disposed to see fire every- 
 
 ^ Liebrecht (Zitr Volkskundc, 241) is reminded by Pururavas (in 
 Roth’s sense of dcr Britlhr) of loud-thundering Zeus, epiydounos. 
 
 - Hcrahkunft dcs Fetters, pp. 86-8g. 
 
CUPID, PSYCHE, AND THE ‘ SUN-FROG.’ 
 
 71 
 
 where, and ftre-myths ; Mr. Muller to see dawn and 
 dawn-myths ; Schwartz to see storm and storm- 
 myths, and so on. As the orthodox teachers are 
 thus at variance, so that there is no safety in ortho- 
 doxy, we may attempt to use our heterodox method. 
 
 None of the three scholars whose views we have 
 glanced at — neither Roth, Kuhn, nor Mr. Muller — lays 
 stress on the saying of Urvasi, ‘ never let me see you 
 without your royal garments, for this is the custom of 
 women.' ^ To our mind, these words contain the gist 
 of the myth. There must have been, at some time, a 
 custom which forbade women to see their husbands 
 without their garments, or the words have no mean- 
 ing. If any custom of this kind existed, a story 
 might well be evolved to give a sanction to the law. 
 
 ‘ You must never see your husband naked : think 
 what happened to Urvasi — she vanished clean away! ’ 
 This is the kind of warning which might be given. 
 If the customary prohibition had grown obsolete, 
 the punishment might well be assigned to a being 
 of another, a spiritual race, in which old human ideas 
 lingered, as the neolithic dread of iron lingers in the 
 Welsh fairies. 
 
 Our method will be, to prove the existence of 
 singular rules of etiquette, corresponding to the 
 etiquette accidentally infringed by Pururavas. We 
 shall then investigate stories of the same character as 
 that of Urvasi and Pururavas, in which the infringe- 
 
 ^ Liebrecht {Ziir Volkskundc, p. 241) notices the reference to the 
 ‘ custom of women.’ But he thinks the clause a mere makeshift, 
 introduced late to account for a prohibition of which the real meaning 
 had been forgotten. The improbability of this view is indicated by 
 the frequency of similar prohibitions in actual custom. 
 
72 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 ment of the etiquette is chastised. It will be seen 
 that, in most cases, the bride is of a peculiar and per- 
 haps supernatural race. Finally, the tale of Urvasi 
 will be taken up again, will be shown to conform in 
 character to the other stories examined, and will be 
 explained as a myth told to illustrate, or sanction, 
 a nuptial etiquette. 
 
 The lives of savages are bound by the most 
 closely-woven fetters of custom. The simplest acts 
 are ‘ tabooed,’ a strict code regulates all intercourse. 
 Married life, especially, moves in the strangest fetters. 
 There will be nothing remarkable in the wide dis- 
 tribution of the myth turning on nuptial etiquette, if 
 this law of nuptial etiquette proves to be also widely 
 distributed. That it is widely distributed we now 
 propose to demonstrate by examples. 
 
 The custom of the African people of the kingdom 
 of Futa is, or was, even stricter than the Vedic custom 
 of women — ‘ wives never permit their husbands to see 
 them unveiled for three years after their marriage.’ ^ 
 
 In his Travels to TimbiLctoo (i. 94), Caillid says 
 that the bridegroom ‘ is not allowed to vsee his 
 intended during the day.’ He has a tabooed hut 
 apart, and ‘ if he is obliged to come out he covers his 
 face.’ He ‘ remains with his wife only till daybreak ’ 
 — like Cupid— and flees, like Cupid, before the light. 
 Among the Australians the chief deity, if deity such 
 
 ^ Astley, Collection of Voyages, ii. 24. This is given by Bluet and 
 Moore on the evidence of one Job Ben Solomon, a native of Bunda 
 in Futa. ‘Though Job had a daughter by his last wife, yet he 
 never saw her without her veil, as having been married to her only 
 two years.’ Excellently as this prohibition suits my theory, yet I 
 confess I do not like Job’s security. 
 
CUPID, PSYCHE, AND THE ‘SUN-FROG.’ 73 
 
 a being can be called, Pundjel, ‘ has a wife whose face 
 he has never seen,’ probably in compliance with some 
 primaeval etiquette or tabood 
 
 Among the Yorubas ‘conventional modesty for- 
 bids a woman to speak to her husband, or even to 
 see him, if it can be avoided.’ Of the Iroquois 
 Lafitau says : ‘ Ils n’oscent aller dans les cabanes par- 
 • ticulieres ou habitent leurs epouses que durant 
 I’obscurite de la nuit.’^ The Circassian women live 
 on distant terms with their lords till they become 
 mothers.^ Similar examples of reserve are reported 
 to be customary among the Fijians. 
 
 In backward parts of Europe a strange custom 
 forbids the bride to speak to her lord, as if in 
 memory of a time when husband and wife were 
 always of alien tribes, and, as among the Caribs, 
 spoke different languages. 
 
 In the Bulgarian ‘ Volkslied,’ the Sun marries 
 Grozdanka, a mortal girl. Her mother addresses her 
 thus : — 
 
 Grozdanka, mother’s treasure mine. 
 
 For nine long years I nourished thee. 
 
 For nine months see thou do not speak 
 To thy first love that marries thee. 
 
 M. Dozon, who has collected the Bulgarian songs, 
 says that this custom of prolonged silence on the part 
 of the bride is very common in Bulgaria, though it is 
 beginning to yield to a sense of the ludicrous.^ In 
 Sparta and in Crete, as is well known, the bridegroom 
 
 ‘ Brough Smyth, i, 423. - Bowen, Central Africa, p. 303. 
 
 ^ Lafitau, i. 576. 
 
 Lubbock, Origin of Civilisation (1875), p. 75. 
 
 ® Chansons Pop. Bulg., p. 172. 
 
74 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 was long the victim of a somewhat similar taboo, and 
 was only permitted to seek the company of his wife 
 secretly, and in the dark, like the Iroquois described 
 by Lafitau. 
 
 Herodotus tells us (i. 146) that some of the old 
 Ionian colonists ‘ brought no women with them, but 
 took wives of the women of the Carians, whose 
 fathers they had slain. Therefore the women made . 
 a law for themselves, and handed it down to their 
 daughters, that they should never sit at meat with 
 their husbands, and that none should ever call her 
 husband by his name' In precisely the same way, in 
 Zululand the wife may not mention her husband’s 
 name, just as in the Welsh fairy tale the husband 
 may not even know the name of his fairy bride, on 
 pain of losing her for ever. These ideas about names, 
 and freakish ways of avoiding the use of names, mark 
 the childhood of languages, according to Mr. Max 
 Muller, ^ and, therefore, the childhood of Society. 
 The Kaffirs call this etiquette ‘ Hlonipa.’ It applies 
 to women as well as men. A Kaffir bride is not 
 called by her own name in her husband’s village, 
 but is spoken of as ‘ mother of so and so,’ even before 
 she has born a child. The universal superstition 
 about names is at the bottom of this custom. The 
 Aleutian Islanders, according to Dali, are quite dis- 
 tressed when obliged to speak to their wives in the 
 presence of others. The Fijians did not know where 
 to look when missionaries hinted that a man might 
 live under the same roof as his wife.'^ Among the 
 
 ^ Lectures on Lujiguufrc , Second Series, p. 41. 
 
 - J. A. Farrer, Priuiitirc Manners, p. 202, quoting Seeman. 
 
CUPID, PSYCHE, AND THE ‘ SUN-FROG.’ 
 
 75 
 
 Turkomans, for six months, a year, or two years, a 
 husband is only allowed to visit his wife by stealth. 
 
 The number of these instances could probably be 
 increased by a little research. Our argument is that 
 the widely distributed myths in which a husband or 
 a wife transgresses some ‘ custom ’ — sees the other’s 
 face or body, or utters the forbidden name — might 
 well have arisen as tales illustrating the punishment 
 of breaking the rule. By a very curious coincidence, 
 a Breton sailor’s tale of the ‘ Cupid and Psyche ’ 
 class is confessedly founded on the existence of the 
 rule of nuptial etiquette.^ 
 
 In this story the son of a Boulogne pilot marries 
 the daughter of the King of Naz — wherever that may 
 be. In Naz a man is never allowed to see the face 
 of his wife till she has born him a child — a modifi- 
 cation of the Futa rule. The inquisitive Ph'ench 
 husband unveils his wife, and, like Psyche in Apu- 
 leius, drops wax from a candle on her cheek. When 
 the pair return to Naz, the king of that country 
 discovers the offence of the husband, and, by the aid 
 of his magicians, transforms the Frenchman into a 
 monster. Here we have the old formula — the in- 
 fringement of a ‘ taboo,’ and the magical punishment 
 — adapted to the ideas of Breton peasantry. The 
 essential point of the story, for our purpose, is that 
 the veiling of the bride is ‘ the custom of women,’ in 
 the mysterious land of Naz. ‘ C’est I’usage du pays : 
 les maris ne voient leurs femmes sans voile que 
 lorsqu’elles sont devenues meres.’ Now our theory 
 of the myth of Urvasi is simply this: ‘the custom of 
 
 ^ Sebillot, Contes Pop. dc la Hante-Brctagne, p. 183. 
 
76 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 women,’ which Pururavas transgresses, is probably a 
 traditional Aryan law of nuptial etiquette, Vusage du 
 pays, once prevalent among the people of India. 
 
 If our view be correct, then several rules of 
 etiquette, and not one alone, will be illustrated in the 
 stories which we suppose the rules to have suggested. 
 In the case of Urvasi and Pururavas, the rule was, 
 not to see the husband naked. In ‘ Cupid and 
 Psyche,’ the husband was not to be looked upon at 
 all. In the well-known myth of Melusine, the bride 
 is not to be seen naked. Melusine tells her lover that 
 she will only abide with him dum ipsam nudam non 
 vidcrit} The same taboo occurs in a Dutch Mdrchen} 
 
 We have now to examine a singular form of the 
 myth, in which the strange bride is not a fairy, or 
 spiritual being, but an animal. In this class of story 
 the husband is usually forbidden to perform some act 
 which will recall to the bride the associations of her 
 old animal existence. The converse of the tale is the 
 well-known legend of the Forsaken Merman. The 
 king of the sea permits his human wife to go to 
 church. The ancient sacred associations are revived, 
 and the woman returns no more. 
 
 She will not come though you call all day 
 Come away, come away. 
 
 Now, in the tales of the animal bride, it is her 
 associations with her former life among the beasts 
 that are not to be revived, and when they are re- 
 
 ’ Gervase of Tilbury. 
 
 2 Kuhn, Hcrabkunft, p. 92. See also South African Journal of 
 holklore, May, 1879, p. 46: ‘ As a rule, the bridegroom never sees his 
 bride.’ 
 
CUPID, PSYCHE, AND THE ‘ SUN-FROG.’ 
 
 77 
 
 awakened by the commission of some act which she 
 has forbidden, or the neglect of some precaution 
 which she has enjoined, she, like Urvasi, disappears. 
 
 The best known example of this variant of the 
 tale is the story of Bheki, in Sanskrit. Mr. Max 
 Muller has interpreted the myth in accordance with 
 his own methodd His difficulty is to account for 
 the belief that a king might marry a frog. Our 
 ancestors, he remarks, ‘ were not idiots,’ how then 
 could they tell such a story ? We might reply that 
 our ancestors, if we go far enough back, were savages, 
 and that such stories are the staple of savage myth. 
 Mr. Muller, however, holds that an accidental corrup- 
 tion of language reduced Aryan fancy to the savage 
 level. He explains the corruption thus : ‘ We find, 
 in Sanskrit, that Bheki, the frog, was a beautiful girl, 
 and that one day, when sitting near a well, she was 
 discovered by a king, who asked her to be his wife. 
 She consented, on condition that he should never show 
 her a drop of water. One day, being tired, she asked 
 the king for water ; the king forgot his promise, 
 brought water, and Bheki disappeared.’ This myth, 
 Mr. Muller holds, ‘began with a short saying, such 
 as that “ Bheki, the sun, will die at the sight of 
 water,” as we should say that the sun will set, when 
 it approaches the water from which it rose in the 
 morning.’ But how did the sun come to be called 
 Bheki, ‘the frog’? Mr. Muller supposes that this 
 name was given to the sun by some poet or fisherman. 
 He gives no evidence for the following statement : 
 ^ Chips, ii. 251. 
 
78 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 ‘ It can be shown that “ fro" ” was used as a name for 
 the sun. Now at sunrise and sunset, when the sun 
 was squatting on the water, it was called the “ frog.” ’ 
 At what historical period the Sanskrit-speaking race 
 was settled in seats where the sun rose and set in 
 water, we do not know, and ‘ chapter and verse ’ are 
 needed for the statement that ‘ frog ’ was actually a 
 name of the sun. Mr. Muller’s argument, however, 
 is that the sun was called ‘ the frog,’ that people forgot 
 that the frog and sun were identical, and that Frog, or 
 Hheki, was mistaken for the name of a girl to whom 
 was applied the old saw about dying at sight of 
 water. ‘ And so,’ says Mr. Muller, ‘the change from 
 sun to frog, and from frog to man, which was at 
 first due to the mere spell of language, would in our 
 nursery tales be ascribed to miraculous charms more 
 familiar to a later age.’ As a matter of fact, magical 
 metamorphoses are infinitely more familiar to the 
 lowest savages than to people in a ‘ later age.’ Magic, 
 as Castren observes, ‘ belongs to the lowest known 
 stages of civilisation.’ Mr. Muller’s theory, how- 
 ever, is this - that a Sanskrit-speaking people, living 
 where the sun rose out of and set in some ocean, 
 called the sun, as he touched the water, Bheki, the 
 frog, and said he would die at the sight of water. 
 They ceased to call the sun the frog, or Bheki, but 
 kept tbe saying, ‘ Bheki will die at sight of water.’ 
 Not knowing who or what Bheki might be, they took 
 her for a frog, who also was a pretty wench. Lastly, 
 they made the story of Bheki’s distinguished wedding 
 and mysterious disappearance. For this interpreta- 
 tion, historical and linguistic evidence is not offered. 
 
CUPID, PSYCHE, AND THE ‘ SUN-FROG.’ 
 
 79 
 
 When did a Sanskrit-speaking^ race live beside a 
 great sea? How do we know that ‘frog’ was used 
 as a name for ‘ sun ’ ? 
 
 We have already given our explanation. To the 
 savage intellect, man and beast are on a level, and all 
 savage myth makes men descended from beasts; while 
 stories of the loves of gods in bestial shape, or the 
 unions of men and animals, incessantly occur. ‘ Un- 
 natural ’ as these notions seem to us, no ideas are 
 more familiar to savages, and none recur more fre- 
 quently in Indo-Aryan, Scandinavian, and Greek 
 mythology. An extant tribe in North-West America 
 still claims descent from a frog. The wedding of 
 Bheki and the king is a survival, in Sanskrit, of a 
 tale of this kind. Lastly, Bheki disappears, when 
 her associations with her old amphibious life are re- 
 vived in the manner she had expressly forbidden. 
 
 Our interpretation may be supported by an Ojib- 
 way parallel. A hunter named Otter-heart, camping 
 near a beaver lodge, found a pretty girl loitering 
 round his fire. She keeps his wigwam in order, and 
 ‘ lays his blanket near the deerskin she had laid for 
 herself. “ Good,” he muttered, “ this is my wife.” ’ 
 She refuses to eat the beavers he has shot, but at 
 night he hears a noise, ‘ krch, krch, as if beavers were 
 gnawing wood.’ He sees, by the glimmer of the 
 fire, his wife nibbling birch twigs. In fact, the good 
 little wife is a beaver, as the pretty Indian girl was a 
 frog. The pair lived happily till spring came and 
 the snow melted and the streams ran full. Then his 
 
8o 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 wife implored the hunter to build her a bridge over 
 every stream and river, that she might cross dry- 
 footed. ‘ For,’ she said, ‘ if my feet touch water, this 
 would at once cause thee great sorrow.’ The hunter 
 did as she bade him, but left unbridged one tidy 
 runnel. The wife stumbled into the water, and, as 
 soon as her foot was wet, she immediately resumed 
 her old shape as a beaver, her son became a beaver- 
 ling, and the brooklet, changing to a roaring river, 
 bore them to the lake. Once the hunter saw his wife 
 again among her beast kin. ‘ To thee I sacrificed all,’ 
 she said, ‘ and I only asked thee to help me dry- 
 footed over the waters. Thou didst cruelly neglect 
 this. Now I must remain for ever with my people.’ 
 
 This tale was told to Kohl by ‘ an old insignificant 
 squaw among the Ojibways.’^ Here we have a 
 precise parallel to the tale of Bheki, the frog-bride, 
 and here the reason of the prohibition to touch water 
 is made perfectly unmistakable. The touch magically 
 revived the bride’s old animal life with the beavers. 
 Or was the Indian name for beaver (temakse) once a 
 name for the sun ? 
 
 A curious variant of this widely distributed 
 Mdrchen of the animal bride is found in the mythical 
 genealogy of the Raja of Chutia Nagpur, a chief 
 of the Naga, or snake race. It is said that Raja 
 Janameja prepared a yajnya, or great malevolently 
 magical incantation, to destroy all the people of the 
 serpent race. To prevent this annihilation, the super- 
 natural being, Pundarika Nag, took a human form, 
 
 ^ Kitchi Garni, p. 105. 
 
CUPID, PSYCHE, AND THE ‘ SUN-FROG.’ 
 
 8l 
 
 and became the husband of the beautiful Parvati, 
 daughter of a l^rahman. But Pundarika Nag, being 
 a serpent by nature, could not divest himself, even 
 in human shape, of his forked tongue and venomed 
 breath. And, just as Urvasi could not abide with her 
 mortal lover, after he transgressed the prohibition 
 to appear before her naked, so Pundarika Nag was 
 compelled by fate to leave his bride, if she asked him 
 any questions about his disagreeable peculiarities. 
 She did, at last, ask questions, in circumstances which 
 made Pundarika believe that he was bound to answer 
 her. Now the curse came upon him, he plunged 
 into a pool, like the beaver, and vanished. His wife 
 became the mother of the serpent Rajas of Chutia 
 Nagpur. Pundarika Nag, in his proper form as a 
 great hooded snake, guarded his first-born child. 
 The crest of the house is a hooded snake with human 
 face.^ 
 
 Here, then, we have many examples of the dis- 
 appearance of the bride or bridegroom in consequence 
 of infringement of various mystic rules. Sometimes 
 the beloved one is seen when he or she should not 
 be seen. Sometimes, as in a Maori story, the bride 
 vanishes merely because she is in a bad temper.'-^ 
 Among the Red Men, as in Sanskrit, the taboo on 
 water is broken, with the usual results. Now for an 
 example in which the rule against using names is 
 infringed.^ 
 
 This formula constantly occurs in the Welsh fairy 
 
 ^ Dalton’s Ethnol. of Bengal, pp. 165, 166. 
 
 - Taylor, New Zealand, p. 143. 
 
 ^ Liebrecht gives a Hindoo example, Ztir Volksknndc, p. 239. 
 
 G 
 
82 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 tales published by Professor Rhys.^ Thus the heir 
 of Corwrion fell in love with a fairy : ‘ They were 
 married on the distinct understanding that the hus- 
 band was not to know her name, . . . and was not 
 to strike her with iron, on pain of her leaving him at 
 once.’ Unluckily the man once tossed her a bridle, 
 the iron bit touched the wife, and ‘ she at once flew 
 through the air, and plunged headlong into Corwrion 
 Lake.’ 
 
 A number of tales turning on the same incident 
 are published in Cymmrodor, v. i. In these we 
 have either the taboo on the name, or the taboo on 
 the touch of iron. In a widely diffused superstition 
 iron ‘ drives away devils and ghosts,’ according to 
 the Scholiast on the eleventh book of the Odyssey^ 
 and the Oriental Djinn also flee from iron.‘^ Just as 
 water is fatal to the Aryan frog-bride and to the 
 Red Indian beaver-wife, restoring them to their old 
 animal forms, so the magic touch of iron breaks love 
 between the Welshman and his fairy mistress, the 
 representative of the stone age. 
 
 In many tales of fairy-brides, they are won by a 
 kind of force. The lover in the familiar Welsh and 
 German Mdrchcn sees the swan-maidens throw off 
 their swan plumage and dance naked. He steals the 
 feather-garb of one of them, and so compels her to 
 his love. Finally, she leaves him, in anger, or be- 
 cause he has broken some taboo. Far from being 
 peculiar to Aryan mythology, this legend occurs, as 
 Mr. Farrer has shown, ^ in Algonquin and Bornoese 
 
 1 Cymmrodor, iv. pt. ii. Prim. Cult., i. 140. 
 
 ^ Primitive Manners, p. 256. 
 
CUPID, PSYCHE, AND THE ‘ SUN FROG.’ 83 
 
 tradition. The Red Indian story told by School- 
 craft in his Algic Researches is most like the Aryan 
 version, but has some native peculiarities. Wampee 
 was a great hunter, who, on the lonely prairie, once 
 heard strains of music. Looking up he saw a speck 
 in the sky : the speck drew nearer and nearer, and 
 proved to be a basket containing twelve heavenly 
 maidens. They reached the earth and began to 
 dance, inflaming the heart of Wampee with love. 
 But Wampee could not draw near the fairy girls in 
 his proper form without alarming them. Like Zeus 
 in his love adventures, Wampee exercised the medi- 
 cine-man’s power of metamorphosing himself. He 
 assumed the form of a mouse, approached unobserved, 
 and caught one of the dancing maidens. After living 
 with Wampee for some time she wearied of earth, and, 
 by virtue of a ‘ mystic chain of verse,’ she ascended 
 again to her heavenly home. 
 
 Now is there any reason to believe that this in- 
 cident was once part of the myth of Pururavas and 
 Urvasi ? Was the fairy-love, Urvasi, originally caught 
 and held by Pururavas among her naked and strug- 
 gling companions ? Though this does not appear to 
 have been much noticed, it seems to follow from a 
 speech of Pururavas in the Vedic dialogue^ (x. 95, 8, g). 
 Mr. Max Muller translates thus : ‘ When I, the mortal, 
 threw my arms <round those flighty immortals, they 
 trembled away from me like a trembling doe, like 
 horses that kick against the cart.’ ^ Ludwig’s ren- 
 dering suits our view — that Pururavas is telling how 
 
 ^ See Meyer, Gaiidharveii-Kcntauren, Benfey, Pantsch., i. 263. 
 
 ^ Selected Essays, i. 411. 
 
84 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 he first caught Urvasi— still better: ‘When I, the 
 mortal, held converse with the immortals who had 
 laid aside their raiment, like slippery serpents they 
 glided from me, like horses yoked to the car.’ 
 These words would well express the adventure of 
 a lover among the naked fiying swan-maidens, an 
 adventure familiar to the Red Men as to Persian 
 legends of the Peris. 
 
 To end our comparison of myths like the tale of 
 ‘ Cupid and Psyche,’ we find an example among the 
 Zulus. Here ^ the mystic lover came in when all was 
 dark, and felt the damsel’s face. After certain rites, 
 
 ‘ in the morning he went away, he speaking continu- 
 ally, the girl not seeing him. During all those days 
 he would not allow the girl {sic), when she said she 
 would light a fire. Finally, after a magical cere- 
 mony, he said, “ Light the fire ! ” and stood before 
 her revealed, a shining shape.’ This has a curious 
 resemblance to the myth of Cupid and Psyche ; but 
 a more curious detail remains. In the Zulu story of 
 Ukcombekcansini, the friends of a bride break a 
 taboo and kill a tabooed animal. Instantly, like 
 Urvasi and her companions in the Yajur Veda, the 
 bride and her maidens disappear and are turned into 
 birds !'^ I'hey are afterwards surprised in human 
 shape, and the bride is restored to her lover. 
 
 Here we conclude, having traced parallels to 
 Cupid and Psyche in many non-Aryan lands. Our 
 theory of the myth does not rest on etymology. 
 We have seen that the most renowned scholars. 
 Max Muller, Kuhn, Roth, all analyse the names 
 
 2 Ibid., p. iig. 
 
 ’ Callaway, p. 63. 
 
CUPID, PSYCHE, AND THE ' SUN-FROG.’ 
 
 85 
 
 Urvasi and Pururavas in different ways, and extract 
 different interpretations. We have found the story 
 where these names were probably never heard of. 
 We interpret it as a tale of the intercourse between 
 mortal men and immortal maids, or between men 
 and metamorphosed animals, as in India and North 
 America. We explain the separation of the lovers 
 as the result of breaking a taboo, or law of etiquette, 
 binding among men and women, as well as between 
 men and fairies. 
 
 The taboos are, to see the beloved unveiled, to 
 utter his or her name, to touch her with a metal 
 ‘ terrible to ghosts and spirits,’ or to do some action 
 which will revive the associations of a former life. 
 We have shown that rules of nuptial etiquette 
 resembling these in character do exist, and have 
 existed, even among Greeks — as where the Milesian, 
 like the Zulu, women made a law not to utter their 
 husbands’ names. Penally, we think it a reasonable 
 hypothesis that tales on the pattern of ‘ Cupid and 
 Psyche ’ might have been evolved wherever a curious 
 nuptial taboo required to be sanctioned, or explained, 
 by a myth. On this hypothesis, the stories may have 
 been separately invented in different lands ; but there 
 is also a chance that they have been transmitted from 
 people to people in the unknown past of our scattered 
 and wandering race. This theory seems at least as 
 probable as the hypothesis that the meaning of an 
 Aryan proverbial statement about sun and dawn was 
 forgotten, and was altered unconsciously into a tale 
 which is found among various non-Aryan tribes. 
 
86 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 That hypothesis again, learned and ingenious as it is, 
 has the misfortune to be opposed by other scholarly 
 hypotheses not less ingenious and learned. 
 
 As for the sun-frog, we may hope that he has 
 sunk for ever beneath the western wave. 
 
87 
 
 A FAR-TRAVELLED TALE. 
 
 A MODERN NOVELIST has boasted that her books 
 are read ‘ from Tobolsk to Tan^iers.’ This is a wide 
 circulation, but the widest circulation in the world 
 has probably been achieved by a story whose author, 
 unlike Ouida, will never be known to fame. The 
 tale which we are about to examine is, perhaps, of 
 all myths the most widely diffused, yet there is no 
 ready way of accounting for its extraordinary popu- 
 larity. Any true ‘ nature-myth,’ any myth which 
 accounts for the processes of nature or the aspects of 
 natural phenomena, may conceivably have been in- 
 vented separately, wherever men in an early state of 
 thought observed the same facts, and attempted to 
 explain them by telling a story. Thus we have seen 
 that the earlier part of the myth of Cronus is a 
 nature-myth, setting forth the cause of the separation 
 of Heaven and Earth. Star-myths, again, are every- 
 where similar, because men who believed all nature 
 to be animated and personal, accounted for the group- 
 ing of constellations in accordance with these crude 
 beliefs.^ Once more, if a story like that of ‘ Cupid and 
 Psyche’ be found among the most diverse races, the 
 
 1 Primitive Culture, i. 357 : ‘The savage sees individual stars as 
 animate beings, or combines star-groups into living celestial creatures, 
 or limbs of them, or objects connected with them.’ 
 
88 
 
 CUvSTOM AND MVTIl. 
 
 distribution becomes intelligible if the myth was in- 
 vented to illustrate or enforce a widely prevalent 
 custom. But in the followinj^ story no such explana- 
 tion is even provisionally acceptable. 
 
 The ^ist of the tale (which has many different 
 ‘ openings/ and conclusions in different places) may be 
 stated thus : A young man is brought to the home of 
 a hostile animal, a giant, cannibal, wizard, or a malevo- 
 lent king. He is put by his unfriendly host to various 
 severe trials, in which it is hoped that he will perish. 
 In each trial he is assisted by the daughter of his 
 host. After achieving the adventures, he elopes with 
 the girl, and is pursued by her father. The runaway 
 pair throw various common objects behind them, 
 which are changed into magical obstacles and check 
 the pursuit of the lather. The myth has various 
 endings, usually happy, in various places. Another 
 form of the narrative is known, in which the visitors 
 to the home of the hostile being are, not wooers of his 
 daughter, but brothers of his wife.^ The incidents of 
 the flight, in this variant, are still of the same character. 
 Finally, when the flight is that of a brother from his 
 sister’s malevolent ghost, in Hades (Japan), or of two 
 sisters from a cannibal mother or step-mother (Zulu 
 and Samoyed), the events of the flight and the magical 
 aids to escape remain little altered. We shall after- 
 wards see that attempts have been made to interpret 
 one of these narratives as a nature-myth ; but the 
 attempts seem unsuccessful. We are therefore at a 
 loss to account for the wide diffusion of this tale, 
 unless it has been transmitted slowly from people to 
 
 ^ This formula occurs among Bushmen and Eskimo (Bleek and Rink). 
 
IIV TALE. 
 
 A FAK-TRAVELLI 
 
 89 
 
 people, in the immense unknown prehistoric past of 
 the human race. 
 
 P)efore comparing the various forms of the myth 
 in its first shape — that which tells of the mortal lover 
 and the giant’s or wizard’s daughter — let us give 
 the Scottish version of the story. This version was 
 written down for me, many years ago, by an aged 
 lady in Morayshire. I published it in the Revue 
 Celtique ; but it is probably new to story-comparers, 
 in its broad Scotch variant. 
 
 Night Nought Nothing. 
 
 There once lived a king and a queen. They were long 
 married and had no bairns j l)ut at last the queen had a bairn, 
 when the king was away in far countries. The queen would 
 not christen the bairn till the king came back, and she said, 
 ‘We will just call him Nicht Nought Nothifig until his father 
 comes home.’ Hut it was long before he came home, and 
 the boy had grown a nice little laddie. At length the king 
 was on his way hack ; hut he had a big river to cross, and 
 there was a spate, and he could not get over the water. 
 But a giant came up to him, and said, ‘ If you will give me 
 Nicht Nought Nothing, I will carry you over the water on 
 my back. The king had never heard that his son was called 
 Nicht Nought Nothing, and so he promised him. When 
 the king got home again, he was very happy to see his wife 
 again, and his young son. She told him that she had not 
 given the child any name hut Nicht Nought Nothing, 
 until he should come home again himself. The poor king 
 was in a terrible case. He said, ‘What have I done? I 
 l)romised to give the giant who carried me over the river on 
 his back, Nicht Nought Nothing.’ The king and the queen 
 were sad and sorry, but they said, ‘ When the giant comes 
 
go 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 we will give him the hen-wife’s bairn ; he will never know 
 the difference.’ The next day the giant came to claim the 
 king’s promise, and he sent for the hen-wife’s bairn ; and 
 the giant went away with the bairn on his back. He 
 travelled till he came to a big stone, and there he sat down 
 to rest. He said, 
 
 “ Hidge Hodge, on my back, what time of day is it?’ 
 
 The poor little bairn said, ‘ It is the time that my mother, 
 the hen-wife, takes up the eggs for the queen’s breakfast.’ 
 
 The giant was very angry, and dashed the bairn on the 
 stone and killed it. 
 
 The same adventure is repeated with the gardener’s son. 
 
 Then the giant went back to the king’s house, and said 
 he would destroy them all if they did not give him Nicht 
 Nought Nothing this time. They had to do it ; and when 
 he came to the big stone, the giant said, ‘ What time of day 
 is it?’ Nicht Nought Nothing said, ‘ It is the time that my 
 father the king will be sitting down to supper.’ The giant 
 said, ‘ I’ve got the right ane noo ; ’ and took Nicht Nought 
 Nothing to his own house and brought him up till he was 
 a man. 
 
 The giant had a bonny dochter, and she and the lad 
 grew very fond of each other. The giant said one day to 
 Nicht Nought Nothing, ‘ I’ve work for you to-morrow. 
 'I'here is a stable seven miles long and seven miles broad, 
 and it has not been cleaned for seven years, and you must 
 clean it to-morrow, or I will have you for my supper.’ 
 
 The giant’s dochter went out next morning with the lad’s 
 breakfast, and found him in a terrible state, for aye as he 
 cleaned out a bit, it aye fell in again. The giant’s dochter 
 said she would help him, and she cried a’ the beasts o’ the 
 field, and a’ the fowls o’ the air, and in a minute they a’ 
 
A FAR-TKAVELLEl) TALE. 
 
 91 
 
 came, and carried awa’ everything that was in the stable 
 and made a’ clean before the giant came home. He said, 
 ‘ Shame for the wit that helped you ; but I have a worse job 
 for you to-morrow.’ Then he told Nicht Nought Nothing 
 that there was a loch seven miles long, and seven miles 
 deep, and seven miles broad, and he must drain it the next 
 day, or else he would have him for his supper. Nicht 
 Nought Nothing began early next morning and tried to 
 lave the water with his pail, but the loch was never getting 
 any less, and he did no ken what to do ; but the giant’s 
 dochter called on all the fi.sh in the sea to come and drink 
 the water, and very soon they drank it dry. When the 
 giant saw the work done he was in a rage, and said, ‘ Pve a 
 worse job for you to-morrow ; there is a tree seven miles 
 high, and no branch on it, till you get to the top, and there 
 is a nest, and you must bring down the eggs without break- 
 ing one, or else I will have you for my suj)per.’ At first the 
 giant’s dochter did not know how to help Nicht Nought 
 Nothing; but she cut off first her fingers and then her toes, 
 and made steps of them, and he clamb the tree, and got all 
 the eggs safe till he came to the bottom, and then one was 
 broken, d'he giant’s dochter advised him to run away, 
 and she would follow him. So he travelled until he came to 
 a king’s j)alace, and the king and queen took him in and 
 were very kind to him. The giant’s dochter left her father’s 
 house, and he pursued her and was drowned, d'hen she 
 came to the king’s palace where Nicht Nought Nothing 
 was. And she went up into a tree to watch for him. The 
 gardener’s dochter, going to draw water in the well, saw 
 the shadow of the lady in the water, and thought it was 
 herself, and said, ‘If Tm so bonny, if I’m so brave, do 
 you send me to draw water?’ The gardener’s wife went 
 out, and she said the same thing. Then the gardener went 
 himself, and brought the lady from the tree, and led her in. 
 
Q2 
 
 CUvSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 And he told her that a stranger was to marry the king’s 
 dochter, and showed her the man : and it was Nicht 
 Nought Notliing asleep in a chair. And she saw him, and 
 cried to him, ‘ Waken, waken, and speak to me ! ’ But he 
 would not waken, and syne she cried, 
 
 ‘ I cleaned the stable, I laved the loch, and I clamb the tree, 
 
 And all for the love of thee, 
 
 , And thou wilt not waken and speak to me.’ 
 
 The king and the queen heard this, and came to the 
 bonny young lady, and she said, 
 
 ‘ I canna get Nicht Nought Nothing to speak to me for 
 all that I can do.’ 
 
 Then were they greatly astonished when she spoke of 
 Nicht Nought Nothing, and asked where he was, and she 
 said, ‘ He that sits there in the chair.’ Then they ran to 
 him and kissed him and called him their own dear son, and 
 he wakened, and told them all that the giant’s dochter had 
 done for him, and of all her kindness. Then they took her 
 in their arms and kissed her, and said she should now be 
 their dochter, for their son should marry her. 
 
 And they lived happy all their days. 
 
 In this variant of the story, which we may use as 
 our text, it is to be noticed that a lacuna exists. The 
 narrative of the Bight omits to mention that the 
 runaways threw things behind them which became 
 obstacles in the giant’s way. One of these objects 
 probably turned into a lake, in which the giant was 
 drowned.^ A common incident is the throwing 
 behind of a comb, which changes into a thicket. 
 The formula of leaving obstacles behind occurs in the 
 Indian collection, the ‘ Kathasarit sagara’ (vii. xxxix.). 
 
 ^ The events of the flight are recorded correctly in the Gaelic 
 variant ‘The Battle of the Birds.’ (Campbell, Talcs of the West 
 Highlands, vol. i. p. 25.) 
 
A FAR-TRAVELLED TALE. 
 
 93 
 
 ‘The Battle of the Birds,’ in Campbell’s Talcs of the 
 West Highlands, is a very copious Gaelic variant. 
 Russian parallels are ‘Vasilissa the Wise and the 
 Water King,’ and ‘ The King Bear.’^ The incident 
 of the flight and the magical obstacles is found in 
 Japanese mythology.'^ The ‘ugly woman of Hades’ 
 is sent to pursue the hero. He casts down his black 
 head-dress, and it is instantly turned into grapes ; he 
 fled while she was eating them. Again, ‘ he cast down 
 his multitudinous and close-toothed comb, and it 
 instantly turned into bamboo sprouts.’ In the Gaelic 
 version, the pursuer is detained by talkative objects 
 which the pursued leave at home, and this marvel 
 recurs in Zululand, and is found among the l^ushmen. 
 The Zulu versions are numerous.^ Oddly enough, in 
 the last variant, the girl performs no magic feat, but 
 merely throws sesamum on the ground to delay the 
 cannibals, for cannibals are very fond of sesamum."* 
 
 Here, then, we have the remarkable details of the 
 flight, in Zulu, Gaelic, Norse, Malagasy,*'’ Russian, 
 Italian, Japanese. Of all incidents in the myth, 
 the incidents of the flight are most widely known. 
 But the whole connected series of events — the coming 
 of the wooer ; the love of the hostile being’s daughter ; 
 the tasks imposed on the wooer ; the aid rendered 
 by the daughter ; the flight of the pair ; the defeat or 
 
 ^ Ralston, Russian Folk Talcs, 132; Kohler, Orient and Occident, 
 ii. 107, 1 14. Ko ti ki, p. 36. 
 
 3 Callaway, pp. 51, 53, 64, 145, 228. 
 
 ^ See also ‘ Petrosinella’ in the Pcntamcronc, and ‘The Master- 
 maid ’ in Dasent’s Talcs from the Norse. 
 
 Folklore Journal August, 1883. 
 
94 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 destruction of the hostile being — all these, or most of 
 these, are extant, in due sequence, among the follov/- 
 ing races. The Greeks have the tale, the people of 
 Madagascar have it, the Lowland Scotch, the Celts, the 
 Russians, the Italians, the Algonquins, the Finns, and 
 the Samoans have it. Now if the story were confined 
 to the Aryan race, we might account for its diffusion, 
 by supposing it to be the common heritage of the 
 Indo-European peoples, carried everywhere with them 
 in their wanderings. But when the tale is found in 
 Madagascar, North America, Samoa, and among the 
 Finns, while many scattered incidents occur in even 
 more widely severed races, such as Zulus, Bushmen, 
 Japanese, Eskimo, Samoyeds, the Aryan hypothesis 
 becomes inadequate. 
 
 To show how closely, all things considered, the 
 Aryan and non-Aryan possessors of the tale agree, 
 let us first examine the myth of Jason. 
 
 The earliest literary reference to the myth of 
 Jason is in the Iliad (vii. 467, xxiii. 747). Here we 
 read of Euneos, a son whom Hypsipyle bore to Jason 
 in Lemnos. Already, even in the Iliad, the legend 
 of Argo’s voyage has been fitted into certain well- 
 known geographical localities. A reference in the 
 Odyssey (xii. 72) has a more antique ring : we are 
 told that of all barques Argo alone escaped the jaws 
 of the Rocks Wandering, which clashed together and 
 destroyed ships. Argo escaped, it is said, ‘ because 
 Jason was dear to Hera.’ It is plain, from various 
 fragmentary notices, that Hesiod was familiar with 
 several of the adventures in the legend of Jason. 
 
A FAR-TRAVELLED TALE. 
 
 95 
 
 In the Theogony (993-998) Hesiod mentions the 
 essential facts of the legend : how Jason carried off 
 from yEetes his daughter, ‘ after achieving the adven- 
 tures, many and grievous, which were laid upon him.’ 
 At what period the home of H 3 etes was placed in 
 Colchis, it is not easy to determine. Mimnermus, a 
 contemporary of Solon, makes the home of H 3 etes lie 
 ‘ on the brink of ocean,’ a very vague description.^ 
 Pindar, on the other hand, in the splendid Fourth 
 Pythian Ode, already knows Colchis as the scene of 
 the loves and flight of Jason and Medea. 
 
 ‘ Long were it for me to go by the beaten track,’ 
 says Pindar, ‘ and I know a certain short path.’ Like 
 Pindar, we may abridge the tale of Jason. He seeks 
 the golden fleece in Colchis : H 3 etes offers it to him as 
 a prize for success in certain labours. By the aid of 
 Medea, the daughter of /Eetes, the wizard king, Jason 
 tames the fire-breathing oxen, yokes them to the 
 plough, and drives a furrow. By Medea’s help he 
 conquers the children of the teeth of the dragon, 
 subdues the snake that guards the fleece of gold, and 
 escapes, but is pursued by yEetes. To detain ^Eetes, 
 Medea throws behind the mangled remains of her own 
 brother, Apsyrtos, and the Colchians pursue no further 
 than the scene of this bloody deed. The savagery as 
 this act survives even in the work of a poet so late as 
 Apollonius Rhodius (iv. 477), where we read how 
 Jason performed a rite of savage magic, mutilating 
 the body of /Vpsyrtos in a manner which was believed 
 to appease the avenging ghost of the slain. ‘ Thrice 
 
 ^ Foetcc Minores Gr., ii. 
 
96 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 he tasted the blood, thrice spat it out between his teeth,’ 
 a passage which the Scholiast says contains the descrip- 
 tion of an archaic custom popular among murderers. 
 
 l^eyond Tomi, where a popular etymology fixed 
 the ‘ cutting up’ of Apsyrtos, we need not follow the 
 fortunes of Jason and Medea. We have already seen 
 the wooer come to the hostile being, win his daughter’s 
 love, achieve the adventures by her aid, and flee in 
 her company, delaying, by a horrible device, the 
 advance of her pursuers. To these incidents in the 
 tale we confine our attention. 
 
 Many explanations of the Jason myth have been 
 given by Scholars who thought they recognised ele- 
 mental phenomena in the characters. As usual these 
 explanations differ widely. Whenever a myth has to 
 be interpreted, it is certain that one set of Scholars 
 will discover the sun and the dawn, where another 
 set will see the thunder-cloud and lightning. The 
 moon is thrown in at pleasure. 
 
 Preller^ is a learned Scholar, with his own set of 
 etymologies. Jason is derived, he thinks, from Idofiai, 
 to heal, because Jason studied medicine under the 
 Centaur Chiron. This is the view of the Scholiast 
 on Appollonius Rhodius (i. 554). Jason, to Preller’s 
 mind, is a form of Asclepius, ‘ a spirit of the spring 
 with its soft suns and fertile rains.’ Medea is the 
 moon. Medea, on the other hand, is a lightning 
 goddess, in the opinion of Schwartz.'^ No philological 
 reason is offered. Mr. Brown writes : ‘ The moon, as 
 the night-light, linked with Idyia-Daeira, is itself 
 knowing, and so appears as Medeia (“the Wise”).’ 
 
 ^ Gr. My., ii. 318. -So)inc, Moiid tind Sterne, pp. 213, 229. 
 
A FAK-TKAVELLEL) TALE. 
 
 97 
 
 We must suppose, it seems, that either the soft 
 spring rains and the moon, or the dawn and the 
 sun, or the lightning and the thunder-cloud, in one 
 arrangement or another, irresistibly suggested, to 
 early Aryan minds, the picture of a wooer, arriving 
 in a hostile home, winning a maiden’s love, achieving 
 adventures by her aid, fleeing with her from her angry 
 father and delaying his pursuit by various devices. 
 Why the spring, the moon, the lightning, the dawn 
 — any of them or all of them — should have suggested 
 such a tale, let Scholars determine when they have 
 reconciled their own differences. It is more to 
 our purpose to follow the myth among Samoans, 
 Algonquins, and Finns. None of these races speak 
 an Aryan language, and none can have been beguiled 
 into telling the same sort of tale by a disease of Aryan 
 speech. 
 
 Samoa, where we find our story, is the name of a 
 group of volcanic islands in Central Polynesia. They 
 are about 3000 miles from Sydney, were first observed 
 by Europeans in 1722, and are as far removed as 
 most spots from direct Aryan influences. Our posi- 
 tion is, however, that in the shiftings and migrations 
 of peoples, the Jason tale has somehow been swept, 
 like a piece of drift-wood, on to the coasts of Samoa. 
 In the islands, the tale has an epical form, and is 
 chanted in a poem of twenty-six stanzas. There is 
 something Greek, in the free and happy life of the 
 Samoans — something Greek, too, in this myth of theirs. 
 There was once a youth, Siati, famous for his sing- 
 ing, a young Thamyris of Samoa. Hut as, according 
 to Homer, ‘the Muses met Thamyris the Thracian, 
 
98 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 and made an end of his singing, for he boasted and 
 said that he would vanquish even the Muses if he 
 sang against them,’ so did the Samoan god of song 
 envy Siati. The god and the mortal sang a match : 
 the daughter of the god was to be the mortal’s prize 
 if he proved victorious. Siati won, and he set off, 
 riding on a shark, as Arion rode the dolphin, to 
 seek the home of the defeated deity. At length he 
 reached the shores divine, and thither strayed Puapae, 
 daughter of the god, looking for her comb which she 
 had lost. ‘Siati,’ said she, ‘how earnest thou hither?’ 
 ‘ I am come to seek the song-god, and to wed his 
 daughter.’ ‘ My father,’ said the maiden, ‘is more a 
 god than a man ; eat nothing he hands you, never 
 sit on a high seat, lest death follow.’ So they were 
 united in marriage. But the god, like ^Eetes, was 
 wroth, and began to set Siati upon perilous tasks : 
 ‘ Build me a house, and let it be finished this very 
 day, else death and the oven await thee.’ ^ 
 
 Siati wept, but the god’s daughter had the house 
 built by the evening. The other adventures were to 
 fight a fierce dog, and to find a ring lost at sea. 
 Just as the Scotch giant’s daughter cut off her fingers 
 to help her lover, so the Samoan god’s daughter bade 
 Siati cut her body into pieces and cast her into the sea. 
 There she became a fish, and recovered the ring. 
 They set off to the god’s house, but met him pursuing 
 them, with the help of his other daughter. ‘ Puapae 
 and Siati threw down the comb, and it became a bush 
 of thorns in the way to intercept the god and Puanli,’ 
 
 ^ This proves that the tale belongs to the pre-Christian cannibal 
 
 age. 
 
A FAR-TRAVELLED TALE. 
 
 99 
 
 the other daughter. Next they threw down a bottle of 
 earth, which became a mountain ; ‘ and then followed 
 their bottle of water, and that became a sea, and 
 drowned the god and Puanli.’ ^ 
 
 This old Samoan song contains nearly the closest 
 savage parallel to the various household tales which 
 find their heroic and artistic shape in the Jason 
 saga. Still more surprising in its resemblances is 
 the Malagasy version of the narrative. In the 
 Malagasy story, the conclusion is almost identical 
 with the winding up of the Scotch fairy tale. The 
 girl hides in a tree ; her face, seen reflected in a well, 
 is mistaken by women for their own faces, and the 
 recognition follows in due course.^ 
 
 Like most Red Indian versions of popular tales, 
 the Algonquin form of the Jason saga is strongly 
 marked with the peculiarities of the race. The story 
 is recognisable, and that is all. 
 
 The opening, as usual, differs from other openings. 
 Two children are deserted in the wilderness, and grow 
 up to manhood. One of them loses an arrow in the 
 water ; the elder brother, Panigwun, wades after it. 
 A magical canoe flies past : an old magician, who is 
 alone in the canoe, seizes Panigwun and carries him 
 off. The canoe fleets along, like the barques of the 
 Phaeacians, at the will of the magician, and reaches 
 the isle where, like the Samoan god of song, he dwells 
 with his two daughters. ‘ Here, my daughter,’ said 
 he, ‘ is a young man for your husband.’ But the 
 
 ^ Turner’s Samoa, p. 102. In this tale only the names of the 
 daughters are translated; they mean ‘white fish’ and ‘dark fish.’ 
 Folklore Journal, August, 1883. 
 
 H 2 
 
lOO 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 daughter knew that the proposed husband was but 
 another victim of the old man’s magic arts. By the 
 daughter’s advice, Panigwun escaped in the magic 
 barque, consoled his brother, and returned to the 
 island. Next day the magician, Mishosha, set the 
 young man to hard tasks and perilous adventures. 
 He was to gather gulls’ eggs ; but the gulls attacked 
 him in dense crowds. By an incantation he subdued 
 the birds, and made them carry him home to the island. 
 Next day he was sent to gather pebbles, that he 
 might be attacked and eaten by the king of the fishes. 
 Once more the young man, like the Finnish Ilmarinen 
 in Pohjola, subdued the mighty fish, and went back 
 triumphant. The third adventure, as in ‘Nicht Nought 
 Nothing,’ was to climb a tree of extraordinary height 
 in search of a bird’s nest. Here, again, the youth 
 succeeded, and finally conspired with the daughters 
 to slay the old magician. Lastly the boy turned the 
 magician into a sycamore tree, and won his daughter. 
 The other daughter was given to the brother who had 
 no share in the perils.^ Here we miss the incident of 
 the flight ; ^ and the magician’s daughter, though in 
 love with the hero, does not aid him to perform the 
 feats. Perhaps an Algonquin brave would scorn the 
 assistance of a girl. In the ‘ Kalevala,’ the old hero, 
 Wainamoinen, and his friend Ilmarinen, set off to the 
 mysterious and hostile land of Pohjola to win a bride. 
 The maiden of Pohjola loses her heart to Ilmarinen, 
 and, by her aid, he bridles the wolf and bear, ploughs 
 
 1 Schoolcraft, Al(ric Researches, ii. 94-104. 
 
 - The Red Indian version of the flight is given in ‘ The Red Horse 
 of the Dacotahs,’ Century May^azinc, 1884. 
 
A FAK-TKAVELLED TALE. 
 
 lOI 
 
 a field of adders with a plough of gold, and conquers 
 the gigantic pike that swims in the Styx of Finnish 
 mythology. After this point the story is interrupted 
 by a long sequel of popular bridal songs, and, in the 
 wandering course of the rather aimless epic, the flight 
 and its incidents have been forgotten, or are neglected. 
 These incidents recur, however, in the thread of some- 
 what different plots. We have seen that they are found 
 in Japan, among the h^skimo, among the Bushmen, the 
 Samoyeds, and the Zulus, as well as in Hungarian, 
 Magyar, Celtic, and other European household tales. 
 
 The conclusion appears to be that the central part 
 of the Jason myth is incapable of being explained, 
 either as a nature-myth, or as a myth founded on a 
 disease of language. So many languages could not 
 take the same malady in the same way ; nor can we 
 imagine any series of natural phenomena that would 
 inevitably suggest this tale to so many diverse races. 
 We must suppose, therefore, either that all wits 
 jumped and invented the same romantic series of 
 situations by accident, or that all men spread from 
 one centre, where the story was known, or that the 
 story, once invented, has drifted all round the world. 
 If the last theory be approved of, the tale will be like 
 the Indian Ocean shell found lately in the Polish 
 bone-cave,^ or like the Egyptian beads discovered in 
 the soil of Dahomey. The story will have been carried 
 hither and thither, in the remotest times, to the re- 
 motest shores, by traders, by slaves, by captives in 
 war, or by women torn from their own tribe and 
 forcibly settled as wives among alien peoples. 
 
 ^ Nature, March 14, 1884. 
 
102 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 Stories of this kind are everywhere the natural 
 property of mothers and grandmothers. When we 
 remember how widely diffused is the law of exogamy, 
 which forbids marriage between a man and woman of 
 the same stock, we are impressed by the number of 
 alien elements which must have been introduced with 
 alien wives. Where husband and wife, as often hap- 
 pened, spoke different languages, the woman would 
 inevitably bring the hearthside tales of her childhood 
 among a people of strange speech. By all these 
 agencies, working through dateless time, we may 
 account for the diffusion, if we cannot explain the 
 origin, of tales like the central arrangement of inci- 
 dents in the career of Jason. 
 
103 
 
 APOLLO AND THE MOUSE. 
 
 Why is Apollo, especially the Apollo of the Troad, 
 he who showered the darts of pestilence among the 
 Greeks, so constantly associated with a mouse? The 
 very name, Smintheus, by which his favourite priest 
 calls on him in the Iliad (i. 39), might be rendered 
 ‘ Mouse Apollo,’ or ‘ Apollo, Lord of Mice!’ As we 
 shall see later, mice lived beneath the altar, and 
 were fed in the holy of holies of the god, and an 
 image of a mouse was placed beside or upon his 
 sacred tripod. The ancients were puzzled by these 
 things, and, as will be shown, accounted for them by 
 ‘ mouse-stories,’ ^fuvOiaKol Xoyoi, so styled by Eusta- 
 thius, the mediaeval interpreter of Homer. Follow- 
 ing our usual method, let us ask whether similar 
 phenomena occur elsewhere, in countries where they 
 are intelligible. Did insignificant animals elsewhere 
 receive worship : were their effigies elsewhere placed 
 in the temples of a purer creed ? We find answers 
 in the history of Peruvian religion. 
 
 After the Spanish conquest of Peru, one of the 
 European adventurers, Don Garcilasso de la Vega, 
 married an Inca princess. Their son, also named 
 Garcilasso, was born about 1540. His famous book, 
 Commentarias Reales, contains the most authentic 
 
104 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 account of the old Peruvian beliefs. Garcilasso was 
 learned in all the learning of the Europeans, and, 
 as an Inca on the mother’s side, had claims on the 
 loyalty of the defeated race. He set himself dili- 
 gently to collect both their priestly and popular 
 traditions, and his account of them is the more trust- 
 worthy as it coincides with what we know to have 
 been true in lands with which Garcilasso had little 
 acquaintance. 
 
 To Garcilasso’s mind, Peruvian religion seems to 
 be divided into two periods — the age before, and the 
 age which followed the accession of the Incas, and 
 their establishment of sun-worship as the creed of 
 the State. In the earlier period, the pre-Inca period, 
 he tells us ‘ an Indian was not accounted honourable 
 unless he was descended from a fountain, river, or lake, 
 or even from the sea, or from a wild animal, such as 
 a bear, lion, tiger, eagle, or the bird they call cuntur 
 (condor), or some other bird of prey.’ ^ To these 
 worshipful creatures ‘ men offered what they usually 
 saw them eat ’ (i. 53). But men were not content to 
 adore large and dangerous animals. ‘ There was not 
 an animal, how vile and filthy soever, that they did 
 not worship as a god,’ including ‘ lizards, toads, and 
 frogs.’ In the midst of these superstitions the Incas 
 appeared. Just as the tribes claimed descent from 
 animals, great or small, so the Incas drew their pedi- 
 gree from the sun, which they adored like the gens 
 of the Aurelii in Rome.^ Thus every Indian had his 
 pacarissa, or, as the North American Indians say, 
 
 ^ Comm. Real., i, 75. - See Early History of the Family, infra. 
 
APOLLO AND THE MOUSE. 
 
 105 
 
 totem} a natural object from which he claimed de- 
 scent, and which, in a certain degree, he worshipped. 
 Though sun-worship became the established religion, 
 worship of the animal pacarissas was still tolerated. 
 The sun-temples also contained huacas, or images, of 
 the beasts which the Indians had venerated.- In the 
 great temple of Pachacamac, the most spiritual and 
 abstract god of Peruvian faith, ‘ they worshipped a 
 she-fox and an emerald. The devil also appeared 
 to them, and spoke in the form of a tiger, veiy 
 fierce.’^ This toleration of an older and cruder, in 
 subordination to a purer, faith is a very common 
 feature in religious evolution. In Catholic countries, 
 to this day, we may watch, in Holy Week, the Adonis 
 feast described by Theocritus,"* and the procession and 
 entombment of the old god of spring. 
 
 ‘The Incas had the good policy to collect all the 
 tribal animal gods into their temples in and round 
 Cuzco, in which the two leading gods were the Master 
 of Life, and the Sun.’ Did a process of this sort ever 
 occur in Greek religion, and were older animal gods 
 ever collected into the temples of such deities as 
 Apollo ? 
 
 While a great deal of scattered evidence about 
 
 ^ The names Totem and Totemism have been in use at least since 
 1792, among writers on the North American tribes. Prof. Max 
 Muller [Academy ^ Jan,, 1884) says the word should be, not Totem, but 
 Otc or Otem. Mr. Tylor’s inquiries among the Red Men support this. 
 Long, an interpreter among the Indians, introduced the word Totarnism 
 in 1792 ; but Lafitau (1724) had already explained some classical myths 
 as survivals of Totemism. 
 
 2 Christoval de Moluna (1570), p. 5. 
 
 ^ Cieza de Leon, p. 183. 
 
 Idyll XV. 
 
io6 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 many animals consecrated to Greek gods points in 
 this direction, it will be enough, for the present, to 
 examine the case of the Sacred Mice. Among races 
 which are still in the totemistic stage, which still 
 claim descent from animals and from other objects, 
 a peculiar marriage law generally exists, or can be 
 shown to have existed. No man may marry a woman 
 who is descended from the same ancestral animal, 
 and who bears the same totem-name, and carries 
 the same badge or family crest, as himself. A man 
 descended from the Crane, and whose family name is 
 Crane, cannot marry a woman whose family name 
 is Crane. He must marry a woman of the Wolf, or 
 Turtle, or Swan, or other name, and her children 
 keep her family title, not his. Thus, if a Crane man 
 marries a Swan woman, the children are Swans, and 
 none of them may marry a Swan ; they must marry 
 Turtles, Wolves, or what not, and their children, 
 again, are Turtles, or Wolves. Thus there is neces- 
 sarily an eternal come and go of all the animal 
 names known in a district. As civilisation advances 
 these rules grow obsolete. People take their names 
 from the father, as among ourselves. Finally the 
 dwellers in a given district, having become united 
 into a local tribe, are apt to drop the various animal 
 titles and to adopt, as the name of the whole tribe, 
 the name of the chief, or of the predominating family. 
 Let us imagine a district of some twenty miles in 
 which there are Crane, Wolf, Turtle, and Swan 
 families. Long residence together, and common 
 interests, have welded them into a local tribe. The 
 chief is of the Wolf family, and the tribe, sinking 
 
APOLLO AND THE MOUSE. 
 
 107 
 
 family differences and family names, calls itself ‘ the 
 Wolves.’ Such tribes were probably, in the begin- 
 ning, the inhabitants of the various Egyptian towns 
 which severally worshipped the wolf, or the sheep, 
 or the crocodile, and abstained religiously (except on 
 certain sacrificial occasions) from the flesh of the 
 animal that gave them its name.' 
 
 It has taken us long to reach the Sacred Mice 
 of Greek religion, but we are now in a position to 
 approach their august divinity. We have seen that 
 the sun-worship superseded, without abolishing, the 
 tribal pacarissas in Peru, and that the huacas, or 
 images, of the sacred animals were admitted under 
 the roof of the temple of the Sun. Now it is recog- 
 nised that the temples of the Sminthian Apollo con- 
 tained images of sacred mice among other animals, 
 and our argument is that here, perhaps, we have 
 another example of the Peruvian religious evolution. 
 Just as, in Peru, the tribes adored ‘vile and filthy’ 
 animals, just as the solar worship of the Incas sub- 
 ordinated these, just as the htiacas of the beasts 
 remained in the temples of the Peruvian Sun ; so, we 
 believe, the tribes along the Mediterranean coasts had, 
 at some very remote prehistoric period, their animal 
 pacarissas ; these were subordinated to the religion 
 (to some extent solar) of Apollo ; and the huacaSy or 
 animal idols, survived in Apollo’s temples. 
 
 If this theory be correct, we shall probably find 
 
 ^ Sayce, Hcrodotos, p. 344; Herodotus, ii.42; Wilkinson’s 
 Efryptiatis (1878, ii. 475, note 2); Plutarch, Dc Is. ct Os., 71, 72; 
 Athenieus, vii. 299 ; Strabo, xvii. 813. 
 
io8 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 the mouse, for example, revered as a sacred animal in 
 many places. This would necessarily follow, if the 
 marriaj^e customs which we have described ever pre- 
 vailed on (ireek soil, and scattered the mouse-name 
 far and wide.^ Traces of the Mouse families, and of 
 adoration, if adoration there was of the mouse, would 
 linger on in the followinj^ shapes : (i) Places would 
 be named from mice, and mice would be actually held 
 sacred in themselves. (2) The mouse-name would be 
 f^iven locally to the i^od who superseded the mouse. 
 (3) The hf^ure of the mouse would be associated with 
 the god, and used as a badge, or a kind of crest, or 
 local mark, in places where the mouse has been a 
 venerated animal. (4) I'inally, myths would be told 
 to account for the sacredness of a creature so 
 undignified. 
 
 Let us take these considerations in their order : — 
 
 (i) If there were local mice tribes, deriving their 
 name from the worshipful mouse, certain towns 
 settled by these tribes would retain a reverence for 
 mice. 
 
 In Chr}’sa, a town of the Troad, according to 
 Heraclides Ponticus, mice were held sacred, the local 
 name for mouse being crfiLv 6 o<;. Many places bore 
 this mouse-name, according to Strabo.^ This is 
 precisely what would have occurred had the Mouse 
 totem, and the Mouse stock, been widely distributed.^ 
 
 * The Mouse, according to Dalton, is still a totem among the 
 
 Oraons of Bengal. A man of the Mouse ‘ motherhood,’ as the totem 
 kindred is locally styled, may not eat mice (esteemed a delicacy), nor 
 marry a girl who is a Mouse. - xiii. 604. Casaub. 1620. 
 
 * There were Sminthiac feasts at Rhodes, Gela, Lesbos, and Crete 
 (De Witte, Revue Numismatique^ N.S. iii. 3-1 1). 
 
APOLLO AND THE MOUSE 
 
 109 
 
 The Scholiast ' mentions Sminthus as a P|*ce in the 
 Troad. Strabo speaks of two places deriving their 
 name from Sminthus. or mouse, near the Sminthian 
 temple, and others near Urissa. In Rhodes and 
 Lindus. the mouse place-name recurs. * and ‘n 
 other districts ’ (Ka. aXX^ 0 i « 
 
 (X. 486) names Caressus. and I'oeessa. in Ceos. amonR 
 the other places which has Sminthian temples, and, 
 presumably, were once centres of tribes named after 
 
 the mouse. . 
 
 Here, then, arc a number of localities in 
 the Mouse ApoWo was adored, and where the old 
 mouse-name lingered. That the mice were actually 
 held sacred in their proper persons we learn from 
 i 1 -:iian. ‘The dwellers in llamaxitus of the Troad 
 worship mice.' sa>a .lilian. ‘ In the tempU of 
 Apollo Smintheus. mice are nourished, and food is 
 offered to them at the public expense, and white 
 mice dwell beneath the altar.'* In the same way we 
 found that the Peruvians fed their sacred beasts on 
 
 what they usually saw them cat. , j . 
 
 (2) The second point in our argument has already 
 been suflicientiv demonstrated. The mouse-name 
 •Smintheus' was given to Apollo in all the places 
 
 mentioned bv Strabo. ' and many others. 
 
 (3) The hgure of the mouse will be associated 
 
 with the god. and used as a badge, or crest, or loca 
 mark, in places where the mouse has been a venerated 
 
 sinifTiftl. 
 
 The passage already quoted from .l.han informs 
 us that there st«Hl ' an cRig> of the mouse beside the 
 i/IW.L». ..WUn. 5. 
 
no 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 tripod of Apollo.’ In Chrysa, according to Strabo 
 (xiii. 604), the statue of Apollo Smintheus had a 
 mouse beneath his foot. The mouse on the tripod of 
 Apollo is represented on a bas-relief illustrating the 
 plague, and the offerings of the Greeks to Apollo 
 Smintheus, as described in the first book of the 
 Iliad} 
 
 The mouse is not an uncommon local badge or 
 crest in Greece. The animals whose figures are 
 stamped on coins, like the Athenian owl, are the 
 most ancient marks of cities. It is plausible con- 
 jecture that, just as the Iroquois when they signed 
 treaties with the Europeans used their totems — bear, 
 wolf, and turtle — as seals,^ so the animals on archaic 
 Greek city coins represented crests or badges which, 
 at some far more remote period, had been totems. 
 
 The Argives, according to Pollux,^ stamped the 
 mouse on their coins.^ As there was a temple of 
 
 ’ The bas-relief is published in Paoli’s Della Rcligi nc de' Gentili, 
 Naples, 1771, p. 9 ; also by Fabretti, ad Cal. Oper. de Colnni. Trajan. 
 p. 315. Paoli’s book was written after the discovery in Neapolitan 
 territory of a small bronze image, hieratic in character, representing a 
 man with a mouse on his hand. Paoli’s engraving of this work of art, 
 unluckily, does not enable us to determine its date ox provenance. The 
 book is a mine of mouse-lore. 
 
 - Golden, History of the Five Nations, p. 15 (1727). 
 
 ^ Onomast., ix. segm. 84. 
 
 ^ De Witte says Pollux was mistaken here. In the Revue 
 Numismatique, N.S. iii., De Witte publishes coins of Alexandria, the 
 more ancient Hamaxitus, in the Troad. The Sminthian Apollo is 
 represented with his bow, and the mouse on his hand. Other coins 
 show the god with the mouse at his foot, or show us the lyre of Apollo 
 supported by mice. A bronze coin in the British Museum gives 
 Apollo with the mouse beside his foot. 
 
APOLLO AND THE MOUSE. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Apollo Sinintheus in Tenedos, we naturally hear of 
 a mouse on the coins of the island.^ Golzio has 
 published one of these mouse coins. The people 
 of Metapontum stamped their money with a mouse 
 j^nawing an ear of corn. The people of Cumse em- 
 ployed a mouse dormant. Paoli fancied that certain 
 mice on Roman medals might be connected with the 
 family of but this is rather guesswork.^ 
 
 We have now shown traces, at least, of various 
 ways in which an early tribal religion of the mouse — 
 the mouse pacarissa, as the Peruvians said — may have 
 been perpetuated. When we consider that the super- 
 seding of the mouse by Apollo must have occurred, 
 if it did occur, long before Homer, we may rather 
 wonder that the mouse left his mark on Greek religion 
 so long. We have seen mice revered, a god with 
 a mouse-name, the mouse-name recurring in many 
 places, the hiuicciy or idol of the mouse, preserved in 
 the temples of the god, and the mouse-badge used 
 in several widely severed localities. It remains (4) 
 to examine the myths about mice. These, in our 
 opinion, were probably told to account for the 
 presence of the hiiaca of the mouse in temples, and 
 for the occurrence of the animal in religion, and his 
 connection with Apollo. 
 
 A singular mouse-myth, narrated by Herodotus, 
 is worth examining for reasons which will appear 
 later, though the events are said to have happened on 
 P>gyptian soil.^ According to Herodotus, one Sethos, 
 a priest of Hephaestus (Ptah), was king of lilgypt. 
 
 ^ Spanhi'im, ad FI. Joseph., vi. i, p. 312. 
 
 Della Rel., p. 174. * Herodotus, ii. 141. 
 
II2 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 He had disgraced the military class, and he found 
 himself without an army when Sennacherib invaded 
 his country. Sethos fell asleep in the temple, and 
 the ^od, appearing to him in a vision, tjld him that 
 divine succour would come to the Egyptians.^ In 
 the night before the battle, field-mice gnawed the 
 quivers and shield-handles of the foe, who fled on 
 finding themselves thus disarmed. ‘ And now,’ sa}^s 
 Herodotus, ‘there standeth a stone image of this king 
 in the temple of Hephaestus, and in the hand of the 
 image a mouse, and there is this inscription, “ Let 
 whoso looketh on me be pious.” ’ 
 
 Prof. Sayce- holds that there was no such person 
 as Sethos, but that the legend ‘is evidently Egyptian, 
 not Greek, and the name of Sennacherib, as well as the 
 fact of the Assyrian attack, is correct.’ The legend 
 also, though Egyptian, is ‘ an echo of the biblical 
 account of the destruction of the Assyrian army,’ an 
 account which omits the mice. ‘ As to the mice, 
 here,’ says Prof. Sayce, ‘ we have to do again with 
 the Greek dragomen (sic). The story of Sethos was 
 attached to the statue of some deity which was sup- 
 posed to hold a mouse in its hand.’ It must have 
 been easy to verify this supposition ; but Mr. Sayce 
 adds, ‘ mice were not sacred in Egypt, nor were 
 
 ^ Liebrecht [Zur Volkskundc, p. 13, quoting yoitrnal Asiatiqiic, 
 ist series, 3, 307) finds the same myth in Chinese annals. It is not 
 a god, however, but the king of the rats who appears to the dis- 
 tressed monarch in his dream. Rats then gnaw the bowstrings of his 
 enemies. The invaders were Turks, the rescued prince a king of 
 Khotan. The king raised a temple, and offered sacrifice — to the rats ? 
 The same story of rats gnawing bowstrings recurs, of all places, in the 
 Migration Legend of the Greeks (Brinton, Philadelphia. 1884). 
 
 Herodotos, p. 20^. 
 
APOLLO AND THE MOUSE. 
 
 II3 
 
 they used as symbols, or found on the monuments.’ 
 To this remark we may suggest some exceptions. 
 Apparently this one mouse was found on the monu- 
 ments. Wilkinson (iii. 264) says mice do occur in the 
 sculptures, but they were not sacred. Rats, however, 
 were certainly sacred, and as little distinction is taken, 
 in m} 4 h, between rats and mice as between rabbits 
 and hares. The rat was sacred to Ra, the Sun-god, 
 and (like all totems) was not to be eaten. ^ This asso- 
 ciation of the rat and the Sun cannot but remind 
 us of Apollo and his mouse. According to Strabo, a 
 certain city ot h-gypt did worship the shrew-mouse. 
 The Athribitai, or dwellers in Crocodilopolis, are the 
 people to whom he attributes this cult, whom he 
 mentions (xvii. 831) among the other local animal- 
 worships of Egypt. Several porcelain examples of the 
 field-mouse sacred to Horus (commonly called Apollo 
 by the Greeks) may be seen in the British Museum. 
 
 That rats and field-mice were sacred in I'vgvpt, 
 then, we may believe on the evidence of the Ritual 
 of Strabo, and of many relics of l^gyptian art. 
 Herodotus, moreover, is credited when he says that 
 the statue ‘had a mouse on its hand.’ IHsewhere, 
 it is certain that the story of the mice gnawing the 
 
 ^ Wilkinson, iii. 249, quoting the Ritual xxxiii. : ‘ Thou devourest 
 the abominable rat of Ra, or the Sun.’ 
 
 - Mr. Loftie has kindly shown me a green mouse containing the 
 throne-name of Thothmes III. The animals thus used 
 as substitutes for scarabs were also sacred, as the fish, 
 rhinoceros, fly, all represented in Mr. Loftie’s col- 
 lection. See his Essay of Scarabs, p. 27. It may 
 be admitted that, in a country where Cats were gods, 
 the religion of the Mouse must have been struggling and oppressed. 
 
 I 
 
CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 II4 
 
 bowstrings occurs frequently as an explanation of 
 mouse-worship. One of the Trojan ‘mouse-stories’ 
 ran — that emigrants had set out in prehistoric times 
 from Crete. The oracle advised them to settle 
 ‘ wherever they were attacked by the children of the 
 soil.’ At Hamaxitus in the Troad, they were assailed 
 in the night by mice, which ate all that was edible of 
 their armour and bowstrings. The colonists made 
 up their mind that these mnce were ‘ the children of 
 the soil,’ settled there, and adored the mouse Apollo.^ 
 A myth of this sort may either be a story invented 
 to explain the mouse-name; or a Mouse tribe, like the 
 Red Indian Wolves, or Crows, may actually have 
 been settled on the spot, and may even have resisted 
 invasion. Another myth of the Troad accounted 
 for the worship of the mouse Apollo on the hypo- 
 thesis that he had once freed the land from mice, like 
 the Pied Piper of Hamelin, whose pipe (still service- 
 able) is said to have been found in his grave by men 
 who were digging a mine.^ 
 
 Stories like these, stories attributing some great 
 deliverance to the mouse, or some deliverance from 
 mice to the god, would naturally spring up among 
 people puzzled by their own worship of the mouse- 
 god or of the mouse. We have explained the reli- 
 gious character of mice as the relics of a past age in 
 which the mouse had been a totem and mouse family 
 names had been widely diffused. That there are, 
 and have been, mice totems and mouse family names 
 
 ^ Strabo, xiii. 604. - Eustathius on Iliad, i. 39. 
 
 A Strange and True Relation of the Prodigious Multitude of 
 Mice, 1670. 
 
APOLLO AND THE MOUSE. 
 
 II5 
 
 among Semitic stocks round the Mediterranean is 
 proved by Prof. Robertson Smith : ^ ‘ Achbor, the 
 mouse, is an P 2 domite name, apparently a stock 
 name, as the jerboa and another mouse-name are 
 among the Arabs. The same name occurs in Judah.’ 
 Where totemism exists, the members of each stock 
 either do not eat the ancestral animal at all, or only 
 eat him on rare sacrificial occasions. The totem 
 of a hostile stock may be eaten by way of insult. 
 In the case of the mouse, Isaiah seems to refer to 
 one or other of these practices (Ixvi.) : ' They that 
 sanctify themselves, and purify themselves in the 
 gardens behind one tree in the midst, eating swine’s 
 flesh, and the abomination, and the mouse, shall be 
 consumed together, saith the Lord.’ This is like the 
 h^gyptian prohibition to eat ‘the abominable’ (that 
 is, tabooed or forbidden ) ‘ Rat of Ra.’ If the un- 
 clean animals of Israel were originally the totems 
 of each clan, then the mouse was a totem,- for the 
 chosen people were forbidden to eat ‘ the weasel, and 
 the mouse, and the tortoise after his kind.’ That 
 unclean beasts, beasts not to be eaten, were originally 
 totems. Prof. Robertson Smith infers from Ivzekiel 
 ( viii. 10, II ), where ‘ we find seventy of the elders of 
 Israel — that is, the heads of houses — worshipping in 
 a chamber which had on its walls the figures of all 
 manner of unclean ’ ( tabooed ) ‘ creeping things, and 
 quadrupeds, even all the idols of the House of Israel.' 
 Some have too hastily concluded that the mouse was 
 a sacred animal among the neighbouring Philistines. 
 After the Philistines had captured the Ark and set 
 
 ^yunrnal of PhiloL, xvii. p. g6. ‘-^Leviticus xi. 29. 
 
ii6 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 it in the house of Dagon, the people were smitten 
 with disease. They therefore, in accordance with a 
 well-known savage magical practice, made five golden 
 representations of the diseased part, and five golden 
 mice, as ‘ a trespass offering to the Lord of Israel,’ 
 and so restored the Arkd Such votive offerings are 
 common still in Catholic countries, and the mice of 
 gold by no means prove that the Philistines had ever 
 worshipped mice. 
 
 Turning to India from the Mediterranean basin, 
 and the Aryan, Semitic, and Egyptian tribes on its 
 coasts, we find that the mouse was the sacred animal 
 of Rudra. ' The mouse, Rudra, is thy beast,’ says 
 the Yajur Veda, as rendered by Grohmann in his 
 Apollo Smintheus. Grohmann recognises in Rudra 
 a deity with most of the characteristics of Apollo. 
 In later Indian mythology, the mouse is an attribute 
 of Gane^a, who, like Apollo Smintheus, is repre- 
 sented in art with his foot upon a mouse. 
 
 Such are the chief appearances of the mouse in 
 ancient religion. If he really was a Semitic totem, it 
 may, perhaps, be argued that his prevalence in con- 
 nection with Apollo is the result of a Semitic leaven 
 in Hellenism. Hellenic invaders may have found 
 Semitic mouse-tribes at home, and incorporated the 
 alien stock deity with their own Apollo-worship. In 
 that case the mouse, while still originally a totem, 
 would not be an Aryan totem. But probably the 
 myths and rites of the mouse, and their diffusion, are 
 more plausibly explained on our theory than on that of 
 
 Samuel i. 5, 6. 
 
APOLLO AND THE MOUSE. 
 
 II7 
 
 De Gubernatis : ‘ The Pagan Sun-god crushes under 
 his foot the Mouse of Night. When the cat’s away, 
 the mice may play; the shadows of night dance when 
 the moon is absent.’ ^ This is one of the quaintest 
 pieces of mythological logic. Obviously, when the 
 cat (the moon) is away, the mice (the shadows) 
 cannot play : there is no light to produce a shadow. 
 As usually chances, the Scholars who try to resolve 
 all the features of myth into physical phenomena 
 do not agree among themselves about the mouse. 
 While the mouse is the night according to M. de 
 Gubernatis, in Grohmann’s opinion the mouse is the 
 lightning. He argues that the lightning was origin- 
 ally regarded by the Aryan race as the ‘ flashing tooth 
 of a beast,’ especially of a mouse. Afterwards men 
 came to identify the beast with his teeth, and, behold 
 the lightning and the mouse are convertible mythical 
 terms ! Now it is perfectly true that savages regard 
 many elemental phenomena, from eclipses to the 
 rainbow, as the result of the action of animals. The 
 rainbow is a serpent;- thunder is caused by the 
 thunder-bird, who has actually been shot in Dacotah, 
 and who is familiar to the Zulus ; while rain is 
 the milk of a heavenly cow — an idea recurring in 
 the Zend Avesta. But it does not follow because 
 savages believe in these meteorological beasts that 
 all the beasts in myth were originally meteorological. 
 Man raised a serpent to the skies, perhaps, but his in- 
 terest in the animal began on earth, not in the clouds. 
 It is excessively improbable, and quite unproved, that 
 any race ever regarded lightning as the flashes of a 
 ' Zool. Myth, ii. 68. - Meliisinc, N.S. i. 
 
ii8 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 mouse’s teeth. The hypothesis is a jcu d'esprit, like 
 the opposite hypothesis about the mouse of Night. 
 In these, and all the other current theories of the 
 Sminthian Apollo, the widely diffused worship of 
 ordinary mice, and such small deer, has been either 
 wholly neglected, or explained by the first theory of 
 symbolism that occurred to the conjecture of a civil- 
 ised observer. The facts of savage animal-worship, 
 and their relations to totemism, seem still unknown 
 to or unappreciated by Scholars, with the exception 
 of Mr. Sayce, who recognises totemism as the origin 
 of the zoomorphic element in Egyptian religion. 
 
 Our explanation, whether adequate or not, is not 
 founded on an isolated case. If Apollo superseded 
 and absorbed the worship of the mouse, he did no 
 less for the wolf, the ram, the dolphin, and several 
 other animals whose images were associated with 
 his own. The Greek religion was more refined and 
 anthropomorphic than that of Egypt. In Egypt 
 the animals were still adored, and the images of 
 the gods had bestial heads. In Greece only a few 
 gods, and chiefly in very archaic statues, had bestial 
 heads ; but besides the other deities the sculptor set 
 the owl, eagle, wolf, serpent, tortoise, mouse, or what- 
 ever creature was the local favourite of the deity. ^ 
 Probably the deity had, in the majority of cases, 
 superseded the animal and succeeded to his honours. 
 But the conservative religious sentiment retained the 
 beast within the courts and in the suit and service of 
 the anthropomorphic god.- 
 
 ^ Dc Isidc ct Osiridc, Ixxvi. 
 
 -This hypothesis does not maintain that totemism prevailed in 
 
APOLLO AND THE MOUSE. 
 
 II9 
 
 The process by which the god ousted the beasts 
 may perhaps be observed in Samoa. There (as Dr. 
 Turner tells us in his Samoa) each family has its 
 own sacred animal, which it may not eat. If this 
 law be transgressed, the malefactor is supernaturally 
 punished in a variety of ways. But, while each 
 family has thus its totem, four or five different 
 families recognise, in owl, crab, lizard, and so on, in- 
 carnations of the same god, say of Tongo. If Tongo 
 had a temple among these families, we can readily 
 believe that images of the various beasts in which he 
 was incarnate would be kept within the consecrated 
 walls. Savage ideas like these, if they were ever 
 entertained in Greece, would account for the holy 
 animals of the different deities. But it is obvious 
 that the phenomena which we have been studying 
 may be otherwise explained. It may be said that 
 the Sminthian Apollo was only revered as the 
 enemy and opponent of mice. St. Gertrude (whose 
 heart was eaten by mice) has the same role in France.^ 
 The worship of Apollo, and the badge of the mouse, 
 would, on this principle, be diffused by colonies from 
 some centre of the faith. The images of mice in 
 Apollo’s temples would be nothing more than votive 
 offerings. Thus, in the church of a Saxon town, the 
 verger shows a silver mouse dedicated to Our Lady. 
 
 Greece during historic times. Though Plutarch mentions a Carian 
 yfuosy the loxidae, of Attic descent, which revered asparagus, it is 
 probable that genuine totemism had died out of Greece many hun- 
 dreds of years before even Homer’s time. But this view is not in- 
 consistent w ith the existence of survivals in religion and ritual. 
 
 ^ Holland, Faunc poptilairc. 
 
120 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 ‘ This is the greatest of our treasures,’ says the verger. 
 ‘ Our town was overrun with mice till the ladies of 
 the city offered this mouse of silver. Instantly all 
 the mice disappeared.’ ‘ And are you such fools as 
 to believe that the creatures went away because a 
 silver mouse was dedicated? ’ asked a Prussian officer. 
 ‘ No,’ replied the verger, rather neatly ; ‘ or long ago 
 we should have offered a silver Prussian.’ 
 
I2I 
 
 STAR-MYTHS. 
 
 Artemus Ward used to say that, while there were 
 many things in the science of astronomy hard to be 
 understood, there was one fact which entirely puzzled 
 him. He could partly perceive how we ‘ weigh the 
 sun,’ and ascertain the component elements of the 
 heavenly bodies, by the aid of spectrum analysis. 
 ‘ But what beats me about the stars,’ he observed 
 plaintively, ‘is how we come to know their names.’ 
 This question, or rather the somewhat similar ques- 
 tion, ‘ How did the constellations come by their very 
 peculiar names?’ has puzzled Professor Pritchard and 
 other astronomers more serious than Artemus Ward. 
 Why is a group of stars called the Bear, or the 
 Swan, or the Twins, or named after the Pleiades, the 
 fair daughters of the Giant Atlas ? ^ These are diffi- 
 culties that meet even children when they examine a 
 ‘ celestial globe.’ There the> find the figure of a bear, 
 traced out with lines in the intervals between the 
 stars of the constellations, while a very imposing giant 
 is so drawn that Orion’s belt just fits his waist. But 
 when he comes to look at the heavens, the infant 
 
 ^ The attempt is not to explain the origin of each separate name, 
 but only of the general habit of giving animal or human names to 
 stars. 
 
122 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 speculator sees no sort of likeness to a bear in the 
 stars, nor anything at all resembling a giant in the 
 neighbourhood of Orion. The most eccentric modern 
 fancy which can detect what shapes it will in clouds, 
 is unable to find any likeness to human or animal 
 forms in the stars, and yet we call a great many of 
 the stars by the names of men and beasts and gods. 
 Some resemblance to terrestrial things, it is true, 
 every one can behold in the heavens. Corona^ for ex- 
 ample, is like a crown, or, as the Australian black 
 fellows know, it is like a boomerang, and we can 
 understand why they give it the name of that curious 
 curved missile. The Milky Way, again, does resemble 
 a path in the sky ; our English ancestors called it 
 Watling Street — the path of the Watlings, mythical 
 giants— and Bushmen in Africa and Red Men in 
 North America name it the ‘ ashen path ’ or ‘ the path 
 of souls.’ The ashes of the path, of course, are sup- 
 posed to be hot and glowing, not dead and black 
 like the ash-paths of modern running-grounds. Other 
 and more recent names for certain constellations are 
 also intelligible. In Homer’s time the Greeks had 
 two names for the Great Bear; they called it the 
 Bear, or the Wain : and a certain fanciful likeness to 
 a wain may be made out, though no resemblance to 
 a bear is manifest. In the United States the same 
 constellation is popularly styled the Dipper, and every 
 one may observe the likeness to a dipper or toddy- 
 ladle. 
 
 But these resemblances take us only a little 
 way towards appellations. WT know that we derive 
 many of the names straight from the Greek ; but 
 
STAR-MYTHS. 
 
 123 
 
 whence did the Greeks get them ? Some, it is said, 
 from the Chaldaeans ; but whence did they reach the 
 Chaldaeans ? To this we shall return later, but, as to 
 early Greek star-lore, Goguet, the author of UOri^inc 
 dcs Lois, a rather learned but too speculative work of 
 the last century, makes the following characteristic 
 remarks : ‘ The Greeks received their astronomy from 
 Prometheus. This prince, as far as history teaches 
 us, made his observations on Mount Caucasus.’ That 
 was the eighteenth century’s method of interpreting 
 mythology. The myth preserved in the ‘ Prometheus 
 Bound ’ of yEschylus tells us that Zeus crucified the 
 Titan on Mount Caucasus. The French philosopher, 
 rejecting the supernatural elements of the tale, makes 
 up his mind that Prometheus was a prince of a scien- 
 tific bent, and that he established his observatory on 
 the frosty Caucasus. But, even admitting this, why 
 did Prometheus give the stars animal names ? Goguet 
 easily explains this by a hypothetical account of the 
 manners of primitive men. ‘ The earliest peoples,’ he 
 says, ‘ must have used writing for purposes of astro- 
 nomical science. They would be content to design 
 the constellations of which they wished to speak by 
 the hieroglyphical symbols of their names ; hence the 
 constellations have insensibly taken the names of the 
 chief symbols.’ Thus, a drawing of a bear or a swan 
 was the hieroglyphic of the name of a star, or group 
 of stars. But whence came the name which was 
 represented by the hieroglyphic ? That is precisely 
 what our author forgets to tell us. But he remarks 
 that the meaning of the hieroglyphic came to be for- 
 gotten, and ‘the symbols gave rise to all the ridiculous 
 
124 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 tales about the heavenly signs.’ This explanation 
 is attained by the process of reasoning in a vicious 
 circle from hypothetical premises ascertained to be 
 false. All the known savages of the world, even those 
 which have scarcely the elements of picture-writing, 
 call the constellations by the names of men and 
 animals, and all tell ' ridiculous tales ’ to account for 
 the names. 
 
 As the star-stories told by the Greeks, the ancient 
 Egyptians, and other civilised people of the old world, 
 exactly correspond in character, and sometimes even 
 in incident, with the star-stories of modern savages, 
 we have the choice of three hypothesis to explain this 
 curious coincidence. Perhaps the star-stories, about 
 nymphs changed into bears, and bears changed into 
 stars, were invented by the civilised races of old, and 
 gradually found their way amongst people like the 
 Eskimo, and the Australians, and Bushmen. Or 
 it may be insisted that the ancestors of Australians, 
 Eskimo, and Bushmen were once civilised, like the 
 Greeks and Egyptians, and invented star-stories, still 
 remembered by their degenerate descendants. These 
 are the two forms of the explanation which will be 
 advanced by persons who believe that the star-stories 
 were originally the fruit of the civilised imagination. 
 The third theory would be, that the ‘ ridiculous tales ’ 
 about the stars were originally the work of the savage 
 imagination, and that the Greeks, Chaldaeans, and 
 Egyptians, when they became civilised, retained the 
 old myths that their ancestors had invented when 
 they were savages. In favour of this theory it may 
 be said, briefly, that there is no proof that the fathers 
 
STAR-MYTHS. 
 
 125 
 
 of Australians, Eskimo, and Ijushmen had ever been 
 civilised, while there is a great deal of evidence 
 to suggest that the fathers of the Greeks had once 
 been savages.^ And, if we incline to the theory 
 that the star-myths are the creation of savage fancy, 
 we at once learn why they are, in all parts of the 
 world, so much alike. Just as the flint and bone 
 weapons ot rude races resemble each other much 
 more than they resemble the metal weapons and the 
 artillery of advanced peoples, so the mental pro- 
 ducts, the fairy tales, and myths of rude races have 
 everywhere a strong family resemblance. They are 
 produced by men in similar mental conditions of 
 ignorance, curiosity, and credulous fancy, and they 
 are intended to supply the same needs, partly of 
 amusing narrative, partly of crude explanation of 
 familiar phenomena. 
 
 Now it is time to prove the truth of our assertion 
 that the star-stories of savage and of civilised races 
 closely resemble each other. Let us begin with that 
 well-known group the Pleiades. The peculiarity of 
 the Pleiades is that the group consists of seven stars, 
 of which one is so dim that it seems entirely to 
 disappear, and many persons can only detect its 
 presence through a telescope. The Greeks had a 
 myth to account for the vanishing of the lost Pleiad. 
 The tale is given in the Catasterismoi (stories of 
 metamorphoses into stars) attributed to Eratosthenes. 
 
 ^ Mr. Herbert Spencer believes that the Australians were once 
 more civilised than at present. But there has never been found a 
 trace of pottery on the Australian continent, which says little for their 
 civilisation in the past. 
 
126 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 This work was probably written after our era ; but 
 the author derived his information from older trea- 
 tises now lost. According to the Greek myth, then, 
 the seven stars of the Pleiad were seven maidens, 
 daughters of the Giant Atlas. Six of them had gods 
 for lovers ; Poseidon admired two of them, Zeus 
 three, and Ares one ; but the seventh had only an 
 earthly wooer, and when all of them were changed 
 into stars, the maiden with the mortal lover hid her 
 light for shame. 
 
 Now let us compare the Australian story. Accord- - 
 ing to Mr. Dawson {Australian Aborigines), a writer 
 who understands the natives well, ‘ their knowledge 
 of the heavenly bodies greatly exceeds that of most 
 white people,’ and ‘ is taught by men selected for their 
 intelligence and information. The knowledge is im- 
 portant to the aborigines on their night journeys ; ’ 
 so we may be sure that the natives are careful ob- 
 servers of the heavens, and are likely to be conservative 
 of their astronomical myths. The ‘ Lost Pleiad ’ has 
 not escaped them, and this is how they account for 
 her disappearance. The Pirt Kopan noot tribe have a 
 tradition that the Pleiades were a queen and her six 
 attendants. Long ago the Crow (our Canopus) fell in 
 love with the queen, who refused to be his wife. The 
 Crow found that the queen and her six maidens, like 
 other Australian gws, were in the habit of hunting for 
 white edible grubs in the bark of trees. The Crow at 
 once changed himself into a grub (just as Jupiter and 
 Indra used to change into swans, horses, ants, or what 
 not) and hid in the bark of a tree. The six maidens 
 sought to pick him out with their wooden hooks, but 
 
STAR-MYTHS. 
 
 127 
 
 he broke the points of all the hooks. Then came the 
 queen with her pretty bone hook ; he let himself be 
 drawn out, took the shape of a giant, and ran away 
 with her. Ever since there have only been six stars, 
 the six maidens, in the Pleiad. This story is well 
 known, by the strictest inquiry, to be current among 
 the blacks of the West District and South Australia. 
 
 Mr. Tylor, whose opinion is entitled to the 
 highest respect, thinks that this may be a hmropean 
 myth, told by some settler to a black in the Greek 
 form, and then spread about among the natives. He 
 complains that the story of the loss of the hrif^htest 
 star does not fit the facts of the case. 
 
 W'e do not know, and how can the Australians 
 know, that the lost star was once the brightest ? It 
 appears to me that the Australians, remarking the 
 disappearance of a star, might very naturally suppose 
 that the Crow had selected for his wife that one which 
 had been the most brilliant of the cluster. Besides, 
 the wide distribution of the tale among the natives, 
 and the very great change in the nature of the inci- 
 dents, seem to point to a native origin. Though the 
 main conception — the loss of one out of seven maidens 
 — is identical in Greek and in Mtirri, the manner of 
 the disappearance is eminently Hellenic in the one 
 case, eminently savage in the other. However this 
 may be, nothing of course is proved by a single 
 example. Let us next examine the stars Castor 
 and Pollux. Both in Greece and in Australia these 
 are said once to have been two young men. In 
 the Catastcrismoi, already spoken of, we read : ‘ The 
 Twins, or Dioscouroi . — They were nurtured in Lace- 
 
128 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 daemon, and were famous for their brotherly love, 
 wherefore, Zeus, desiring to make their memory 
 immortal, placed them both among the stars.’ In 
 Australia, according to Mr. Brough Smyth {Ahorigmes 
 of Victoria), Turree {Castor) and Wanjel {Pollux) are 
 two young men who pursue Purra and kill him at 
 the commencement of the great heat. Coonar toorung 
 (the mirage) is the smoke of the fire by which they 
 roast him. In Greece it was not Castor and Pollux, but 
 Orion who was the great hunter placed among the 
 stars. Among the Bushmen of South Africa, Castor 
 and Pollux are not young men, but young women, the 
 wives of the Eland, the great native antelope. In 
 Greek star-stories the Great Bear keeps watch, Homer 
 says, on the hunter Orion for fear of a sudden attack. 
 But how did the Bear get its name in Greece ? 
 According to Hesiod, the oldest Greek poet after 
 Homer, the Bear was once a lady, daughter of 
 Lycaon, King of Arcadia. She was a nymph of the 
 train of chaste Artemis, but yielded to the love of 
 Zeus, and became the ancestress of all the Arcadians. 
 Changed by Zeus to a bestial form, she was shot by 
 Artemis, and then translated by Zeus to the stars 
 (Apollod., iii. 8; Eustath., 1156; Bachofen, Der Bar, 
 p. 14).^ Here we must notice first, that the Arca- 
 dians, like Australians, Red Indians, and other wild 
 races, and like the Bedouins, believed themselves to 
 be descended from a girl who became an animal. 
 
 ^ See C. O. Muller (ProA),^. zur Mythol., Engl, transl., p. 17): 
 
 ‘ Callisto is just nothing else than Artemis and her sacred animal com- 
 prehended in one idea.’ See also pp. 201-4. Miiller (C. O.) very 
 nearly made the discovery that the gods of Greece may in some cases 
 have a bestial ancestry. 
 
STAR- MYTHS. 
 
 I2g 
 
 That the early J^gyptians did the same is not im- 
 probable ; for names of animals are found among 
 the ancestors in the very oldest genealogical papy- 
 rus,^ as in the genealogies of the old brnglish kings. 
 Next the Arcadians transferred the ancestral bear 
 to the heavens, and, in doing this, they resembled 
 the Peruvians, of whom Acosta says : ‘ They adored 
 the star Urchuchilly, feigning it to be a Ram, and 
 worshipped two others, and say that one of them is a 
 sheep, and the other a lamb . . . others worshipped 
 the star called the Titter. They were of opinion that 
 there was not any beast or bird upon the earth, whose 
 shape or image did not shine in the heavens' 
 
 l^ut to return to our bears. The Australians have, 
 properly speaking, no bears, though the animal called 
 the native bear is looked up to by the aborigines with 
 superstitious regard. Hut among the North American 
 Indians, as the old missionaries Lahtau and Charlevoix 
 observed, ‘ the four stars in front of our constellation 
 are a bear; those in the tail are hunters who pursue 
 him ; the small star apart is the pot in which they 
 mean to cook him.’ 
 
 It may be held that the Red Men derived their 
 bear from the European settlers. Hut, as we have 
 seen, an exact knowledge of the stars has always 
 been useful if not essential to savages ; and we 
 venture to doubt whether they would confuse their 
 nomenclature and sacred traditions by borrowing 
 terms from trappers and squatters. Hut, if this is 
 improbable, it seems almost impossible that all 
 savage races should have borrowed their whole 
 
 ^ Brugsch, History of Egypt, i. 32. 
 
 K 
 
CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 130 
 
 conception of the heavenly bodies from the myths of 
 Greece. It is thus that Egede, a missionary of the 
 last century, describes the Eskimo philosophy of 
 the stars : ‘ The notions that the Greenlanders have 
 as to the origin of the heavenly lights — as sun, moon, 
 and stars— are very nonsensical ; in that they pretend 
 they have formerly been as many of their own ances- 
 tors, who, on different accounts, were lifted up to 
 heaven, and became such glorious celestial bodies.’ 
 Again, he writes : ‘ Their notions about the stars are 
 that some of them have been men, and others different 
 sorts of animals and ffshes.’ But every reader of Ovid 
 knows that this was the very mythical theory of the 
 Greeks and Romans. The Egyptians, again, wor- 
 shipped Osiris, Isis, and the rest as ancestors, and 
 there are even modern scholars, like Mr. Loftie in his 
 Essay of Scarabs, who hold Osiris to have been 
 originally a real historical person. But the Egyptian 
 priests who showed Plutarch the grave of Osiris, 
 showed him, too, the stars into which Osiris, Isis, 
 and Horus had been metamorphosed. Here, then, 
 we have Greeks, Egyptians, and P^skimo, all agreed 
 about the origin of the heavenly lights, all of opinion 
 that ‘ they have formerly been as many of their own 
 ancestors.’ 
 
 The Australian general theory is : ‘Of the good 
 men and women, after the deluge, Pundjel (a kind of 
 zeus, or rather a sort of Prometheus of Australian 
 mythology) made stars. Sorcerers {Biraark) can tell 
 which stars were once good men and women.’ Here 
 the sorcerers have the same knowledge as the P-gyp- 
 tian priests. Again, just as among the Arcadians, 
 
STAR-MYTHS. 
 
 ‘ the progenitors of the existing tribes, whether birds, 
 or beasts, or men, were set in the sky, and made to 
 shine as stars.’ ^ 
 
 We have already given some Australian examples 
 in the stories of the Pleiades, and of Castor and 
 Pollux. We may add the case of the Eagle. In 
 Greece the Eagle was the bird of Zeus, who carried 
 off Ganymede to be the cup-bearer of Olympus. 
 Among the Australians this same constellation is 
 called Totyarguil ; he was a man who, when bathing, 
 was killed by a fabulous animal, a kind of kelpie ; as 
 Orion, in Greece, was killed by the Scorpion. Like 
 Orion, he was placed among the stars. The Austra- 
 lians have a constellation named Eagle, but he is our 
 Sirius, or Dog-star. 
 
 The Indians of the Amazon are in one tale with 
 the Australians and Eskimo. ‘ Dr. Silva de Coutinho 
 informs me,’ says Professor Hartt,‘^ ‘ that the Indians 
 of the Amazonas not only give names to many of the 
 heavenly bodies, but also tell stories about them. 
 The two stars that form the shoulders of Orion are 
 said to be an old man and a boy in a canoe, chasing 
 a peixe boi, by which name is designated a dark spot in 
 the sky near the above constellation.’ The Indians also 
 know monkey-stars, crane-stars, and palm-tree stars. 
 
 The Bushmen, almost the lowest tribe of South 
 Africa, have the same star-lore and much the same 
 myths as the Greeks, Australians, Egyptians, and 
 Eskimo. According to Dr. Bleek, ‘ stars, and even 
 the sun and moon, were once mortals on earth, or 
 even animals or inorganic substances, which happened 
 
 ^ Brough Smyth. “ Amazonian Tortoise Myths, p. 39. 
 
 K 2 
 
132 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 to get translated to the skies. The sun was once a 
 man whose arm-pit radiated a limited amount of light 
 round his house. Some children threw him into the 
 sky, and there he shines.’ The Homeric hymn to 
 Helios, in the same way, as Mr. Max Muller observes, 
 ‘ looks on the sun as a half-god, almost a hero, who 
 had once lived on earth.’ The pointers of the 
 Southern Cross were ‘two men who were lions,’ just 
 as Callisto, in Arcadia, was a woman who was a 
 bear. It is not at all rare in those queer philosophies, 
 as in that of the Scandinavians, to hnd that the sun or 
 moon has been a man or woman. In Australian fable 
 the moon was a man, the sun a woman of indifferent 
 character, who appears at dawn in a coat of red kanga- 
 roo skins, the present of an admirer. In an old Mexi- 
 can text the moon was a man, across whose face a god 
 threw a rabbit, thus making the marks in the moon.^ 
 
 Many separate races seem to recognise the figure 
 of a hare, where we see ‘ the Man in the Moon.’ In 
 a Buddhist legend, an exemplary and altruistic hare 
 was translated to the moon. ‘ To the common people 
 in India the spots on the moon look like a hare, and 
 Chandras, the god of the moon, carries a hare : hence 
 the moon is called sasin or sasanka, hare-mark. The 
 Mongolians also see in these shadows the figure of a 
 hare.’*^ Among the Eskimo, the moon is a girl, who 
 always flees from her cruel brother, the sun, because 
 he disfigured her face. Elsewhere the sun is the girl, 
 beloved by her own brother, the moon ; she blackens 
 her face to avert his affection. On the Rio Branco, 
 and among the Tomunda, the moon is a girl who 
 
 ^ Sahagun, vii. 3. - Grimm, 1). M., Engl. Iransl., p. 716, 
 
STAR-MYTHS. 
 
 133 
 
 loved her brother and visited him in the dark. He 
 detected her wicked passion by drawing his black- 
 ened hand over her face. The marks betrayed her, 
 and, as the spots on the moon, remain to this day.^ 
 
 Amon^ the New Zealanders and North American 
 Indians the sun is a great beast, whom the hunters 
 trapped and thrashed with cudgels. His blood is 
 used in some New Zealand incantations; and, ac- 
 cording to an hvgyptian myth, was kneaded into clay 
 at the making of man. Hut there is no end to 
 similar sun-myths, in all of which the sun is regarded 
 as a man, or even as a beast. 
 
 To return to the stars — 
 
 The Red Indians, as Schoolcraft says, ‘ hold many 
 of the planets to be transformed adventurers.’ The 
 lowas ‘ believed stars to be a sort of living creatures.’ 
 One of them came down and talked to a hunter, and 
 showed him where to find game. The Gallinomeros 
 of Central California, according to Mr. Bancroft, 
 believe that the sun and moon were made and lighted 
 up by the Hawk and the Coyote, who one day flew 
 into each other’s faces in the dark, and were deter- 
 mined to prevent such accidents in the future. Hut 
 the very oddest example of the survival of the notion 
 that the stars are men or women is found in the 
 ‘ Pax ’ of Aristophanes. Trygaeus in that comedy has 
 just made an expedition to heaven. A slave meets 
 him, and asks him, ‘ Is not the story true, then, that 
 we become stars when we die?’ The answer is, 
 ‘Certainly’; and Trygaeus points out the star into 
 which los of Chios has just been metamorphosed. 
 
 ^ Hartt, op. cit., p. 40. For a modern sun-man and his myth in 
 the Cyclades, see J. T. Bent, in the Athcnceum, Jan. 17, 1885. 
 
134 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 Aristophanes is making fun of some popular Greek 
 superstition. But that very superstition meets us in 
 New Zealand. ‘Heroes,’ says Mr. Tylor, ‘were 
 thought to become stars of greater or less brightness, 
 according to the number of their victims slain in fight.’ 
 
 The Aryan race is seldom far behind, when there 
 are ludicrous notions to be credited or savage tales 
 to be told. We have seen that Aristophanes, in 
 Greece, knew the Eskimo doctrine that stars are souls 
 of the dead. The Persians had the same belief,^ ‘ all 
 the unnumbered stars were reckoned ghosts of men.’^ 
 The German folklore clings to the same belief, ‘Stars 
 are souls ; when a child dies God makes a new star.’ 
 Kaegi quotes^ the same idea from the Veda, and 
 from the Satapatha Brahmana the thoroughly Aus- 
 tralian notion that ‘good men become stars.’ For 
 a truly savage conception, it would be difficult, in 
 South Africa or on the Amazons, to beat the fol- 
 lowing story from the Aitareya Brahmana (iii. 33). 
 Pragapati, the Master of Life, conceived an incestuous 
 passion for his own daughter. Like Zeus, and Indra, 
 and the Austrian wooer in the Pleiad tale, he con- 
 cealed himself under the shape of a beast, a roebuck, 
 and approached his own daughter, who had assumed 
 the form of a doe. The gods, in anger at the awful 
 crime, made a monster to punish Pragapati. The 
 monster sent an arrow through the god’s body ; he 
 sprang into heaven, and, like the x\rcadian bear, this 
 Aryan roebuck became a constellation. He is 
 among the stars of Orion, and his punisher, also 
 
 ^ Kaegi, Dcr Rig Veda, p. 217. 
 
 2 Mainjo-i-Khard, 49, 22, ed. West. ^ Op. cit., p. 98. 
 
STAR-MYTHS. 
 
 135 
 
 now a star, is, like the Greek Orion, a hunter. The 
 daughter of Pragapati, the doe, became another con- 
 stellation, and the avenging arrow is also a set of stars 
 in the sky. What follows, about the origin of the 
 gods called Adityas, is really too savage to be quoted 
 by a chaste mythologist. 
 
 It would be easy to multiply examples of this 
 stage of thought among Aiyans and savages. But 
 we have probably brought forward enough for our 
 purpose, and have expressly chosen instances from 
 the most widely separated peoples. These instances, 
 it will perhaps be admitted, suggest, if they do not 
 prove, that the Greeks had received from tradition 
 precisely the same sort of legends about the heavenly 
 bodies as are current among Eskimo and Hush- 
 men, New Zealanders and lowas. As much, indeed, 
 might be inferred from our own astronomical nomen- 
 clature. We now give to newly discovered stars 
 names derived from distinguished people, as Geor^iiim 
 Sidus, or Herschcl; or, again, merely technical appella- 
 tives, as Alpha, Beta, and the rest. We should never 
 think when ‘ some new planet swims into our ken ’ of 
 calling it Kangaroo, or Rabbit, or after the name of 
 some hero of romance, as Rob Roy, or Count Fosco. 
 Hut the names of stars which we inherit from Greek 
 mythology —the Bear, the Pleiades, Castor and Pollux, 
 and so forth — are such as no people in our mental 
 condition would originally think of bestowing. When 
 Callimachus and the courtly astronomers of Alex- 
 andria pretended that the golden locks of Berenice 
 were raised to the heavens, that was a mere piece of 
 flattery constructed on the inherited model of legends 
 
CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 136 
 
 about the crown {Corona) of Ariadne. It seems 
 evident enough that the older Greek names of stars 
 are derived from a time when the ancestors of the 
 Greeks were in the mental and imaginative condition 
 of lowas, Kanekas, Bushmen, Murri, and New Zea- 
 landers. All these, and all other savage peoples, 
 believe in a kind of equality and intercommunion 
 among all things animate and inanimate. Stones are 
 supposed in the Pacific Islands to be male and female 
 and to propagate their species. Animals are believed 
 to have human or superhuman intelligence, and speech, 
 if they choose to exercise the gift. Stars are just on 
 the same footing, and their movements are explained 
 by the same ready system of universal anthropomor- 
 phism. Stars, fishes, gods, heroes, men, trees, clouds, 
 and animals, all play their equal part in the confused 
 dramas of savage thought and savage mythology. 
 Even in practical life the change of a sorcerer into an 
 animal is accepted as a familiar phenomenon, and the 
 power of soaring among the stars is one on which 
 the Australian Biraark, or the Eskimo Shaman, most 
 plumes himself It is not wonderful that things which 
 are held possible in daily practice should he frequent 
 features of mythology. Hence the ready invention 
 and belief of star-legends, which in their turn fix the 
 names of the heavenly bodies. Nothing more, except 
 the extreme tenacity of tradition and the inconveni- 
 ence of changing a widely accepted name, is needed 
 to account for the human and animal names of the 
 stars. The Greeks received from the dateless past of 
 savage intellect the myths, and the names of the con- 
 stellations, and we have taken them, without inquiry. 
 
STAR-MYTHS. 
 
 137 
 
 from the (jreeks. Thus it happens that our celestial 
 globes are j ust as queer menageries as any globes could 
 be that were illustrated by Australians or American 
 Indians, by Bushmen or Peruvian aborigines, or h>s- 
 kimo. It was savages, we may be tolerably certain, 
 who first handed to science the names of the constel- 
 lations, and provided Greece with the raw material 
 of her astronomical myths — as Bacon prettily says, 
 that we listen to the harsh ideas of earlier peoples 
 ‘ blown softly through the dutes of the Grecians.' 
 
 This position has been disputed by Mr. Brown, 
 in a work called The Law of Kosmic Order. Mr. 
 P)rown’s theory is that the early Accadians named 
 the zodiacal signs after certain myths and festivals 
 connected with the months. Thus the crab is a 
 figure of ‘ the darkness power ’ which seized the 
 Accadian solar hero, Dumuzi, and ‘which is con- 
 stantly represented in monstrous and drakontic form.’ 
 The bull, again, is connected with night and dark- 
 ness, ‘ in relation to the horned moon,’ and is, for 
 other reasons, ‘ a nocturnal potency.’ Pew stars, to 
 tell the truth, are diurnal potencies. Mr. Brown’s 
 explanations appear to me far-fetched and uncon- 
 vincing. But, granting that the zodiacal signs reached 
 Greece from Chaldcca, Mr. Brown will hardly maintain 
 that Australians, Melanesians, lowas, Amazon Indians, 
 Pvskimo, and the rest, borrowed their human and 
 animal stars from ‘Akkadia.’ The belief in animal 
 and human stars is practically universal among 
 savages who have not attained the ‘ Akkadian ’ 
 degree of culture. The belief, as Mr. Tylor has 
 shown, ^ is a natural result of savage ideas. We 
 
 ^ Prim. Cult.., i. 357. 
 
138 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 therefore infer that the ‘ Akkadians,’ too, prohahly 
 fell hack for star-names on what they inherited from 
 the savage past. If the Greeks borrowed certain 
 star-names from the ‘ Akkadians,’ they also, like the 
 Aryans of India, retained plenty of savage star-miyths 
 of their own, fahles derived from the earliest astro- 
 nomical guesses of early thought. 
 
 The first moment in astronomical science arrives 
 when the savage, looking at a star, says, like the child 
 in the nursery poem, ‘ How I wonder what you are ! ’ 
 The next moment comes when the savage has made 
 his first rough practical observations of the move- 
 ments of the heavenly body. His third step is to 
 explain these to himself. Now science cannot offer 
 any but a fanciful explanation beyond the sphere of 
 experience. The experience of the savage is limited 
 to the narrow world of his tribe, and of the beasts, 
 birds, and fishes of his district. His philosophy, 
 therefore, accounts for all phenomena on the supposi- 
 tion that the laws of the animate nature he observes 
 are working everywhere. But his observations, mis- 
 guided by his crude magical superstitions, have led 
 him to believe in a state of equality and kinship 
 between men and animals, and even inorganic things. 
 He often worships the very beasts he slays ; he 
 addresses them as if they understood him ; he 
 believes himself to be descended from the animals, 
 and of their kindred. These confused ideas he 
 applies to the stars, and recognises in them men like 
 himself, or beasts like those with which he conceives 
 himself to be in such close human relations. There 
 is scarcely a bird or beast but the Red Indian or the 
 
STAR- MYTHS. 
 
 139 
 
 Australian will explain its peculiarities by a myth, 
 like a page from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. It was 
 once a man or a woman, and has been changed to 
 bird or beast by a god or a magician. Men, again, 
 have originally been beasts, in his philosophy, and 
 are descended from wolves, frogs, or serpents, or 
 monkeys. The heavenly bodies are traced to pre- 
 cisely the same sort of origin ; and hence, we conclude, 
 come their strange animal names, and the strange 
 myths about them which appear in all ancient poetry. 
 These names, in turn, have curiously affected human 
 beliefs. Astrology is based on the opinion that a 
 man’s character and fate are determined by the stars 
 under which he is born. And the nature of these 
 stars is deduced from their names, so that the bear 
 should have been found in the horoscope of Dr. John- 
 son. When Giordano Bruno wrote his satire against 
 religion, the famous ‘ Spaccio della bestia trionfante,’ 
 he proposed to banish not only the gods but the beasts 
 from heaven. He would call the stars, not the Bear, 
 or the Swan, or the Pleiades, but Truth, Mercy, Justice, 
 and so forth, that men might be born, not under bestial, 
 but moral influences. But the beasts have had too long 
 possession of the stars to be easily dislodged, and the 
 tenure of the Bear and the Swan will probably last as 
 long as there is a science of Astronomy. Their names 
 are not likely again to delude a philosopher into the 
 opinion of Aristotle that the stars are animated. 
 
 This argument had been worked out to the writer’s 
 satisfaction when he chanced to light on Mr. Max 
 Muller’s explanation of the name of the Great Bear. 
 We have explained that name as only one out of 
 
140 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 countless similar appellations which men of every 
 race give to the stars. These names, again, we have 
 accounted for as the result of savage philosophy, 
 which takes no great distinction between man and 
 the things in the world, and looks on stars, beasts, birds, 
 fishes, flowers, and trees as men and women in dis- 
 guise. Mr. Muller’s theory is based on philological 
 considerations. He thinks that the name of the 
 Great Bear is the result of a mistake as to the mean- 
 ing of words. There was in Sanskrit, he says,^ a 
 root ark, or arch, meaning ' to be bright.’ She-stars 
 are called riksha, that is, bright ones, in the Veda. 
 ‘ The constellations here called the Rikshas, in the 
 sense of the “ bright ones,” would be homonymous 
 in Sanskrit with the Bears. Remember also that, 
 apparently without rhyme or reason, the same con- 
 stellation is called by Greeks and Romans the Bear. 
 . . . There is not the shadow of a likeness with a 
 bear. You will now perceive the influence of words 
 on thought, or the spontaneous growth of mythology. 
 The name Riksha was applied to the bear in the sense 
 of the bright fuscous animal, and in that sense it 
 became most popular in the later Sanskrit, and in 
 Greek and Latin. The same name, “ in tlie sense of 
 the bright ones,” had been applied by the Vedic poets 
 to the stars in general, and more particularly to that 
 constellation which in the northern parts of India 
 was the most prominent. The etymological mean- 
 ing, “ the bright stars,” was forgotten ; the popular 
 meaning of Riksha (bear) was known to every one. 
 And thus it happened that, when the Greeks had left 
 
 ^ Lectures on Language, pp. 359, 362. 
 
STAR-MYTHS. 
 
 I4I 
 
 their central home and settled in Europe, they re- 
 tained the name of Arktos for the same unchanging 
 stars; but, not knowing why those stars had originally 
 received that name, they ceased to speak of them as 
 arktoi, or many bears, and spoke of them as the Bear.’ 
 This is a very good example of the philological 
 way of explaining a myth. If once we admit that 
 ark, or arch, in the sense of ‘ bright ’ and of ‘ bear,’ 
 existed, not only in Sanskrit, but in the undivided 
 Aryan tongue, and that the name Riksha, bear, 
 ‘ became in that sense most popular in Greek and 
 Latin,’ this theory seems more than plausible. But 
 the explanation does not look so well if we examine, 
 not only the Aryan, but all the known myths and 
 names of the Bear and the other stars. Professor 
 Sayce, a distinguished philologist, says we may not 
 compare non-Aryan with Aryan myths. We have 
 ventured to do so, however, in this paper, and have 
 shown that the most widely severed races give the 
 stars animal names, of which the Bear is one example. 
 Now, if the philologists wish to persuade us that 
 it was decaying and half-forgotten language which 
 caused men to give the names of animals to the stars, 
 they must prove their case on an immense collection of 
 instances — on Iowa, Kaneka, Murri, Maori, Brazilian, 
 Peruvian, Mexican, Egyptian, Eskimo, instances. 
 It would be the most amazing coincidence in the 
 world if forgetfulness of the meaning of their own 
 speech compelled tribes of every tongue and race to 
 recognise men and beasts, cranes, cockatoos, serpents, 
 monkeys, bears, and so forth in the heavens. How 
 came the misunderstood words always to be mis- 
 
142 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 understood in the same way ? Does the philological 
 explanation account for the enormous majority of the 
 phenomena ? If it fails, we may at least doubt whether 
 it solves the one isolated case of the Great Bear among 
 the Greeks and Romans. It must be observed that 
 the philological explanation of Mr. Muller does not 
 clear up the Arcadian story of their own descent from a 
 she-bear who is now a star. Yet similar stories of the 
 descent of tribes from animals are so widespread that 
 it would be difficult to name the race or the quarter of 
 the globe where they are not found. Are they all de- 
 rived from misunderstood words meaning ‘bright’? 
 These considerations appear to be a strong argument 
 for comparing not only Aryan, but all attainable myths. 
 We shall often find, ifwetakea wide view, that the phil- 
 ological explanation which seemed plausible in a single 
 case is hopelessly narrow when applied to a large col- 
 lection of parallel cases in language of various families. 
 
 Finally, in dealing with star-myths, we adhere to 
 the hypothesis of Mr. Tylor : ‘From savagery up 
 to civilisation,’ Akkadian, Greek, or English, ‘ there 
 may be traced in the mytholog}/ of the stars a course 
 of thought, changed, indeed, in application, yet never 
 broken in its evident connection from first to last. 
 The savage sees individual stars as animate beings, or 
 combines star-groups into living celestial creatures, or 
 limbs of them, or objects connected with them ; while 
 at the other extremity of the scale of civilisation the 
 modern astronomer keeps up just such ancient fancies, 
 turning them to account in useful survival, as a means 
 of mapping out the celestial globe.’ ^ 
 
 1 Ideler {Untcrsiichnngcn uchcr den Ursprung dcr Stcrnnnmcn) 
 may also be consulted. 
 
MOLY AND MANDRAGORA. 
 
 ‘ I HAVE found out a new cure for rheumatism,’ said 
 the lady beside whom it was my privilege to sit at 
 dinner. ‘ You carry a potato about in your pocket ! ’ 
 
 Some one has written an amusing account of the 
 behaviour of a man who is finishing a book. He 
 takes his ideas everywhere with him and broods over 
 them, even at dinner, in the pauses of conversation. 
 But here was a lady who kindly contributed to my 
 studies and offered me folklore and survivals in culti- 
 vated Kensington. 
 
 My mind had strayed from the potato cure to the 
 New Zealand habit of carrying a baked yam at night 
 to frighten away ghosts, and to the old English belief 
 that a bit of bread kept in the pocket was sovereign 
 against evil spirits. Why should ghosts dread the 
 food of mortals when it is the custom of most races 
 of mortals to feed ancestral ghosts ? The human 
 mind works pretty rapidly, and all this had passed 
 through my brain while I replied, in tones of curiosity: 
 
 ‘ A potato ! ’ 
 
 ‘Yes; but it is not every potato that will do. I 
 heard of the cure in the country, and when we came 
 up to town, and my husband was complaining of 
 rheumatism, I told one of the servants to get me a 
 potato for Mr. Johnson’s rheumatism. “ Yes, ma’am,” 
 
144 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 said the man ; “ but it must be a stolen potato.” I 
 bad forgotten that. Well, one can’t ask one’s servants 
 to steal potatoes. It is easy in the country, where 
 you can pick one out of anybody’s field.’ ‘ And what 
 did you do ? ’ I asked. ‘ Oh, I drove to Covent 
 Garden and ordered a lot of fruit and flowers. 
 While the man was not looking, I stole a potato — a 
 very little one. I don’t think there was any harm in 
 it.’ ‘And did Mr. Johnson try the potato cure?’ 
 ‘ Yes, he carried it in his pocket, and now he is quite 
 well. I told the doctor, and he says he knows of the 
 cure, but he dares not recommend it.’ 
 
 How oddly superstitions survive ! The central 
 idea of this modern folly about the potato is that you 
 must pilfer the root. Let us work the idea of the 
 healing of magical herb backwards, from Kensington 
 to European folklore, and thence to classical times, 
 to Homer, and to the Hottentots. Turning first to 
 Germany, we note the beliefs, not about the potato, 
 but about another vegetable, the mandrake. Of all 
 roots, in German superstition, the Alraun, or man- 
 drake is the most famous. The herb was conceived 
 of, in the savage fashion, as a living human person, a 
 kind of old witch-wife.^ 
 
 Again, the root has a human shape. ‘ If a here- 
 ditary thief who has preserved his chastity gets hung,’ 
 the broad-leafed, yellow-flowered mandrake grows 
 up, in his likeness, beneath the gallows from which 
 he is suspended. The mandrake, like the moly, the 
 magical herb of the Odyssey, is ‘ hard for men to 
 dig.’ He who desires to possess a mandrake must 
 
 ^ Grimm, D. M., T'ngl. transl., p, 1202. 
 
MOLY AND MANDKAGOKA. 
 
 M5 
 
 stop his ears with wax, so that he may not hear 
 the deathly yells which the plant utters as it is 
 bein^ dragged out of the earth. Then before sun- 
 rise on a Friday, the amateur goes out with a dog, 
 
 ‘ all black,’ makes three crosses round the mandrake, 
 loosens the soil about the root, ties the root to the 
 dog’s tail, and offers the beast a piece of bread. The 
 dog runs at the bread, drags out the mandrake root, 
 and falls dead, killed by the horrible yell of the plant. 
 The root is now taken up, washed with wine, wrapped 
 in silk, laid in a casket, bathed every Friday, ‘ and 
 clothed in a little new white smock every new moon.’ 
 The mandrake acts, if thus considerately treated, as 
 a kind of familiar spirit. ‘ Every piece of coin put 
 to her over night is found doubled in the morning.’ 
 Gipsy folklore, and the folklore of American children, 
 keep this belief in doubling deposits. The gipsies 
 use the notion in what they call ‘ The Great Trick.’ 
 Some foolish rustic makes up his money in a parcel 
 which he gives to the gipsy. The latter, after various 
 ceremonies performed, returns the parcel, which is to 
 be buried. The money will be found doubled by a 
 certain date. Of course when the owner unburies the 
 parcel he finds nothing in it but brass buttons. In 
 the same way, and with pious confidence, the American 
 boy buries a marble in a hollow log, uttering the for- 
 mula, ‘What hasn’t come here, come ! here, 
 
 stay here ! ’ and expects to find all the marbles he 
 has ever lost.^ Let us follow the belief in magical 
 roots into the old Pagan world. 
 
 The ancients knew mandragora and the super- 
 
 * To 7 n Sawyer, p. 87. 
 
 L 
 
146 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 stitions connected with it very well. Dioscorides 
 mentions inandragoms, or antimelon, or dirccua, or 
 Circcca, and says the Egyptians call it apemoum, and 
 Pythagoras ‘ anthropomorphon.’ In digging the root, 
 Pliny says ‘ there are some ceremonies observed, first 
 they that goe about this worke, look especially to this 
 that the wind be not in their face, but blow upon their 
 backs. Then with the point of a sword they draw 
 three circles round about the plant, which don, they 
 dig it up afterwards with their face unto the west.’ 
 Pliny says nothing of the fetich qualities of the plant, 
 as credited in modern and mediaeval Germany, but 
 mentions ‘ sufficient it is with some bodies to cast them 
 into sleep with the smel of mandrago.’ This is like 
 Shakespeare’s ‘ poppy and mandragora, and all the 
 drowsy syrups of the world.’ Plato and Demos- 
 thenes^ also speak of mandragora as a soporific. It 
 is more to the purpose of magic that Columella men- 
 tions ‘ the half-human mandragora.’ Here we touch 
 the origin of the mandrake superstitions. The roots 
 have a kind of fantastic resemblance to the human 
 shape ; Pliny describes them as being ‘ of a fleshy 
 substance and tender.’ Now it is one of the recog- 
 nised principles in magic, that things like each other, 
 however superficially, affect each other in a mystic 
 way, and possess identical properties. Thus, in 
 Melanesia, according to Mr. Codrington,- ‘ a stone 
 in the shape of a pig, of a bread-fruit, of a yam, 
 was a most valuable find,’ because it made pigs 
 prolific, and fertilised bread-fruit trees and yam- 
 
 Rep., vi. 488. Dem., 10, 6. 
 
 -Journal Anthrop. Inst., Feb., 1881. 
 
MOLY AND MANDRAGORA. 
 
 147 
 
 plots. In vScotland, too, ‘ stones were called by the 
 names of the limbs they resembled, as “ eye-stane,” 
 “ head-stane.” A patient washed the affected part 
 of his body, and rubbed it well with the stone cor- 
 responding.’ ^ In precisely the same way, the man- 
 drake root, bein^ thought to resemble the human body, 
 was credited with human and superhuman powers. 
 Josephus mentions^ a plant ‘ not easily caught, which 
 slips away from them that wish to gather it, and 
 never stands still ’ till certain repulsive rites are per- 
 formed. These rites cannot well be reported here, 
 but they are quite familiar to Red Indian and to 
 Bushman magic. Another way to dig the plant 
 spoken of by Josephus is by aid of the dog, as in the 
 German superstition quoted from Grimm, ^^lian also 
 recommends the use of the dog to pluck the herb 
 aglaophotis, which shines at night. ^ When the dog 
 has dragged up the root, and died of terror, his body 
 is to be buried on the spot with religious honours 
 and secret sacred rites. 
 
 So much for mandragora, which, like the healing 
 potato, has to be acquired stealthily and with peril. 
 Now let us examine the Homeric herb moly. The 
 plant is thus introduced by Homer: In the tenth 
 
 book of the Odyssey, Circe has turned Odysseus’s 
 men into swine. He sets forth to rescue them, trust- 
 ing only to his sword. The god Hermes meets him, 
 and offers him ‘ a charmed herb,’ ‘ this herb of grace ’ 
 {(fuipfiaKov iaOXov), whereby he may subdue the magic 
 wiles of Circe. 
 
 ^ Gregor, Folklore of North-cast Counties, p. 40. 
 
 ^ Wars of fews, vii. 6, 3. ^ Var. Hist., 14, 27. 
 
148 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 The plant is described by Homer with some 
 minuteness. ‘ It was black at the root, but the flower 
 was like to milk. “ Moly,” the gods call it, but it is 
 bard for mortal men to dig, howbeit with the gods all 
 things are possible.’ The etymologies given of ‘ moly ’ 
 are almost as numerous as the etymologists. One 
 derivation, from the old ‘Turanian’ tongue of Acca- 
 dia, will be examined later. The Scholiast offers the 
 derivation ‘ ficoX-uecv, to make charms of no avail ’ ; but 
 this is exactly like Professor Blackie’s etymological 
 discovery that Erinys is derived from epivveiv : ‘ he 
 might as well derive critic from criticise.’’^ The 
 Scholiast adds that moly caused death to the person 
 who dragged it out of the ground. This identification 
 of moly with mandrake is probably based on Homer’s 
 remark that moly is ‘ hard to dig.’ The black root 
 and white flower of moly are quite unlike the yellow 
 flower and white fleshy root ascribed by Pliny to 
 mandrake. Only confusion is caused by regarding 
 the two magical herbs as identical. 
 
 But why are any herbs or roots magical ? While 
 some Scholars, like De Gubernatis,seek an explanation 
 in supposed myths about clouds and stars, it is enough 
 for our purpose to observe that herbs really have medi- 
 cinal properties, and that untutored people invariably 
 confound medicine with magic. A plant or root is 
 thought to possess virtue, not only when swallowed 
 in powder or decoction, but when carried in the 
 hand. St. John’s wort and rowan berries, like the 
 Homeric moly, still ‘ make evil charms of none avail ’ ; 
 
 ^ Max Muller, Selected Essays, ii. 622. 
 
MOLY AND MAN DRAG OKA. 
 
 149 
 
 Rowan, ash, and red threed 
 Gar the witches tyne their speed, 
 
 says the Scotch rhyme. Any fanciful resemblance of 
 leaf or flower or root to a portion of the human body, 
 any analogy based on colour, will give a plant reputa- 
 tion for magical virtues. This habit of mind survives 
 from the savage condition. The Hottentots are great 
 herbalists. Like the Greeks, like the Germans, they 
 expect supernatural aid from plants and roots. Mr. 
 Hahn, in his Tsui Goauiy the Supreme Being of the 
 Kiwi Kiwi (p. 82), gives the following examples: — 
 
 Dapper, in his description of Africa, p. 621, tells us: 
 
 ‘ Some of them wear round the neck, roots, which they find 
 far inland, in rivers, and being on a journey they light them 
 in a fire or chew them, if they must sleep the night out in 
 the field, d'liey believe that these roots keep off the wild 
 animals. The roots they chew are spit out around the spot 
 where they encamp for the night ; and in a similar way, if 
 they set the roots alight, they blow the smoke and ashes 
 about, believing that the smell will keep the wild animals 
 off. 
 
 ‘ I had often occasion to observe the practice of these 
 superstitious ceremonies, especially when we were in a part 
 of the country where we heard the roaring of the lions, or 
 had the day previously met with the footprints of the king 
 of the beasts. 
 
 " ‘ d’he Korannas also have these roots as safeguards with 
 them. If a Commando (a warlike expedition) goes out, 
 every man will put such roots in his pockets and in the 
 pouch where he keeps his bullets, believing that the arrows 
 or bullets of the enemy have no effect, but that his own 
 bullets will surely kill the enemy. And also before they lie 
 down to sleep, they set these roots alight, and murmur : 
 
CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 150 
 
 “ My grandfather’s root, bring sleep on the eyes of the lion 
 and leopard and the hyena. Make them blind, that they 
 cannot find us, and cover their noses, that they cannot smell 
 us out.” Also, if they have carried off large booty, or 
 stolen cattle of the enemy, they light these roots and say : 
 “ We thank thee, our grandfather’s root, that thou hast 
 given us cattle to eat. Let the enemy sleep, and lead him 
 on the wrong track, that he may not follow us until we have 
 safely escaped.” 
 
 ‘ Another sort of shrub is called abib. Herdsmen, es- 
 pecially, carry pieces of its wood as charms, and if cattle or 
 sheep have gone astray, they burn a piece of it in the fire, 
 that the wild animals may not destroy them. And they 
 believe that the cattle remain safe until they can be found 
 the next morning.’^ 
 
 Schweinfurth found the same belief in magic 
 herbs and roots among the Bongoes and Niam Niams 
 in ‘ The Heart of Africa.’ The Bongoes believe, 
 like the Homeric Greeks, that ‘ certain roots ward off 
 the evil influences of spirits.’ Like the German 
 amateurs of the mandrake, they assert that ‘ there 
 is no other resource for obtaining communication 
 with spirits, except by means of certain roots ’ (i. 306). 
 
 Our position is that the Lmglish magical potato, 
 the German mandrake, the Greek moly, are all sur- 
 vivals from a condition of mind like that in which 
 the Hottentots still pray to roots. 
 
 Now that we have brought mandragora and moly 
 into connection with the ordinary magical supersti- 
 
 ^ There is no end to Aryan parallels of savaj^e practices. The 
 famous soma of the Veda is apparently now used like the Hottentot 
 roots. Dy the Zoroastrians ‘ it is used at incantations and sacrifices, 
 and thrown into the fire.’ See Mr. Hootum Schindler, Academy, 
 Jan. 31, 1885, p. 83. 
 
MOLY AND MANDRAGORA. 
 
 I5I 
 
 tions of savage peoples, let us see what is made of 
 the subject by another method. Mr. R. Brown, the 
 learned and industrious author of The Great Diony- 
 siak Myth, has investigated the traditions about the 
 Homeric moly. He hrst^ ‘ turns to Aryan philology.’ 
 Many guesses at the etymology of ‘ moly ’ have been 
 made. Curtius suggests mollis, molvis, //wXu-?, akin to 
 fia\aKo<;, ‘ soft.’ This does not suit Mr. Brown, who, 
 to begin with, is persuaded that the herb is not a 
 magical herb, sans phrase, like those which the Hot- 
 tentots use, but that the basis of the myth ‘ is simply 
 the effect of night upon the world of day.’ Now, as 
 moly is a name in use among the gods, Mr. Brown 
 thinks ‘ we may fairly examine the hypothesis of a 
 foreign origin of the term.’ Any one who holds that 
 certain Greek gods were borrowed from abroad, may 
 be allowed to believe that the gods used foreign words, 
 and, as Mr. Brown points out, there are foreign ele- 
 ments in various Homeric names of imported articles, 
 peoples, persons, and so forth. Where, then, is a 
 foreign word like moly, which might have reached 
 Homer ? By a long process of research, Mr. Brown 
 finds his word in ancient ‘ Akkadian.’ From Professor 
 Sayce he borrows a reference to Apuleius Barbarus, 
 about whose life nothing is known, and whose date 
 is vague. Apuleius Barbarus may have lived about 
 four centuries after our era, and he says that ‘ wild 
 rue was called moly by the Cappadocians.’ Rue, 
 like rosemary, and indeed like most herbs, has its 
 magical repute, and if we supposed that Homer’s 
 moly was rue, there would be some interest in the 
 
 ’ Myth of Kirkc, p. 80. 
 
152 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 knowledge. Rue was called ‘ herb of grace ’ in 
 English, holy water was sprinkled with it, and the 
 name is a translation of Homer’s ^apfjbaKov iadXov. 
 Perhaps rue was used in sprinkling, because in 
 pre-Christian times rue had, by itself, power against 
 sprites and powers of evil. Our ancestors may have 
 thought it as well to combine the old charm of rue 
 and the new Christian potency of holy water. Thus 
 there would be a distinct analogy between Homeric 
 moly and English ‘ herb of grace.’ 
 
 ‘ Euphrasy and rue ’ were employed to purge and 
 purify mortal eyes. Pliny is very learned about the 
 magical virtues of rue. Just as the stolen potato is 
 sovereign for rheumatism, so ‘ rue stolen thriveth the 
 best.’ The Samoans think that their most valued 
 vegetables were stolen from heaven by a Samoan 
 visitor.^ It is remarkable that rue, according to 
 Pliny, is killed by the touch of a woman in the same 
 way as, according to Josephus, the mandrake is 
 tamed. These passages prove that the classical 
 peoples had the same extraordinary superstitions 
 about women as the Bushmen and Red Indians. 
 Indeed Pliny^ describes a magical manner of defend- 
 ing the crops from blight, by aid of women, which 
 is actually practised in America by the Red Men."^ 
 
 Here, then, are proofs enough that rue was magical 
 outside of Cappadocia. But this is not an argument 
 
 ^ Turner’s Samoa. 
 
 ^ Josephus, loc. cit. For this, and many other references, I am in- 
 debted to Schwartz’s Prahistorisch-anthropologische Studicn. In most 
 magic herbs the learned author recognises thunder and lightning — a 
 theory no less plausible than Mr. Brown’s. 
 
 ^ Lib. xxviii. Schoolcraft, v. 
 
MOLY AND MANDHAGORA. 
 
 153 
 
 on Mr. Brown’s lines. The Cappadocians called rue 
 ‘ moly ’ ; what language, he asks, was spoken by the 
 Cappadocians ? Prof. Sayce (who knows so many 
 tongues) says that ‘ we know next to nothing of the 
 language of the Cappadocians, or of the Moschi who 
 lived in the same locality.’ But where Prof. Sayce is, 
 the Hittites, if we may say so respectfully, are not 
 very far off. In this case he thinks the Moschi 
 (though he admits we know next to nothing about 
 it) ‘ seem to have spoken a language allied to that of 
 the Cappadocians and Hittites.’ That is to say, it 
 is not impossible that the language of the Moschi, 
 about which next to nothing is known, may have 
 been allied to that of the Cappadocians, about 
 which we know next to nothing. All that we do 
 know in this case is, that four hundred years after 
 Christ the dwellers in Cappadocia employed a word 
 ‘ moly,’ which had been Greek for at least twelve 
 hundred years. But Mr. Brown goes on to quote 
 that one of the languages of which we know next 
 to nothing, Hittite, was ‘ probably allied to Proto- 
 Armenian, and perhaps Lykian, and was above all 
 not Semitic.’ In any case ‘ the cuneiform mode of 
 writing was used in Cappadocia at an early period.’ 
 As even Professor Sayce declines to give more than 
 a tentative reading of a Cappadocian cuneiform in- 
 scription, it seems highly rash to seek in this direc- 
 tion for an interpretation of a Homeric word ‘ moly,’ 
 used in Cappadocia very many centuries after the 
 tablets were scratched. lUit, on the evidence of the 
 Babylonian character of the cuneiform writing on 
 Cappadocian tablets, Mr. Brown establishes a con- 
 
154 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 nection between the people of Accadia (who probably 
 introduced the cuneiform style) and the people of 
 Cappadocia. The connection amounts to this. Twelve 
 hundred years after Homer, the inhabitants of Cappa- 
 docia are said to have called rue ‘ moly.’ At some 
 unknown period, the Accadians appear to have in- 
 fluenced the art of writing in Cappadocia. Appar- 
 ently Mr. Brown thinks it not too rash to infer 
 that the Cappadocian use of the word ‘ moly ’ is 
 not derived from the Greeks, but from the Acca- 
 dians. Now in Accadian, according to Mr. Brown, 
 mill means ‘ star.’ ‘ Hence ulu or miihi = /ulcoXv, the 
 mysterious Homerik counter-charm to the charms of 
 Kirke ’ (p. 6o). Mr. Brown’s theory, therefore, is that 
 moly originally meant ‘ star.’ Circe is the moon, 
 Odysseus is the sun, and ‘ what watches over the solar 
 hero at night when exposed to the hostile lunar 
 power, but the stars ? ’ especially the dog-star. 
 
 The truth is, that Homer’s moly, whatever plant 
 he meant by the name, is only one of the magical 
 herbs in which most peoples believe or have believed. 
 Like the Scottish rowan, or like St. John’s wort, it is 
 potent against evil influences. People have their own 
 simple reasons for believing in these plants, and have 
 not needed to bring down their humble, early botany 
 from the clouds and stars. We have to imagine, on 
 the other hand (if we follow Mr. Brown), that in some 
 unknown past the Cappadocians turned the Accadian 
 word for a star into a local name of a plant, that 
 this word reached Homer, that the supposed old 
 Accadian myth of the star which watches over the 
 solar hero retained its vitality in (ireek, and leaving 
 
MOLY AND MANDRAGOKA. 
 
 155 
 
 the star clung to the herb, that Homer used an 
 ‘ Akkado-Kappadokian ’ myth, and that, many ages 
 after, the Accadian star-name in its perverted sense 
 of ‘ rue ’ survived in Cappadocia. This structure of 
 'argument is based on tablets which even Prof. Sayce 
 cannot read, and on possibilities about the alliances 
 of tongues concerning which we ‘ know next to 
 nothing.’ A method which leaves on one side the 
 common, natural, widely-diffused beliefs about the 
 magic virtue of herbs (beliefs which we have seen at 
 work in Kensington and in Central Africa), to hunt for 
 moly among stars and undeciphered Kappadokian 
 inscriptions, seems a dubious method. We have ex- 
 amined it at full length because it is a specimen of an 
 erudite, but, as we think, a mistaken way in folklore. 
 M. Halevy’s warnings against the shifting mythical 
 theories based on sciences so new as the lore of 
 Assyria and ‘ Akkadia ’ are by no means superfluous. 
 ‘ Akkadian ’ is rapidly become as ready a key to all 
 locks as ‘ Aryan ’ was a few years ago.^ 
 
 ^ Mr. Brown {Academy, Jan. 3, 1885) says he freely acknowledges 
 that his ‘ suggestion might be quite incorrect ’ — which seems possible — 
 and that ‘ if Odysseus and Kirke were sun and moon here is a good 
 starting-point for the theory that the moly was stellar.’ This reminds 
 one of the preacher who demonstrated the existence of the Trinity thus : 
 ‘ For is there not, my brethren, one sun, and one moon, — and one 
 multitude of stars ? ’ 
 
156 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 ‘ KALEVALA^ ; OR, THE FINNISH 
 NATIONAL EPIC. 
 
 It is difficult to account for the fact that the scien- 
 tific curiosity which is just now so busy in examining 
 all the monuments of the primitive condition of our 
 race, should, in England at least, have almost totally 
 neglected to popularise the ‘ Kalevala,’ or national 
 poem of the Finns. Besides its fresh and simple beauty 
 of style, its worth as a storehouse of every kind of 
 primitive folklore, being as it is the production of an 
 Urvolk, a nation that has undergone no violent revo- 
 lution in'language or institutions — the ‘ Kalevala ’ has 
 the peculiar interest of occupying a position between 
 the two kinds of primitive poetry, the ballad and 
 the epic. So much difficulty has been introduced 
 into the study of the first developments of song, by 
 confusing these distinct sorts of composition under 
 the name of popular poetiy, that it may be well, in 
 writing of a poem which occupies a middle place 
 between epic and ballad, to define what we mean by 
 each. 
 
 The author of our old hvnglish Art of Pocsic 
 begins his work with a statement which may serve as 
 a text : ‘ Poesie,’ says Puttenham, writing in 1589, 
 
 ‘ is more ancient than the artificiall of the Greeks and 
 
THE ‘ KALEVALA.’- 
 
 157 
 
 Latines, coming by instinct of nature, and used by 
 the savage and uncivil!, who were before all science 
 and civilitie. This is proved by certificate of mer- 
 chants and travellers, who by late navigations have 
 surveyed the whole world, and discovered large coun- 
 tries, and strange people, wild and savage, affirming 
 that the American, the Perusine, and the very canni- 
 ball, do sing, and also say, their highest and holiest 
 matters in certain riming versicles.’ Puttenham is 
 here referring to that instinct of primitive men, which 
 compels them in all moments of high-wrought feel- 
 ing, and on all solemn occasions, to give utterance 
 to a kind of chant. ^ Such a chant is the song of 
 Lamech, when he had ‘ slain a man to his wound- 
 ing.’ So in the Norse sagas, Grettir and Gunnar 
 sing when they have anything particular to say ; 
 and so in the Mdrchen — the primitive fairy tales of 
 all nations — scraps of verse are introduced where em- 
 phasis is wanted. This craving for passionate ex- 
 pression takes a more formal shape in the lays which 
 among all primitive peoples, as among the modern 
 Greeks to-day,^ are sung at betrothals, funerals, and 
 departures for distant lands. These songs have been 
 collected in Scotland by Scott and Motherwell ; 
 their Danish counterparts have been translated by 
 Mr. Prior. In Greece, M. Fauriel and Dr. Ulrichs ; 
 in Provence, Damase Arbaud ; in Italy, M. Nigra ; 
 in Servia, Talvj ; in P" ranee, Gerard de Nerval — have 
 done for their separate countries what Scott did for 
 the Border. Professor Child, of Harvard, is publish- 
 
 ^ Talvj, Charakteristik dcr Volkslicdcr, p. 3, 
 
 - Fauriel, Chants dc la Grecc moderne, 
 
158 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 ing a beautiful critical collection of English V olks- 
 lieder, with all known variants from every country. 
 
 A comparison of the collections proves that 
 among all European lands the primitive ‘ versicles ’ 
 of the people are identical in tone, form, and incident. 
 It is this kind of early expression of a people’s life — 
 careless, abrupt, brief, as was necessitated by the fact 
 that they were sung to the accompaniment of the 
 dance — that we call ballads. These are distinctly, 
 and in every sense, popular poems, and nothing can 
 cause greater confusion than to apply the same title, 
 ‘ popular,’ to early epic poetry. Ballads are short ; 
 a long ballad, as Mr. Matthew Arnold has said, 
 creeps and halts. A true epic, on the other hand, 
 is long, and its tone is grand, noble, and sustained. 
 Ballads are not artistic ; while the form of the epic, 
 whether we take the hexameter or the rougher laisse 
 of the Erench chansons de geste, is full of conscious 
 and admirable art. Lastly, popular ballads deal 
 with vague characters, acting and living in vague 
 places ; while the characters of an epic are heroes of 
 definite station, whose descendants are still in the land, 
 whose home is a recognisable place, Ithaca, or Argos. 
 Now, though these two kinds of early poetry— the 
 ballad, the song of the people ; the epic, the song of 
 the chiefs of the people, of the ruling race— are 
 distinct in kind, it does not follow that they have 
 no connection, that the nobler may not have been 
 developed out of the materials of the lower form of 
 expression. And the value of the ‘ Kalevala ’ is 
 partly this, that it combines the continuity and unison 
 of the epic with the simplicity and popularity of the 
 
THE ‘ K A LEVA LA.’ 
 
 159 
 
 ballad, and so forms a kind of link in the history of 
 the development of poetry. This may become clearer 
 as we proceed to explain the literary history of the 
 Finnish national poem. 
 
 Sixty years ago, it may be said, no one was aware 
 that Finland possessed a national poem at all. Her 
 people — who claim affinity with the Magyars of 
 Hungary, but are possibly a back-wave of an earlier 
 tide of population — had remained untouched by 
 foreign influences since their conquest by Sweden, 
 and their somewhat lax and wholesale conversion 
 to Christianity : events which took place gradually 
 between the middle of the twelfth and the end of the 
 thirteenth centuries. Under the rule of Sweden, the 
 Finns were left to their quiet life and undisturbed 
 imaginings, among the forests and lakes of the region 
 which they aptly called Pohja, ‘ the ends of things ’ ; 
 while their educated classes took no very keen in- 
 terest in the native poetry and mythology of their 
 race. At length the annexation of Finland by Russia, 
 in 1809, awakened national feeling, and stimulated 
 research into songs and customs which were the 
 heirlooms of the people. 
 
 It was the policy of Russia to encourage, rather 
 than to check, this return on a distant past ; and 
 from the north of Norway to the slopes of the Altai, 
 ardent explorers sought out the fragments of un- 
 written early poetry. These runes, or Runots, were 
 chiefly sung by old men called Runoias, to beguile the 
 weariness of the long dark winters. The custom was 
 for two champions to engage in a contest of memory, 
 clasping each other’s hands, and reciting in turn till 
 
i6o 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 he whose memory first gave in slackened his hold. 
 The ‘ Kalevala ’ contains an instance of this practice, 
 where it is said that no one was so hardy as to 
 clasp hands with Wainamoinen, who is at once the 
 Orpheus and the Prometheus of Finnish mythology. 
 These Runoias, or rhapsodists, complain, of course, 
 of the degeneracy of human memory ; they notice 
 how any foreign influence, in religion or politics, is 
 destructive to the native songs of a race.^ ‘ As for 
 the lays of old time, a thousand have been scattered 
 to the wind, a thousand buried in the snow ; . . • 
 as for those which the Munks (the Teutonic knights) 
 swept away and the prayer of the priests overwhelmed, 
 a thousand tongues were not able to recount them.’ 
 In spite of the losses thus caused, and in spite of the 
 suspicious character of the Finns, which often made 
 the task of collection a dangerous one, enough mate- 
 rials remained to furnish Dr. Ldnnrot, the most noted 
 explorer, with thirty-five Kunots, or cantos. These 
 were published in 1835, but later research produced 
 the fifteen cantos which make up the symmetrical fifty 
 of the ‘ Kalevala.’ In the task of arranging and 
 uniting these. Dr. Lonnrot played the part tradi- 
 tionally ascribed to the commission of Pisistratus in 
 relation to the Iliad and Odyssey. Dr. Lonnrot 
 cut about and altered at pleasure the materials 
 which come before us as one poem. They have 
 little unity now, and originally had none. 
 
 1 Thus Scotland scarcely produced any ballads, properly speak- 
 ing, after the Reformation. The Kirk suppressed the dances to 
 whose motion the ballad was sung in Scotland, as in Greece, Pro- 
 vence, and France. 
 
THE ‘ KALEVALA. 
 
 l6l 
 
 It cannot be doubted that, at whatever period 
 the Homeric poems took shape in Greece, they 
 were believed to record the feats of the supposed 
 ancestors of existing families. Thus, for example, 
 Pisistratus, as a descendant of the Nelidae, had 
 an interest in securing certain parts, at least, of 
 the Iliad and the Odyssey from oblivion. The 
 same family pride embellished and preserved the 
 epic poetry of early France. There were in P'rance 
 but three heroic houses, or gestes ; and three cor- 
 responding cycles of epopees. Now, in the ‘ Kale- 
 vala,’ there is no trace of the influence of family 
 feeling ; it was no one’s peculiar care and pride 
 to watch over the records of the fame of this or 
 that hero. The poem begins with a cosmogony 
 as wild as any Indian dream of creation ; and the 
 human characters who move in the story are 
 shadowy inhabitants of no very deflnite lands, 
 whom no family claim as their forefathers. The 
 very want of this idea of family and aristocratic 
 pride gives the ‘ Kalevala ’ a unique place among 
 epics. It is emphatically an epic of the people, 
 of that class whose life contains no element of 
 progress, no break in continuity ; which from age 
 to age preserves, in solitude and close communion 
 with nature, the earliest beliefs of grey antiquity. 
 The Greek epic, on the other hand, has, as 
 Preller^ points out, ‘nothing to do with natural 
 
 ^ L. Preller’s Ausgcwdhlte Aufsdtzc. Greek ideas on the origin 
 of Man. It is curious that the myth of a gold, a silver, and a copper 
 race occurs in South America. See Hrasseur de Bourbourg’s Notes 
 on the Popol Viih. 
 
 M 
 
i 62 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 man, but with an ideal world of heroes, with 
 sons of the gods, with consecrated kings, heroes, 
 elders, a kind of specific race of men. The people 
 exist only as subsidiary to the great houses, as a 
 mere background against which stand out the 
 shining figures of heroes ; as a race of beings fresh 
 and rough from the hands of nature, with whom, 
 and with whose concerns, the great houses and 
 their bards have little concern.’ This feeling — so 
 universal in Greece, and in the feudal countries of 
 mediaeval Europe, that there are two kinds of men, 
 the golden and the brazen race, as Plato would have 
 called them — is absent, with all its results, in the 
 ‘ Kalevala.’ 
 
 Among the Finns we find no trace of an aris- 
 tocracy ; there is scarcely a mention of kings, or 
 priests ; the heroes of the poem are really popular 
 heroes, fishers, smiths, husbandmen, ‘ medicine- 
 men,’ or wizards ; exaggerated shadows of the people, 
 pursuing on a heroic scale, not war, but the common 
 daily business of primitive and peaceful men. In 
 recording their adventures, the ‘ Kalevala,’ like the 
 shield of Achilles, reflects all the life of a race, the 
 feasts, the funerals, the rites of seed-time and har- 
 vest, of marriage and death, the hymn, and the 
 magical incantation. 
 
 Though without the interest of an unique position 
 as a popular epic, the ‘ Kalevala ’ is very valuable, 
 both for its literary beauties and for the confused 
 mass of folklore which it contains. 
 
 Here old cosmogonies, attempts of man to re- 
 present to himself the beginning of things, are 
 
THE ‘ KALEVALA.’ 
 
 163 
 
 mingled with the same wild imaginings as are found 
 everywhere in the shape of fairy-tales. We are 
 hurried from an account of the mystic egg of crea- 
 tion, to a hymn like that of the Ambarval Brothers, 
 to a strangely familiar scrap of a nursery story, to 
 an incident which we remember as occurring in 
 almost identical words in a Scotch ballad. We 
 are among a people which endows everything with 
 human characters and life, which is in familiar 
 relations with birds, and beasts, and even with 
 rocks and plants. Ravens and wolves and fishes 
 of the sea, sun, moon, and stars, are kindly or 
 churlish ; drops of blood find speech, man and 
 maid change to snake or swan and resume their 
 forms, ships have magic powers, like the ships of 
 the Phacacians. 
 
 Then there is the oddest confusion of every stage 
 of religious development : we hnd a supreme God, 
 delighting in righteousness ; Ukko, the lord of the 
 vault of air, who stands apart from men, and sends 
 his son, Wainamoinen, to be their teacher in music 
 and agriculture. 
 
 Across this faith comes a religion of petrified 
 abstractions like those of the Roman Pantheon. 
 There are gods of colour, a goddess of weaving, a 
 goddess of man’s blood, besides elemental spirits 
 of woods and waters, and the manes of the dead. 
 Meanwhile the working faith of the people is the 
 belief in magic — generally a sign of the lower 
 culture. It is supposed that the knowledge of 
 certain magic words gives power over the ele- 
 mental bodies which obey them ; it is held that 
 
 M 2 
 
i64 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 the will of. a distant sorcerer can cross the lakes 
 and plains like the breath of a fantastic frost, 
 with power to change an enemy to ice or stone. 
 Traces remain of the worship of animals : there 
 is a hymn to the bear ; a dance like the bear- 
 dance of the American Indians ; and another 
 hymn tells of the birth and power of the serpent. 
 Across all, and closing all, comes a hostile account 
 of the origin of Christianity — the end of joy and 
 music. 
 
 How primitive was the condition of the authors 
 of this medley of beliefs is best proved by the sur- 
 vival of the custom called exogamy.^ This custom, 
 which is not peculiar to the Finns, but is probably 
 a universal note of early society, prohibits marriage 
 between members of the same tribe. Consequently, 
 the main action, such as it is, of the ' Kale- 
 vala ’ turns on the efforts made by the men of 
 Kaleva to obtain brides from the hostile tribe of 
 Pohja.2 
 
 Further proof of ancient origin is to be found in 
 what is the great literary beauty of the poem — its 
 pure spontaneity and simplicity. It is the produc- 
 tion of an intensely imaginative race, to which song 
 came as the most natural expression of joy and 
 
 ^ See essay on Early History of the Family. 
 
 This constant struggle may be, and of course by one school of 
 comparative mythologists will be, represented as the strife between 
 light and darkness, the sun’s rays, and the clouds of night, and so on. 
 M. Castren has well pointed out that the struggle has really an his- 
 torical meaning. Even if the myth be an elementary one, its con- 
 structors must have been in the exogamous stage of society. 
 
THE ‘ KALEVALA.’ 
 
 165 
 
 sorrow, terror or triumph — a class which lay near to 
 nature’s secret, and was not out of sympathy with 
 the wild kin of woods and waters. 
 
 ‘ d’hese songs,’ says the prelude, ‘ were found by the 
 wayside, and gathered in the depths of the copses ; blown 
 from the branches of the forest, and culled among the 
 plumes of the pine-trees. Tliese lays came to me as 1 
 followed the flocks, in a land of meadows honey-sweet and 
 of golden hills. . . . The cold has spoken to me, and the 
 rain has told me her runes ; the winds of heaven, the 
 waves of the sea, have spoken and sung to me ; the wild 
 birds have taught me, the music of many waters has been 
 my master.’ 
 
 The metre in which the epic is chanted re- 
 sembles, to an English ear, that of Mr. Longfellow’s 
 ‘ Hiawatha’ — there is assonance rather than rhyme ; 
 and a very musical effect is produced by the liquid 
 character of the language, and by the frequent 
 alliterations. 
 
 This rough outline of the main characteristics of 
 the ‘ Kalevala ’ we shall now try to fill up with an 
 abstract of its contents. The poem is longer than 
 the Iliad, and much of interest must necessarily be 
 omitted ; but it is only through such an abstract that 
 any idea can be given of the sort of unity which does 
 prevail amid the most utter discrepancy. 
 
 In the first place, what is to be understood by the 
 word ‘Kalevala’? The affix la signifies ‘abode.’ 
 Thus, ‘ Tuonela ’ is ‘ the abode of Tuoni,’ the god of . 
 the lower world; and as ‘ kaleva ’ means ‘heroic,’ 
 
 ‘ magnificent,’ ‘ Kalevala ’ is ‘ The Home of Heroes ’ 
 
i66 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 The poem is the record of the adventures of the 
 people of Kalevala — of their strife with the men 
 of Pohjola, the place of the world's end. We may 
 fancy two old Runoias, or singers, clasping hands 
 on one of the first nights of the Finnish winter, 
 and beginning (what probably has never been 
 accomplished) the attempt to work through the 
 ‘ Kalevala ’ before the return of summer. They 
 commence ab ovo, or, rather, before the egg. 
 First is chanted the birth of Wainamoinen, the 
 benefactor and teacher of men. He is the son 
 of Luonnotar, the daughter of Nature, who answers 
 to the first woman of the Iroquois cosmogony. Be- 
 neath the breath and touch of wind and tide, she 
 conceived a child ; but nine ages of man passed 
 before his birth, while the mother floated on 
 ‘ the formless and the multiform waters.’ Then 
 Ukko, the supreme God, sent an eagle, which 
 laid her eggs in the maiden’s bosom, and from 
 these eggs grew earth and sky, sun and moon, 
 star and cloud. Then was Wainamoinen born on 
 the waters, and reached a barren land, and gazed 
 on the new heavens and the new earth. There 
 he sowed the grain that is the bread of man, 
 chanting the hymn used at seed-time, calling on 
 the mother earth to make the green herb spring, 
 and on Ukko to send down clouds and rain. So 
 the corn sprang, and the golden cuckoo — which in 
 Finland plays the part of the popinjay in Scotch 
 ballads, or of the three golden birds in Greek folk- 
 songs — came with his congratulations. In regard to 
 the epithet ‘ golden,’ it may be observed that gold 
 
THE ‘ KALEVALA.’ 167 
 
 and silver, in the Finnish epic, are lavished on the 
 commonest objects of daily life. 
 
 This is a universal note of primitive poetry, and 
 is not a peculiar Finnish idiom, as M. Leouzon le 
 Due supposes ; nor, as i\Ir. Tozer seems to think, in 
 his account of Romaic ballads, a trace of Oriental in- 
 fluence amon^ the modern Greeks. It is common to 
 all the ballads of Furope, as M. Ampere has pointed 
 out, and may be observed in the ‘ Chanson de 
 Roland,’ and in Homer. 
 
 While the corn ripened, Wainamoinen rested from 
 his labours, and took the task of Orpheus. ‘ He sang,’ 
 says the ‘ Kalevala,’ of the origin of things, of the 
 mysteries hidden from babes, that none may attain to 
 in this sad life, in the hours of these perishable days. 
 The fame of the Runoia’s singing excited jealousy in 
 the breast of one of the men Around him, of whose 
 origin the ‘ Kalevala ’ gives no account. This man, 
 Joukahainen, provoked him to a trial of song, boast- 
 ing, like Empedocles, or like one of the old Celtic 
 bards, that he had been all things. ‘ When the earth 
 was made I was there ; when space was unrolled I 
 launched the sun on his way.’ Then was Wainamoi- 
 nen wroth, and by the force of his enchantment he 
 rooted Joukahainen to the ground, and suffered him 
 not to go free without promising him the hand of his 
 sister Aino. The mother was delighted ; but the girl 
 wept that she must now cover her long locks, her 
 curls, her glory, and be the wife of ‘ the old imper- 
 turbable Wainamoinen.’ It is in vain that her mother 
 offers her dainty food and rich dresses ; she flees 
 from home, and wanders till she meets three maidens 
 
i68 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 bathing, and joins them, and is drowned, singing a 
 sad song : ‘ Ah, never may my sister come to bathe 
 in the sea-water, for the drops of the sea are the 
 drops of my blood.’ This wild idea occurs in the 
 Romaic ballad, Koprj ra^iSevTpLa, where a drop of 
 blood on the lips of the drowned girl tinges all the 
 waters of the world. To return to the fate of Aino. 
 A swift hare runs (as in the Zulu legend of the 
 Origin of Death) with the tale of sorrow to the 
 maiden’s mother, and from the mother’s tears flow 
 rivers of water, and therein are isles with golden hills 
 where golden birds make melody. As for the old, 
 the imperturbable Runoia, he loses his claim to the 
 latter title, he is filled with sorrow, and searches 
 through all the elements for his lost bride. At length 
 he catches a fish which is unknown to him, who, like 
 Atlas, ‘ knew the depths of all the seas.’ The strange 
 fish slips from his hands, a ‘ tress of hair, of drowned 
 maiden’s hair,’ floats for a moment on the foam, and 
 too late he recognises that ‘ there was never salmon 
 yet that shone so fair, above the nets at sea.’ His 
 lost bride has been within his reach, and now is 
 doubly lost to him. Suddenly the waves are cloven 
 asunder, and the mother of Nature and of Waina- 
 mdinen appears, to comfort her son, like Thetis from 
 the deep. She bids him go and seek, in the land of 
 Pohjola, a bride alien to his race. After many a wild 
 adventure, Wainamdinen reaches Pohjola and is 
 kindly entreated by Loutri, the mother of the maiden 
 of the land. But he grows homesick, and complains, 
 almost in Dante’s words, of the bitter bread of exile. 
 Loutri will only grant him her daughter’s hand on 
 
THE ‘ KALEVALA. 
 
 i6g 
 
 condition that he gives her a sampo. A sampo is a 
 mysterious engine that grinds meal, salt, and money. 
 In fact, it is the mill in the well-known fairy tale. 
 Why the Sea is Salt} 
 
 Wainamoinen cannot fashion this mill himself, he 
 must seek aid at home from Ilmarinen, the smith who 
 forged ‘ the iron vault of hollow heaven.’ As the 
 hero returns to Kalevala, he meets the Lady of the 
 Rainbow, seated on the arch of the sky, weaving the 
 golden thread. She promises to be his, if he will 
 accomplish certain tasks, and in the course of those 
 he wounds himself with an axe. The wound can 
 only be healed by one who knows the mystic words 
 that hold the secret of the birth of iron. The legend 
 of this evil birth, how iron grew from the milk of a 
 maiden, and was forged by the primeval smith, Ilma- 
 rinen, to be the bane of warlike men, is communi- 
 cated by Wainamoinen to an old magician. The 
 wizard then solemnly curses the iron, as a living 
 thing, and invokes the aid of the supreme God Ukko, 
 thus bringing together in one prayer the extremes of 
 early religion. Then the hero is healed, and gives 
 thanks to the Creator, ‘ in whose hands is the end of 
 a matter.’ 
 
 Returning to Kalevala, Wainamoinen sends Ilma- 
 rinen to Pohjola to make the sampo, ‘ a mill for corn 
 one day, for salt the next, for money the next.’ The 
 fatal treasure is concealed by Loutri, and is obvi- 
 
 ^ Sampo may be derived from a Thibetan word, meaning ‘ fountain 
 of good,’ or it may possibly be connected with the Swedish stamp, a 
 hand-mill. The talisman is made of all the quaint odds and ends that 
 the Fetichist treasures, swan’s feathers, flocks of wool, and so on. 
 
lyo 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 ously to play the part of the fairy hoard in the ‘ Nibe- 
 lungen Lied.’ 
 
 With the eleventh canto a new hero, Ahti, or 
 Lemminkainen, and a new cycle of adventures, is 
 abruptly introduced. Lemminkainen is a profligate 
 wanderer, with as many loves as Hercules. The fact 
 that he is regarded as a form of the sea-god makes it 
 strange that his most noted achievement, the seduction 
 of the whole female population of his island, should 
 correspond with a like feat of Krishna’s. ‘ Sixteen 
 thousand and one hundred,’ says the Vishnu Purana, 
 
 ‘ was the number of the maidens ; and into so many 
 forms did the son of Madhu multiply himself, so that 
 every one of the damsels thought that he had wedded 
 her in her single person.’ Krishna is the sun, per- 
 haps, and the maidens are the dew-drops ; it is to 
 be hoped that Lemminkainen’s connection with sea- 
 water may save him from the solar hypothesis. His 
 first regular marriage is unhappy, and he is slain in 
 trying to capture a bride from the people of Pohjola. 
 The black waters of the river of forgetfulness sweep 
 him away, and his comb, which he left with his mother, 
 bursts out bleeding — a frequent incident in Russian 
 and other fairy tales. In many household tales, the 
 hero, before setting out on a journey, erects a stick 
 which will fall down when he is in distress, or death. 
 The natives of Australia use this form of divination 
 in actual practice, tying round the stick some of the 
 hair of the person whose fate is to be ascertained. 
 Then, like Demeter seeking Persephone, the mother 
 questions all the beings of the world, and their answers 
 show a wonderful poetic sympathy with the silent life 
 
THE ‘ KALEVALA.’ 
 
 171 
 
 of Nature. ‘ The moon said, I have sorrows enough 
 of my own, without thinking of thy child. My lot is 
 hard, my days are evil. I am born to wander com- 
 panionless in the night, to shine in the season of frost, 
 to watch through the endless winter, to fade when 
 summer comes as king.’ The sun is kinder, and 
 reveals the place of the hero’s body. The mother 
 collects the scattered limbs, the birds bring healing 
 balm from the heights of heaven, and after a hymn 
 to the goddess of man’s blood, Lemminkainen is 
 made sound and well, as the scattered ‘ fragments of 
 no more a man ’ were united by the spell of Medea, 
 like those of Osiris by Isis, or of the fair countess by 
 the demon blacksmith in the Russian Marchen, or of 
 the Carib hero mentioned by Mr. M‘Lennan,^ or of 
 the ox in the South African household tale. 
 
 With the sixteenth canto we turn to Waina- 
 moinen, who, like all epic heroes, visits the place of 
 the dead, Tuonela. The maidens who play the part 
 of Charon are with difficulty induced to ferry over a 
 man bearing no mark of death by fire or sword or 
 water. Once among the dead, Wainamoinen refuses 
 — being wiser than Psyche or Persephone — to taste 
 of drink. This ‘ taboo ’ is found in Japanese, Melane- 
 sian, and Red Indian accounts of the homes of the 
 dead. Thus the hero is able to return and behold 
 the stars. Arrived in the upper world, he warns men 
 to ‘ beware of perverting innocence, of leading astray 
 the pure of heart ; they that do these things shall be 
 punished eternally in the depths of Tuoni. There is 
 
 ^Fortnightly Review, 1869: ‘The Worship of Plants and 
 Animals.’ 
 
1J2 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 a place prepared for evil-doers, a bed of stones burn- 
 ing, rocks of lire, worms and serpents.’ This speech 
 throws but little light on the question of how far a 
 doctrine of rewards and punishments enters into 
 primitive ideas of a future state. The ‘ Kalevala,’ as 
 we possess it, is necessarily, though faintly, tinged 
 with Christianity ; and the peculiar vices which are 
 here threatened with punishment are not those which 
 would have been most likely to occur to the early 
 heathen singers of this runot. 
 
 Wain’amoinen and Ilmarinen now go together to 
 Pohjola, but the fickle maiden of the land prefers the 
 young forger of the sampo to his elder and imperturb- 
 able companion. Like a northern Medea, or like the 
 Master-maid in Dr. Dasent’s Tales from the Norse, 
 or like the hero of the Algonquin tale and the Samoan 
 ballad, she aids her alien lover to accomplish the 
 tasks assigned to him. He ploughs with a plough 
 of gold the adder-close, or field of serpents ; he bridles 
 the wolf and the bear of the lower world, and catches 
 the pike that swim in the waters of forgetfulness. 
 After this, the parents cannot refuse their consent, 
 the wedding-feast is prepared, and all the world, ex- 
 cept the seduisant Lemminkainen, is bidden to the 
 banquet. The narrative now brings in the ballads 
 that are sung at a Finnish marriage. 
 
 First, the son-in-law enters the house of the parents 
 of the bride, saying, ‘ Peace abide with you in this 
 illustrious hall.’ The mother answers, ‘ Peace be 
 with you even in this lowly hut.’ Then Wainamoinen 
 began to sing, and no man was so hardy as to clasp 
 hands and contend with him in song. Next follow the 
 
THE ' KALEVALA.’ 
 
 173 
 
 songs of farewell, the mother telling the daughter of 
 what she will have to endure in a strange home : 
 
 ‘ Thy life was soft and delicate in thy father’s house. 
 Milk and butter were ready to thy hand ; thou wert 
 as a dower of the field, as a strawberry of the wood ; 
 all care was left to the pines of the forest, all wailing 
 to the wind in the woods of barren lands. But now 
 thou goest to another home, to an alien mother, to 
 doors that grate strangely on their hinges.’ ‘ My 
 thoughts,’ the maiden replies, ‘ are as a dark night 
 of autumn, as a cloudy day of winter ; my heart is 
 sadder than the autumn night, more weary than the 
 winter day.’ The maid and the bridegroom are then 
 lyrically instructed in their duties : the girl is to be 
 long-suffering, the husband to try five years’ gentle 
 treatment before he cuts a willow wand for his wife’s 
 correction. The bridal party sets out for home, a 
 new feast is spread, and the bridegroom congratu- 
 lated on the courage he must have shown in stealing 
 a girl from a hostile tribe. 
 
 While all is merry, the mischievous Lemmin- 
 kainen sets, out, an unbidden guest, for Pohjola. On 
 his way he encounters a serpent, which he slays by 
 the song of serpent-charming. In this ‘mystic chain 
 of verse ’ the serpent is not addressed as the gentle 
 reptile, god of southern peoples, but is spoken of with 
 all hatred and loathing : ‘ Black creeping thing of the 
 low lands, monster decked with the colours of death, 
 thou that hast on thy skin the stain of the sterile soil, 
 get thee forth from the path of a hero.’ After slaying 
 the serpent, Lemminkainen reaches Pohjola, kills one 
 of his hosts, and fixes his head on one of a thousand 
 
174 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 stakes for human skulls that stood about the house, 
 as they might round the hut of a Dyak in Borneo. 
 He then liees to the isle of Saari, whence he is 
 driven for his heroic profligacy, and by the hatred of 
 the only girl whom he has not wronged. This is a 
 very pretty touch of human nature. 
 
 He now meditates a new incursion into Pohjola. 
 The mother of Pohjola (it is just worth noticing that 
 the leadership assumed by this woman points to a 
 state of society when the family was scarcely formed) 
 calls to her aid ‘ her child the Frost’ ; but the frost is 
 put to shame by a hymn of the invader’s, a song 
 against the Cold : ‘The serpent was his foster-mother, 
 the serpent with her barren breasts ; the wind of the 
 north rocked his cradle, and the ice-wind sang him to 
 sleep, in the midst of the wild marsh-land, where the 
 wells of the waters begin.’ It is a curious instance of 
 the animism, the vivid power of personifying all the 
 beings and forces of nature, which marks the ‘ Kale- 
 vala,’ that the Cold speaks to Lemminkainen in 
 human voice, and seeks a reconciliation. 
 
 At this part of the epic there is an obvious la- 
 cuna. The story goes to Kullervo, a luckless man, who 
 serves as shepherd to Ilmarinen. Thinking himself ill- 
 treated by the heroic smith’s wife, the shepherd changes 
 his flock into bears and wolves, which devour their mis- 
 tress. Then he returns to his own home, where he learns 
 that his sister has been lost for many days, and is be- 
 lieved to be dead. Travelling in search of her he meets a 
 girl, loves her, and all unwittingly commits an inex- 
 piable offence. ‘ Then,’ says the ‘ Kalevala,’ ‘ came up 
 the new dawn, and the maiden spoke, saying, “What 
 
THE ‘ KALEVALA.’ 
 
 175 
 
 is thy race, bold young man, and who is thy father ? ” 
 Kullervo said, “ I am the wretched son of Kalerva ; 
 but tell me, what is thy race, and who is thy father ? ” 
 Then said the maiden, “ I am the wretched daughter 
 of Kalerva. Ah ! would God that I had died, then 
 might I have grown with the green grass, and blos- 
 somed with the flowers, and never known this sorrow.” 
 With this she sprang into the midst of the foaming 
 waves, and found peace in Tuoni, and rest in the 
 waters of forgetfulness.’ Then there was no word 
 for Kullervo, but the bitter moan of the brother in 
 the terrible Scotch ballad of the Bonny Hind, and no 
 rest but in death by his own sword, where grass 
 grows never on his sister’s tomb. 
 
 The epic now draws to a close. Ilmarinen seeks 
 a new wife in Pohja, and endeavours with Wainarndi- 
 nen’s help to recover the mystic sampo. On the 
 voyage, the Runoia makes a harp out of the bones of 
 a monstrous flsh, so strange a harp that none may 
 play it but himself. When he played, all four-footed 
 things came about him, and the white birds dropped 
 down ‘ like a storm of snow.’ The maidens of the 
 sun and the moon paused in their weaving, and the 
 golden thread fell from their hands. The Ancient 
 One of the sea-water listened, and the nymphs of the 
 wells forgot to comb their loose locks with the golden 
 combs. All men and maidens and little children 
 wept, amid the silent joy of nature ; nay, the great 
 harper wept, and of his tears were pearls made. 
 
 In the war with Pohjola the heroes were victorious, 
 but the sampo was broken in the light, and lost in the 
 sea, and that, perhaps, is ‘ why the sea is salt.’ Frag- 
 
176 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 ments were collected, however, and Loutri, furious at 
 the success of the heroes of Kalevala, sent against 
 them a bear, destructive as the boar of Calydon. But 
 W'ainamdinen despatched the monster, and the body 
 was brought home with the bear-dance, and the 
 hymn of the bear. • Oh, Otso,’ cry the singers, ‘ be not 
 angry that we come near thee. The bear, the honey- 
 footed bear, was born in lands between sun and moon, 
 and he died not by men’s hands, but of his own will.’ 
 The Finnish savants are probably right, who find 
 here a trace of the beast-worship which in many- 
 lands has placed the bear among the number of the 
 stars. Propitiation of the bear is practised by Red 
 Indians, by the Ainos of Japan, and (in the case of 
 the ‘ native bear ’ ) by Australians. The Red Indians 
 have a myth to prove that the bear is immortal, does 
 not die, but, after his apparent death, rises again in 
 another body. There is no trace, however, that the 
 Finns claimed, like the Danes, descent from the bear. 
 The Lapps, a people of confused belief, worshipped 
 him along with Thor, Christ, the sun, and the serpent.^ 
 
 But another cult, an alien creed, is approaching 
 Kalevala. 1'here is no part of the poem more strange 
 than the closing canto, which tells in the wildest 
 language, and through the most exaggerated forms 
 of savage imagination, the tale of the introduction of 
 Christianity. Marjatta was a maiden, ‘ as pure as the 
 dew is, as holy as stars are that live without stain.’ 
 As she fed her flocks, and listened to the singing of 
 the golden cuckoo, a berry fell into her bosom. After 
 many days she bore a child, and the people despised 
 
 ^ Mr. M‘Lennan in the Fortnightly Review, February, 1870. 
 
THE ‘ KALEVALA.’ 
 
 177 
 
 and rejected her, and she was thrust forth, and her 
 babe was born in a stable, and cradled in the manger. 
 Who should baptise the babe ? The god of the wil- 
 derness refused, and Wain’amdinen would have had 
 the young child slain. Then the infant rebuked the 
 ancient Demigod, who fled in anger to the sea, and 
 with his magic song he built a magic barque, and he 
 sat therein, and took the helm in his hand. The 
 tide bore him out to sea, and he lifted his voice and 
 sang: ‘Times go by, and suns shall rise and set, 
 and then shall men have need of me, and shall look 
 for the promise of my coming that I may make a 
 new sampo, and a new harp, and bring back sun- 
 light and moonshine, and the joy that is banished 
 from the world.’ Then he crossed the waters, and 
 gained the limits of the sea, and the lower spaces of 
 the sky. 
 
 Here the strange poem ends at its strangest 
 moment, with the cry, which must have been uttered 
 so often, but is heard here alone, of a people reluc- 
 tantly deserting the gods that it has fashioned in 
 its own likeness, for a faith that has not sprung from 
 its needs or fears. Yet it cherishes the hope that 
 this tyranny shall pass over : ‘ they are gods, and 
 behold they shall die, and the waves be upon them 
 at last.’ 
 
 As the ‘ Kalevala,’ and as all relics of folklore, 
 all Mdrchen and ballads prove, the lower mythology 
 — the elemental beliefs of the people — do survive be- 
 neath a thin covering of Christian conformity. There 
 are, in fact, in religion, as in society, two worlds, of 
 which the one does not know how the other lives. 
 
 N 
 
178 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 The class whose literature we inherit, under whose 
 institutions we live, at whose shrines we worship, has 
 changed as outworn raiment its manners, its gods, 
 its laws ; has looked before and after, has hoped and 
 forgotten, has advanced from the wilder and grosser 
 to the purest faith. Beneath the progressive class, 
 and beneath the waves of this troublesome world, 
 there exists an order whose primitive form of human 
 life has been far less changeful, a class which has 
 put on a mere semblance of new faiths, while half- 
 consciously retaining the remains of immemorial 
 cults. 
 
 Obviously, as M. Fauriel has pointed out in the 
 case of the modern Greeks, the life of such folk con- 
 tains no element of progress, admits no break in 
 continuity. Conquering armies pass and leave them 
 still reaping the harvest of field and river ; religions 
 appear, and they are baptised by thousands, but the 
 lower beliefs and dreads that the progressive class 
 has outgrown remain unchanged. 
 
 Thus, to take the instance of modern Greece, the 
 high gods of the divine race of Achilles and Aga- 
 memnon are forgotten, but the descendants of the 
 Penestae, the villeins of Thessaly, still dread the 
 beings of the popular creed, the Nereids, the Cyclopes, 
 and the Lamia. ^ 
 
 The last lesson we would attempt to gather from 
 the ‘ Kalevala ’ is this : that a comparison of the 
 thoroughly popular beliefs of all countries, the beliefs 
 
 ^ M. Schmidt, Volkslcbcn dcr Ncugricchcn, finds comparatively 
 few traces of the worship of Zeus, and these mainly in proverbial 
 expressions. 
 
THE ‘ KALEVALA.’ 
 
 179 
 
 cherished by the non-literary classes whose ballads 
 and fairy tales have only recently been collected, 
 would probably reveal a general identity, concealed 
 by diversity of name, among the ‘ lesser people of 
 the skies,’ the elves, fairies, Cyclopes, giants, nereids, 
 brownies, lamiae. It could then be shown that some 
 of these spirits survive among the lower beings of 
 the mythology of what the Germans call a cultur-volk 
 like the Greeks or Romans. It could also be proved 
 that much of the narrative element in the classic epics 
 is to be found in a popular or childish form in primitive 
 fairy tales. The question would then come to be. Have 
 the higher mythologies been developed, by artistic 
 poets, out of the materials of a race which remained 
 comparatively untouched by culture ; or are the lower 
 spirits, and the more simple and puerile forms of 
 myth, degradations of the inventions of a cultivated 
 class ? In the majority of cases, the former theory 
 is correct. 
 
 N 2 
 
i8o 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 THE DIVINING ROD, 
 
 There is something remarkable, and not flattering 
 to human sagacity, in the periodical resurrection of 
 superstitions. Houses, for example, go on being 
 ‘ haunted ’ in country districts, and no educated man 
 notices the circumstance. Then comes a case like 
 that of the Drummer of Tedworth, or the Cock Lane 
 Ghost, and society is deeply moved, philosophers 
 plunge into controversy, and he who grubs among 
 the dusty tracts of the past finds a world of fugitive 
 literature on forgotten bogies. Chairs move un- 
 touched by human hands, and tables walk about in 
 lonely castles of Savoy, and no one marks them, till 
 a day comes when the furniture of some American 
 cottage is similarly afflicted, and then a shoddy new 
 religion is based on the phenomenon. The latest 
 revival among old beliefs is faith in the divining rod. 
 ‘ Our liberal shepherds give it a shorter name,’ and 
 so do our conservative peasants, calling the ‘ rod of 
 Jacob ’ the ‘ twig.’ To ‘ work the twig ’ is rural Eng- 
 lish for the craft of Dousterswivel in the Antiquary, 
 and perhaps from this comes our slang expression 
 to ‘ twig,’ or divine, the hidden meaning of another. 
 Recent correspondence in the newspapers has proved 
 that, whatever may be the truth about the ‘ twig,’ 
 
THE DIVINING ROD. 
 
 l8l 
 
 belief in its powers is still very prevalent. Respect- 
 able people are not ashamed to bear signed witness 
 to its miraculous powers of detecting springs of water 
 and secret mines. It is habitually used by the miners 
 in the Mendips, as Mr. Woodward found ten years 
 ago ; and forked hazel divining rods from the Men- 
 dips are a recognised part of ethnological collections. 
 There are two ways of investigating the facts or 
 fancies about the rod. One is to examine it in its 
 actual operation — a task of considerable labour, 
 which will doubtless be undertaken by the Society 
 for Psychical Research ; the other, and easier, way is 
 to study the appearances of the divining wand in 
 history, and that is what we propose to do in this 
 article. 
 
 When a superstition or belief is widely spread in 
 Europe, as the faith in the divining rod certainly is 
 (in Germany rods are hidden under babies’ clothes 
 when they are baptised), we naturally expect to find 
 traces of it in ancient times and among savages all 
 over the modern world. We have already examined 
 in ‘The Bull-Roarer’ a very similar example. We 
 saw that there is a magical instrument — a small 
 fish-shaped piece of thin flat wood tied to a thong 
 — which, when whirled in the air, produces a strange 
 noise, a compound of roar and buzz. This instru- 
 ment is sacred among the natives of Australia, where 
 k is used to call together the men, and to frighten 
 away the women from the religious mysteries of the 
 males. The same instrument is employed for similar 
 purposes in New Mexico, and in South Africa and 
 New Zealand — parts of the world very widely distant 
 
i 82 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 from each other, and inhabited by very diverse races. 
 It has also been lately discovered that the Greeks used 
 this toy, which they called in the Mysteries 
 
 of Dionysus, and possibly it may be identical with 
 the inystica vannus lacchi (Virgil, Georgies, i. i66). 
 The conclusion drawn by the ethnologist is that 
 this object, called turndun by the Australians, is a 
 very early savage invention, probably discovered and 
 applied to religious purposes in various separate 
 centres, and retained from the age of savagery in 
 the mystic rites of Greeks and perhaps of Romans. 
 Well, do we find anything analogous in the case of 
 the divining rod ? 
 
 Future researches may increase our knowledge, 
 but at present little or nothing is known of the divining 
 rod in classical ages, and not very much (though that 
 little is significant) among uncivilised races. It is 
 true that in all countries rods or wands, the Latin 
 virga, have a magical power. Virgil obtained his 
 mediaeval repute as a wizard because his name was 
 erroneously connected with virgula, the magic wand. 
 But we do not actually know that the ancient wand 
 of the enchantress Circe, in Homer, or the wand of 
 Hermes, was used, like the divining rod, to indicate 
 the whereabouts of hidden wealth or water. In the 
 Homeric hymn to Hermes (line 529), Apollo thus 
 describes the cadneeus, or wand of Hermes: ‘There- 
 after will I give thee a lovely wand of wealth and 
 riches, a golden wand with three leaves, which shall 
 keep thee ever unharmed.’ In later art this wand, 
 or caduceus, is usually entwined with serpents ; but 
 on one vase, at least, the wand of Hermes is simply 
 
THE DIVINING KOI). 
 
 183 
 
 the forked twig of our rustic miners and water-hnders. 
 The same form is found on an engraved Etruscan 
 mirror.^ 
 
 Now, was a wand of this form used in classical 
 times to discover hidden objects of value ? That 
 wands were used by Scythians and Germans in 
 various methods of casting lots is certain ; but that 
 is not the same thing as the working of the twig. 
 Cicero speaks of a fabled wand by which wealth can 
 be procured ; but he says nothing of the method of 
 its use, and possibly was only thinking of the rod of 
 Hermes, as described in the Homeric hymn already 
 quoted. There was a Roman satura, by Varro, called 
 ‘Virgula Divina’ ; fragments remain, but throw no 
 light on the subject. A passage usually quoted from 
 Seneca has no more to do with the divining rod than 
 with the telephone. Pliny is a writer extremely fond 
 of marvels ; yet when he describes the various modes 
 of finding wells of water, he says nothing about the 
 divining wand. The isolated texts from Scripture 
 which are usually referred to clearly indicate wands 
 of a different sort, if we except Hosea iv. 12 , the 
 passage used as motto by the author of Lettres qui 
 decouvrent Villusion dcs Philosophes sur la Baguette 
 (i6g6). This text is translated in our Bible, ‘ My 
 people ask counsel at their stocks, and their staff 
 declareth unto them.' Now, we have here no reference 
 to the search for wells and minerals, but to a form of 
 divination for which the modern twig has ceased to 
 be applied. In rural England people use the wand 
 to find water, but not to give advice, or to detect 
 
 ^ Preller, Ausgcwdhlte Aufsatze, p. 154. 
 
184 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 thieves or murderers ; but, as we shall see, the rod 
 has been very much used for these purposes within 
 the last three centuries. 
 
 This brings us to the moral powers of the twig ; 
 and here we hnd some assistance in our inquiry from 
 the practices of uncivilised races. In 1719 John Bell 
 was travelling across Asia ; he fell in with a Russian 
 merchant, who told him of a custom common among 
 the Mongols. The Russian had lost certain pieces 
 of cloth, which were stolen out of his tent. The 
 Kutuchtu Lama ordered the proper steps to be 
 taken to find out the thief. ‘ One of the Lamas 
 took a bench with four feet, and after turning it in 
 several directions, at last it pointed directly to the tent 
 where the stolen goods were concealed. The Lama 
 now mounted across the bench, and soon carried it, or, 
 as was commonly believed, it carried him, to the very 
 tent, where he ordered the damask to be produced. 
 The demand was directly complied with ; for it is vain 
 in such cases to offer any excuse.’ ^ Here we have not 
 a wand, indeed, but a wooden object which turned in 
 the direction, not of water or minerals, but of human 
 guilt. A better instance is given by the Rev. H. 
 Rowley, in his account of the Mauganja.^ A thief 
 had stolen some corn. The medicine-man, or sorcerer, 
 produced two sticks, which he gave to four young 
 men, two holding each stick. The medicine-man 
 danced and sang a magical incantation, while a zebra- 
 tail and a rattle were shaken over the holders of the 
 
 ’ Tylor, Prim. Cult., ii. 156. Pinkerton, vii. 357. 
 
 2 Universities MissioJi to Central Africa, p. 217. Prim. Cult., ii. 
 
 156, 157- 
 
THE DIVINING ROD. 
 
 185 
 
 sticks. ‘ After a while, the men with the sticks had 
 spasmodic twitchings of the arms and legs ; these 
 increased nearly to convulsions. . . . According to 
 the native idea, it was the sticks which were possessed 
 primarily, and through them the men, who could hardly 
 hold them. The sticks whirled and dragged the men 
 round and round like mad, through bush and thorny 
 shrub, and over every obstacle ; nothing stopped 
 them ; their bodies were torn and bleeding. At last 
 they came back to the assembly, whirled round again, 
 and rushed down the path to fall panting and 
 exhausted in the hut of one of a chiefs wives. The 
 sticks, rolling to her very feet, denounced her as a 
 thief She denied it ; but the medicine-man answered, 
 “ The spirit has declared her guilty ; the spirit never 
 lies.” ’ The woman, however, was acquitted, after 
 a proxy trial by ordeal : a cock, used as her proxy, 
 threw up the mnavi, or ordeal-poison. 
 
 Here the points to be noted are, first, the violent 
 movement of the sticks, which the men could hardly 
 hold; next, the physical agitation of the men. The 
 former point is illustrated by the confession of a civil 
 engineer writing in the Times. This gentleman had 
 seen the rod successfully used for water ; he was asked 
 to try it himself, and he determined that it should not 
 twist in his hands ‘ if an ocean rolled under his feet.’ 
 Twist it did, however, in spite of all his efforts to hold 
 it, when he came above a concealed spring. Another 
 example is quoted in the Quarterly Review, vol. 
 xxii. p. 374. A narrator, in whom the editor ‘ had 
 implicit confidence,’ mentions how, when a lady held 
 the twig just over a hidden well, ‘the twig turned so 
 
CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 1 86 
 
 quick as to snap, breaking near her fingers.’ There 
 seems to be no indiscretion in saying, as the statement 
 has often been printed before, that the lady spoken 
 of in the Quarterly Review was Lady Milbanke, 
 mother of the wife of Byron. Dr. Hutton, the geolo- 
 gist, is quoted as a witness of her success in the search 
 for water with the divining rod. He says that, in an 
 experiment at Woolwich, ‘the twigs twisted them- 
 selves off below her fingers, which were considerably 
 indented by so forcibly holding the rods between 
 them.’ ^ Next, the violent excitement of the four 
 young men of the Mauganja is paralleled by the 
 physical experience of the lady quoted in the Quar- 
 terly Review. ‘ A degree of agitation was visible 
 in her face when she first made the experiment ; she 
 says this agitation was great ’ when she began to 
 practise the art, or whatever we are to call it. Again, 
 in Lettres qui decouvrent rUlusion (p. 93), we read 
 that Jacques Aymar (who discovered the Lyons 
 murderer in 1692) se sent tout emu — feels greatly 
 agitated — when he comes on that of which he is in 
 search. On page 97 of the same volume, the body 
 of the man who holds the divining rod is described 
 as ‘ violently agitated.’ When Aymar entered the 
 room where the murder, to be described later, was 
 committed, ‘ his pulse rose as if he were in a burning 
 fever, and the wand turned rapidly in his hands ’ 
 {Lettres, p. 107). But the most singular parallel to 
 the performance of the African wizard must be quoted 
 from a curious pamphlet already referred to, a trans- 
 
 ^ Quoted in Jacob's Rod : London, n.d., a translation of La 
 Verge de Jacob, Lyon, 1693. 
 
THE DIVINING ROD. 
 
 187 
 
 lation of the old French Verge de Jacob, written, 
 annotated, and published by a Mr. Thomas Welton. 
 Mr. Welton seems to have been a believer in mes- 
 merism, animal magnetism, and similar doctrines, but 
 the coincidence of his story with that of the African 
 sorcerer is none the less remarkable. It is a coincid- 
 ence which must almost certainly be ‘ undesigned.’ 
 Mr. Welton’s wife was what modern occult philo- 
 sophers call a ‘ Sensitive.’ In 1851, he wished her to 
 try an experiment with the rod in a garden, and sent 
 a maid-servant to bring ‘ a certain stick that stood 
 behind the parlour door. In great terror she brought 
 it to the garden, her hand firmly clutched on the 
 stick, nor could she let it go. . . .’ The stick was 
 given to Mrs. Welton, ‘ and it drew her with very con- 
 siderable force to nearly the centre of the garden, to 
 a bed of poppies, where she stopped.’ Here water 
 was found, and the gardener, who had given up his 
 lease as there was no well in the garden, had the lease 
 renewed. 
 
 We began by giving evidence to show (and much 
 more might be adduced) that the belief in the divining 
 rod, or in analogous instruments, is not confined to the 
 European races. The superstition, or whatever we 
 are to call it, produces the same effects of physical 
 agitation, and the use of the rod is accompanied with 
 similar phenomena among Mongols, English people, 
 Frenchmen, and the natives of Central Africa. The 
 same coincidences are found in almOvSt all superstitious 
 practices, and in the effects of these practices on 
 believers. The Chinese use a form of planchette, 
 which is half a divining rod — a branch of the peach 
 
i88 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 tree; and ‘ spiritualism ’ is more than three-quarters of 
 the religion of most savage tribes, a Maori seance being 
 more impressive than anything the civilised Sludge 
 can offer his credulous patrons. From these facts 
 different people draw different inferences. Believers 
 say that the wide distribution of their favourite 
 mysteries is a proof that ‘there is something in them.’ 
 The incredulous look on our modern ‘ twigs ’ and 
 turning-tables and ghost stories as mere ‘ survivals ’ 
 from the stage of savage culture, or want of culture, 
 when the fancy of half-starved man was active and 
 his reason uncritical. 
 
 The great authority for the modern history of the 
 divining rod is a work published by M. Chevreuil, 
 in Paris, in 1854. Chevreuil, probably with truth, 
 regarded the wand as much on a par with the turning- 
 tables, which, in 1854, attracted a good deal of atten- 
 tion. He studied the topic historically, and his book, 
 with a few accessible French tracts and letters of the 
 seventeenth century, must here be our guide. A 
 good deal of M. Chevreuil’s learning, it should be 
 said, is reproduced in Mr. Baring Gould’s Curious 
 Myths of the Middle Ages, but the French author 
 is much more exhaustive in his treatment of the 
 topic. M. Chevreuil could find no earlier book on 
 the twig than the Testament du Frere Basil Valentin, 
 a holy man who flourished (the twig) about 1413 ; 
 but whose treatise is possibly apocryphal. According 
 to Basil Valentin, the twig was regarded with awe 
 by ignorant labouring men, which is still true. Para- 
 celsus, though he has a reputation for magical daring, 
 thought the use of the twig ‘ uncertain and unlawfuF; 
 
THE DIVINING ROD. 
 
 i8g 
 
 and A^ricola, in his Dc Re Metallica (1546), expresses 
 a good deal of scepticism about the use of the rod in 
 mining. A traveller of 1554 found that the wand 
 was not used — and this seems to have surprised 
 him — in the mines of Macedonia. Most of the 
 writers of the sixteenth century accounted for the 
 turning of the rod by ‘ sympathy,’ which was then as 
 favourite an explanation of everything as evolution 
 is to-day. In 1630 the Baron de Beau Soleil of 
 Bohemia (his name sounds rather Bohemian) came 
 to France with his wife, and made much use of the 
 rod in the search for water and minerals. The 
 Baroness wrote a little volume on the subject, after- 
 wards reprinted in a great storehouse of this lore. 
 La Physique Occulte, of Vallemont. Kircher, a Jesuit, 
 made experiments which came to nothing ; but Gas- 
 pard Schott, a learned writer, cautiously declined to 
 say that the Devil was always ‘ at the bottom of it ’ 
 when the rod turned successfully. The problem of 
 the rod was placed before our own Royal Society 
 by Boyle, in 1666, but the Society was not more 
 successful here than in dealing with the philoso- 
 phical difficulty proposed by Charles II. In 1679 
 De Saint Remain, deserting the old hypothesis of 
 secret ‘ sympathies,’ explained the motion of the rod 
 (supposing it to move) by the action of corpuscules. 
 From this time the question became the playing 
 ground of the Cartesian and other philosophers. 
 The struggle was between theories of ‘ atoms,’ 
 magnetism, ‘corpuscules,’ electric effluvia, and so forth, 
 on one side, and the immediate action of devils or of 
 conscious imposture, on the other. The controversy, 
 
igo 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 comparatively simple as lon^ as the rod only in- 
 dicated hidden water or minerals, was complicated 
 by the revival of the savage belief that the wand 
 could ‘ smell out ’ moral offences. As long as the 
 twig turned over material objects, you could imagine 
 sympathies and ‘ effluvia ’ at pleasure. But when the 
 wand twirled over the scene of a murder, or dragged 
 the expert after the traces of the culprit, fresh explana- 
 tions were wanted. Le Brun wrote to Malebranche 
 on July 8, i68g, to tell him that the wand only 
 turned over what the holder had the intention of 
 discovering.^ If he were following a murderer, the 
 wand good-naturedly refused to distract him by turn- 
 ing over hidden water. On the other hand, Vallemont 
 says that when a peasant was using the wand to find 
 water, it turned over a spot in a wood where a mur- 
 dered woman was buried, and it conducted the peasant 
 to the murderer’s house. These events seem incon- 
 sistent with Le Brun’s theory of intention. Male- 
 branche replied, in effect, that he had only heard of 
 the turning of the wand over water and minerals ; 
 that it then turned (if turn it did) by virtue of some 
 such force as electricity ; that, if such force existed, 
 the wand would turn over open water. But it does 
 not so turn ; and, as physical causes are constant, 
 it follows that the turning of the rod cannot be the 
 result of a physical cause. The only other explana- 
 tion is an intelligent cause — either the will of an 
 impostor, or the action of a spirit. Good spirits 
 would not meddle with such matters; therefore either 
 the Devil or an impostor causes the motion of the rod, 
 
 ^ Lettres siir la Baguette, pp. 106-112. 
 
THE DIVINING ROD. 
 
 igi 
 
 if it does move at all. This lo^ic of Malebranche’s is 
 not agreeable to believers in the twig ; but there the 
 controversy stood, till, in 1692, Jacques Aymar, a 
 peasant of Dauphine, by the use of the twig dis- 
 covered one of the Lyons murderers. 
 
 Though the story of this singular event is pretty 
 well known, it must here be briefly repeated. No 
 affair can be better authenticated, and our version is 
 abridged from the ‘ Relations ’ of ‘ Monsieur le Pro- 
 cureur du Roi, Monsieur I’Abbe de la Garde, 
 Monsieur Panthot, Doyen des Medecins de Lyon, 
 et Monsieur Aubert, Avocat celebre.’ 
 
 On July 5, 1692, a vintner and his wife were 
 found dead in the cellar of their shop at Lyons. 
 They had been killed by blows from a hedging-knife, 
 and their money had been stolen. The culprits 
 could not be discovered, and a neighbour took upon 
 him to bring to Lyons a peasant out of Dauphine, 
 named Jacques Aymar, a man noted for his skill 
 with the divining rod. The Lieutenant-Criminel and 
 the Procureur du Roi took Aymar into the cellar, 
 furnishing him with a rod of the first wood that 
 came to hand. According to the Procureur du Roi, 
 the rod did not move till Aymar reached the very 
 spot where the crime had been committed. His 
 pulse then rose, and the wand twisted rapidly. 
 
 ‘ Guided by the wand or by some internal sensation,’ 
 Aymar now pursued the track of the assassins, 
 entered the court of the Archbishop’s palace, left the 
 town by the bridge over the Rhone, and followed 
 the right bank of the river. He reached a gardener’s 
 house, which he declared the men had entered, and 
 
IQ2 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 some children confessed that three men {whom they 
 described) had come into the house one Sunday 
 morning. Aymar followed the track up the river, 
 pointed out all the places where the men had 
 landed, and, to make a long story short, stopped at 
 last at the door of the prison of Beaucaire. He was 
 admitted, looked at the prisoners, and picked out as 
 the murderer a little hunchback (had the children 
 described a hunchback?) who had just been brought 
 in for a small theft. The hunchback was taken to 
 Lyons, and he was recognised, on the way, by the 
 people at all the stages where he had stopped. At 
 Lyons he .was examined in the usual manner, and 
 confessed that he had been an accomplice in the 
 crime, and had guarded the door. Aymar pursued 
 the other culprits to the coast, followed them by sea, 
 landed where they had landed, and only desisted 
 from his search when they crossed the frontier. As 
 for the hunchback, he was broken on the wheel, 
 being condemned on his own confession. It does 
 not appear that he was put to the torture to make 
 him confess. If this had been done his admissions 
 would, of course, have been as valueless as those of 
 the victims in trials for witchcraft. 
 
 This is, in brief, the history of the famous Lyons 
 murders. It must be added that many experiments 
 were made with Aymar in Paris, and that they were all 
 failures. He fell into every trap that was set for him ; 
 detected thieves who were innocent, failed to detect 
 the guilty, and invented absurd excuses ; alleging, for 
 example, that the rod would not indicate a murderer 
 who had confessed, or who was drunk when he com- 
 
THE DIVINING ROD. 
 
 193 
 
 mitted his crime. These excuses seem to annihilate 
 the wild contemporary theory of Chauvin and others, 
 that the body of a murderer naturally exhales an 
 invisible mature meurtriere — peculiar indestructible 
 atoms, which may be detected by the expert with the 
 rod. Something like the same theory, we believe, 
 has been used to explain the pretended phenomena 
 of haunted houses. But the wildest philosophical 
 credulity is staggered by a mature meurtriere which 
 is disengaged by the body of a sober, but not by that 
 of an intoxicated, murderer, which survives tempests 
 in the air, and endures for many years, but is dissi- 
 pated the moment the murderer confesses. Believers 
 in Aymar have conjectured that his real powers were 
 destroyed by the excitements of Paris, and that he 
 took to imposture ; but this is an effort of too easy 
 good-nature. When Vallemont defended Aymar 
 (1693) in the book called La Physique Occulte, he 
 declared that Aymar was physically affected to an 
 unpleasant extent by mature meurtriere, but was not 
 thus agitated when he used the rod to discover 
 minerals. We have seen that, if modern evidence 
 can be trusted, holders of the rod are occasionally 
 much agitated even when they are only in search of 
 wells. The story gave rise to a prolonged contro- 
 versy, and the case remains a judicial puzzle, but little 
 elucidated by the confession of the hunchback, who 
 may have been insane, or morbid, or vexed con- 
 stant questioning till he was weary of his life. He was 
 only nineteen years of age. 
 
 The next use of the rod was very much like that 
 
 o 
 

 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 of ‘ tipping ’ and turning tables. Experts held it (as 
 did Le Pere Menestrier, 1694), questions were asked, 
 and the wand answered by turning in various direc- 
 tions. By way of showing the inconsistency of all 
 philosophies of the wand, it may be said that one 
 girl found that it turned over concealed gold if she held 
 gold in her hand, while another found that it indicated 
 the metal so long as she did not carry gold with her 
 in the quest. In the search for water, ecclesiastics 
 were particularly fond of using the rod. The Mare- 
 chal de Boufflers dug many wells, and found no 
 water, on the indications of a rod in the hands of the 
 Prieur de Dorenic, near Guise. In 1700 a cure, near 
 Toulouse, used the wand to answer questions, which, 
 like planchette, it often answered wrong. The great 
 sourcier, or water-finder, of the eighteenth century 
 was one Bleton. He declared that the rod was a 
 mere index, and that physical sensations of the 
 searcher communicated themselves to the wand. 
 This is the reverse of the African theory, that the 
 stick is inspired, while the men who hold it are only 
 influenced by the stick. On the whole, Bleton’s idea 
 seems the less absurd, but Bleton himself often failed 
 when watched with scientific care by the in'credulous. 
 Paramelle, who wrote on methods of discovering 
 wells, in 1856, came to the conclusion that the wand 
 turns in the hands of certain individuals of peculiar 
 temperament, and that it is very much a matter of 
 chance whether there are, or are not, wells in the 
 places where it turns. 
 
 On the whole, the evidence for the turning of the 
 
THE DIVINING ROD. 
 
 195 
 
 wand is a shade better than that for the magical 
 turning of tables. If there are no phenomena of this 
 sort at all, it is remarkable that the belief in them is 
 so widely diffused. But if the phenomena are purely 
 subjective, owing to the conscious or unconscious 
 action of nervous patients, then they are precisely of 
 the sort which the cunning medicine-man observes, 
 and makes his profit out of, even in the earliest 
 stages of society. Once introduced, these practices 
 never die out among the conservative and unprogres- 
 sive class of peasants ; and, every now and then, they 
 attract the curiosity of philosophers, or win the belief 
 of the credulous among the educated classes. Then 
 comes, as we have lately seen, a revival of ancient 
 superstition. For it were as easy to pluck the comet 
 out of the sky by the tail, as to eradicate superstition 
 from the mind of man. 
 
 Perhaps one good word may be said for the 
 divining rod. Considering the chances it has enjoyed, 
 the rod has done less mischief than might have been 
 expected. It might very well have become, in Europe, 
 as in Asia and Africa, a kind of ordeal, or method 
 of searching for and trying malefactors. Men like 
 Jacques Aymar might have played, on a larger scale, 
 the part of Hopkins, the witch-finder. Aymar was, 
 indeed, employed by some young men to point out, 
 by help of the wand, the houses of ladies who had 
 been more frail than faithful. But at the end of the 
 seventeenth century in France, this research was not 
 regarded with favour, and put the final touch on 
 the discomfiture of Aymar. So far as we know. 
 
 o 2 
 
196 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 the hunchback of Lyons was the only victim of the 
 ‘ twig ’ who ever suffered in civilised society. It is 
 true that, in rural England, the movements of a 
 Bible, suspended like a pendulum, have been thought 
 to point out the guilty. But even that evidence is 
 not held good enough to go to a jury. 
 
197 
 
 HOTTENTOT MYTHOLOGY. 
 
 ‘ What makes mythology mythological, in the true 
 sense of the word, is what is utterly unintelligible, 
 absurd, strange, or miraculous.’ So says Mr. Max 
 Muller in the January number of the Nineteenth 
 Century for 1882. Men’s attention would never have 
 been surprised into the perpetual study and question- 
 ing of mythology if it had been intelligible and 
 dignified, and if its report had been in accordance 
 with the reason of civilised and cultivated races. 
 What mythologists wish to discover is the origin of 
 the countless disgusting, amazing, and incongruous 
 legends which occur in the myths of all known 
 peoples. According to Mr. Muller — 
 
 There are only two systems possible in which the irra- 
 tional element in mythology can be accounted for. One 
 school takes the irrational as a matter of fact ; and if we 
 read that Daphne fled from Phoebus, and was changed 
 into a laurel tree, that school would say that there probably 
 was a young lady called Aurora, like, for instance, Aurora 
 Kdnigsmark ; that a young man called Robin, or possibly a 
 man with red hair, pursued her, and that she hid behind a 
 laurel tree that happened to be there. This was the theory 
 of Euhemeros, re-established by the famous Abbe Bernier 
 [Mr. Muller doubtless means Banier] , and not quite extinct 
 even now. According to another school, the irrational 
 
ig8 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 element in mythology is inevitable, and due to the influence 
 of language on thought, so that many of the legends of gods 
 and heroes may be rendered intelligible if only we can dis- 
 cover the original meaning of their proper names. The 
 followers of this school try to show that Daphne, the laurel 
 tree, was an old name for the dawn, and that Phoibos was 
 one of the many names of the sun, who pursued the dawn 
 till she vanished before his rays. Of these two schools, the 
 former has alw^ays appealed to the mythologies of savage 
 nations, as showing that gods and heroes were originally 
 human beings, worshipped after their death as ancestors and 
 as gods, while the latter has confined itself chiefly to an 
 etymological analysis of mythological names in Greek, 
 Latin, and Sanskrit, and other languages, such as had been 
 sufficiently studied to admit of a scientific, grammatical, and 
 etymological treatment. 
 
 This is a long text for our remarks on Hottentot 
 mythology ; but it is necessary to prove that there 
 are not two schools only of mythologists : that there 
 are inquirers who neither follow the path of Abbe 
 Banier, nor of the philologists, but a third way, un- 
 known to, or ignored by Mr. Muller. We certainly 
 were quite unaware that Banier and Euhemeros were 
 very specially concerned, as Mr. Muller thinks, with 
 savage mythology ; but it is by aid of savage myths 
 that the school unknown to Mr. Muller examines the 
 myths of civilised people like the Greeks. The 
 disciples of Mr. Muller interpret all the absurdities of 
 Greek myth, the gods who are beasts on occasion, 
 the stars who were men, the men who become serpents 
 or deer, the deities who are cannibals and parricides 
 and adulterers, as the result of the influence of Aryan 
 speech upon Aryan thought. Men, in Mr. Muller’s 
 
HOTTENTOT MYTHOLOGY. 
 
 igg 
 
 opinion, had originally pure ideas about the gods, and 
 expressed them in language which we should call 
 figurative. The figures remained, when their meaning 
 was lost ; the names were then supposed to be gods, 
 the 7iomina became numina, 3.nd out of the inextricable 
 confusion of thought which followed, the belief in 
 cannibal, bestial, adulterous, and incestuous gods was 
 evolved. That is Mr. Muller’s hypothesis ; with him . 
 the evolution, a result of a disease of language, has 
 been from early comparative purity to later religious 
 abominations. Opposed to him is what may be called 
 the school of Mr. Herbert Spencer : the modern Euhe- 
 merism, which recognises an element of historical truth 
 in myths, as if the characters had been real characters, 
 and which, in most gods, beholds ancestral ghosts 
 raised to a higher power. 
 
 There remains a third system of mythical inter- 
 pretation, though Mr. Muller says only two methods 
 are possible. The method, in this third case, is to see 
 whether the irrational features and elements of civilised 
 Greek myth occur also in the myths of savages who 
 speak languages quite unlike those from whose dis- 
 eases Mr. Muller derives the corruption of religion. 
 
 If the same features recur, are they as much in 
 harmony with the mental habits of savages, such as 
 Bushmen and Hottentots, as they are out of accord 
 with the mental habits of civilised Greeks ? If this 
 question can be answered in the affirmative, then it 
 may be provisionally assumed that the irrational 
 elements of savage myth are the legacy of savage 
 modes of thought, and have survived in the religion 
 of Greece from a time when the ancestors of the 
 
200 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 Greeks were savages. But inquirers who use this 
 method do not in the least believe that either Greek 
 or savage gods were, for the more part, originally real 
 men. Both Greeks and savages have worshipped 
 the ghosts of the dead. Both Greeks and savages 
 assign to their gods the miraculous power of trans- 
 formation and magic, which savages also attribute to 
 their conjurers or shamans. The mantle (if he had a 
 mantle) of the medicine-man has fallen on the god ; 
 but Zeus, or Indra, was not once a real medicine-man. 
 A number of factors combine in the conception of 
 Indra, or Zeus, as either god appears in Sanskrit or 
 Greek literature, of earlier or later date. Our school 
 does not hold anything so absurd as that Daphne 
 was a real girl pursued by a young man. But it 
 has been observed that, among most savage races, 
 metamorphoses like that of Daphne not only exist in 
 mythology, but are believed to occur very frequently 
 in actual life. Men and women are supposed to be 
 capable of turning into plants (as the bamboo in 
 Sarawak), into animals, and stones, and stars, and 
 those metamorphoses happen as contemporary events 
 — for example, in Samoa. ^ 
 
 When Mr. Lane was living at Cairo, and trans- 
 lating the A rabian Nights, he found that the people 
 still believed in metamorphosis. Any day, just as in 
 the Arabian Nights, a man might hnd himself turned 
 by an enchanter into a pig or a horse. Similar 
 beliefs, not derived from language, supply the matter 
 of the senseless incidents in Greek myths. 
 
 Savage mythology is also full of metamorphoses. 
 
 1 Turner’s Samoa, pp. 77, 119. 
 
HOTTENTOT MYTHOLOGY. 
 
 201 
 
 Therefore the mytholo^ists whose case we are stating, 
 when they hnd identical metamorphoses in the 
 classical mythologies, conjecture that these were first 
 invented when the ancestors of the Aryans were in 
 the imaginative condition in which a score of rude 
 races are to-day. This explanation they apply to 
 many other irrational elements in mythology. They 
 do not say ‘ Something like the events narrated in 
 these stories once occurred,’ nor ‘ A disease of lan- 
 guage caused the belief in such events,’ but ‘ These 
 stories were invented when men were capable of 
 believing in their occurrence as a not unusual sort of 
 incident.’ 
 
 Philologists attempt to explain the metamor- 
 phoses as the result of some oblivion and confusion 
 of language. Apollo, they say, was called the ‘ wolf- 
 god ’ (Lukeios) by accident : his name really meant 
 the ‘ god of light.’ A similar confusion made the 
 ‘seven shiners’ into the ‘seven bears.’ These ex- 
 •planations are distrusted, partly because the area to 
 be covered by them is so vast. There is scarcely a 
 star, tree, or beast, but it has been a man or woman 
 once, if we believe civilised and savage myth. Two or 
 three possible examples of myths originating in forget- 
 fulness of the meaning of words, even if admitted, do 
 not explain the incalculable crowd of metamorphoses. 
 We account for these by saying that, to the savage 
 mind, which draws no hard and fast line between man 
 and nature, all such things are possible ; possible 
 enough, at least, to be used as incidents in story. 
 Again, as has elsewhere been shown, the laxity of 
 philological reasoning is often quite extraordinary ; 
 
202 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 while, lastly, philologists of the highest repute Ifatly 
 contradict each other about the meaning of the names 
 and roots on which they agree in founding their theory.^ 
 
 By way of an example of the philological method 
 as applied to savage mythology, we choose a book 
 in many ways admirable. Dr. Hahn’s Tsuni Goam, 
 the Supreme Being of the Khoi Khoi.'^ This book 
 is sometimes appealed to as a crushing argument 
 against the mythologists who adopt the method 
 we have just explained. Let us see if the blow be 
 so very crushing. To put the case in a nutshell, the 
 Hottentots have commonly been described as a race 
 which worshipped a dead chief, or conjurer — Tsui 
 Goab his name is, meaning Wounded Knee, a not 
 unlikely name for a savage. Dr. Hahn, on the other 
 hand, labours to show that the Hottentots originally 
 worshipped no dead chief, but (as a symbol of the 
 Infinite) the Red Dawn. The meaning of the name 
 Red Dawn, he says, was lost ; the words which meant 
 Red Dawn were erroneously supposed to mean 
 Wounded Knee, and thus arose the adoration and 
 the myths of a dead chief, or wizard, Tsui Goab, 
 Wounded Knee. Clearly, if this can be proved, it 
 is an excellent case for the philological school, an 
 admirable example of a myth produced by forgetful- 
 ness of the meaning of words. Our own opinion is 
 that, even if Tsui Goab originally meant Red Dawn, 
 the being, as now conceived of by his adorers, is 
 bedizened in the trappings of the dead medicine-man, 
 and is worshipped just as ghosts of the dead are 
 
 ^ See examples in ‘A Far-travelled Tale,’ ‘ Cupid and Psyche,’ and 
 ‘ The Myth of Cronus.’ -Trubner, i88i. 
 
HOTTENTOT MYTHOLOGY. 
 
 203 
 
 worshipped. Thus, whatever his origin, his myth is 
 freely coloured by the savage fancy and by savage 
 ideas, and we ask no more than this colouring to 
 explain the wildest Greek myths. What truly ‘ primi- 
 tive ’ religion was, we make no pretence to know. 
 We only say that, whether Greek religion arose from 
 a pure fountain or not, its stream had flowed through 
 and been tinged by the soil of savage thought, before 
 it widens into our view in historical times. But it 
 will be shown that the logic which connects Tsui 
 Goab with the Red Dawn is far indeed from being 
 cogent. 
 
 Tsui Goab is thought by the Hottentots them- 
 selves to be a dead man, and it is admitted that 
 among the Hottentots dead men are adored. ‘Cairns 
 are still objects of worship,’ ^ and Tsui Goab lies be- 
 neath several cairns. Again, soothsayers are believed 
 in (p. 24), and Tsui Goab is regarded as a deceased 
 soothsayer. As early as 1655, a witness quoted by 
 Hahn saw women worshipping at one of the cairns 
 of Heitsi Eibib, another supposed ancestral being. 
 Kolb, the old Dutch traveller, found that the Hotten- 
 tots, like the Bushmen, revered the mantis insect. 
 This creature they called Gaunab. They also had 
 some moon myths, practised adoration of the moon, 
 and danced at dawn. Thunberg (1792) saw the 
 cairn-worship, and, on asking its meaning, was told 
 that a Hottentot lay buried there.^ Thunberg also 
 heard of the worship of the mantis, or grey grass- 
 hopper. In 1803 Liechtenstein noted the cairn- 
 worship, and was told that a renowned Hottentot 
 
 ^ Hahn, p. 23. “ Ibid,, p. 45. 
 
204 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 doctor of old times rested under the cairn. Apple- 
 yard’s account of ‘ the name God in Khoi Khoi, or 
 Hottentot,’ deserves quoting in full : — 
 
 Hottentot : Tsoei’koap. 
 
 Namaqua : Tsoei’koap. 
 
 Koranna : Tshu’koab, and the author adds : ‘ This is 
 the word from which the Kafirs have probably derived 
 their u-Tixo, a term which they have universally applied, 
 like the Hottentots, to designate the Divine Being, since 
 the introduction of Christianity. Its derivation is curious. 
 It consists of two words, which together mean the “ wounded 
 knee.” It is said to have been originally applied to a doctor 
 or sorcerer of considerable notoriety and skill amongst the 
 Hottentots or Namaquas some generations back, in con- 
 sequence of his having received some injury in his knee. 
 Having been held in high repute for extraordinary powers 
 during life, he appeared to be invoked even after death, as 
 one who could still relieve and protect ; and hence, in 
 process of time, he became nearest in idea to their first 
 conceptions of God.’ 
 
 Other missionaries make old Wounded Knee a 
 good sort of being on the whole, who fights Gaunab, 
 a bad being. Dr. Moffat heard that ‘ Tsui Kuap ’ 
 was ‘a notable warrior,’ who once received a wound 
 in the knee. Sir James Alexander^ found that the 
 Namaquas believed their ‘great father’ lay below the 
 cairns on which they Bung boughs. This great father 
 was Heitsi Eibib, and, like other medicine-men, ‘he 
 could take many forms.’ Like Tsui Goab, he died 
 several times and rose again. Hahn gives (p. 6i) a 
 long account of the Wounded Knee from an old 
 chief, and a story of the battle between Tsui Goab, 
 
 ^Expedition, i. 166. 
 
HOTTENTOT MYTHOLOGY. 
 
 205 
 
 who ‘ lives in a beautiful heaven,’ and Gaunab, who 
 ‘ lives in a dark heaven.’ As this chief had dwelt 
 among missionaries very long, we may perhaps dis- 
 count his remarks on ‘ heaven ’ as borrowed. Hahn 
 thinks they refer to the red sky in which Tsui 
 Goab lived, and to the black sky which was the 
 home of Gaunab. The two characters in this crude 
 religious dualism thus inhabit light and darkness 
 respectively. 
 
 As far as we have gone, Tsui Goab, like Heitsi 
 Eibib among the Namas, is a dead sorcerer, whose 
 graves are worshipped, while, with a common in- 
 consistency, he is also thought of as dwelling in the 
 sky. Even Christians often speak of the dead with 
 similar inconsistency. Tsui Goab’s worship is intelli- 
 gible enough among a people so credulous that they 
 took Hahn himself for a conjurer (p. 81), and so 
 given to ancestor- worship that Hahn has seen them 
 worship their own fathers’ graves, and expect help 
 from men recently dead (pp. 112, 113). But, while 
 the Khoi Khoi think that Tsui Goab was once a real 
 man, we need not share their Euhemerism. More 
 probably, like Unkulunkulu among the Zulus, Tsui 
 Goab is an ideal, imaginary ancestral sorcerer and 
 god. No one man requires many graves, and Tsui 
 Goab has more than Osiris possessed in Egypt. 
 
 If the Egyptians in some immeasurably distant 
 past were once on the level of Namas and Hottentots, 
 they would worship Osiris at as many barrows as 
 Heitsi Eibib and Tsui Goab are adored. In later 
 times the numerous graves of one being would 
 
2o6 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 require explanation, and explanations would be fur- 
 nished by the myth that the body of Osiris was 
 torn to pieces and each fragment buried in a separate 
 tomb. 
 
 Again, lame gods occur in Greek, Australian, and 
 Brazilian creeds, and the very coincidence of Tsui 
 Goab’s lameness makes us sceptical about his claims 
 to be a real dead man. On the other hand, when 
 Hahn tells us that epical myths are now sung in the 
 dances in honour of warriors lately slain (p. 103), and 
 that similar dances and songs were performed in the 
 past to honour Tsui Goab, this looks more as if Tsui 
 Goab had been an actual person. Against this we 
 must set (p. 105) the belief that Tsui Goab made the 
 first man and woman, and was the Prometheus of the 
 Hottentots. 
 
 So far Dr. Hahn has given us facts which entirely 
 fit in with our theory that an ancestor-worshipping 
 people, believing in metamorphosis and sorcery, 
 adores a god who is supposed to be a deceased 
 ancestral sorcerer with the power of magic and 
 metamorphosis. But now Dr. Hahn offers his own 
 explanation. According to the philological method, 
 he will ‘ study the names of the persons, until we 
 arrive at the naked root and original meanings of the 
 words.’ Starting then with Tsui Goab, whom all 
 evidence declares to be -a dead lame conjurer and 
 warrior. Dr. Hahn avers that ‘ Tsui Goab, originally 
 Tsuni Goam, was the name by which the Red Men 
 called the Infinite.’ As the PTenchman said of the 
 derivation of jour from dies, we may hint that the 
 
HOTTENTOT MYTHOLOGY. 
 
 207 
 
 Infinite thus transformed into a lame Hottentot ‘ bush- 
 doctor ’ is diablcmmt change on route. To a dead 
 lame sorcerer from the Infinite is a fall indeed. The 
 process of the decline is thus described. Tsid Goab 
 is composed of two roots, tsu and goa. Goa means 
 ‘ to go on,’ Ho come on.’ In Khoi Khoi go a-b means 
 ‘ the coming on one,’ the dawn, and goa-b also means 
 ‘ the knee.’ Dr. Hahn next writes (making a logical 
 leap of extraordinary width), ‘ It is now obvious that 
 / / goab in Tsui Goab cannot be translated with knee,’ 
 — why not ? — ‘ but we have to adopt the other meta- 
 phorical meaning, the approaching day, i.c., the dawn.’ 
 Where is the necessity? In ordinary philology, we 
 should here demand a number of attested examples 
 of goab, in the sense of dawn, but in Khoi Khoi we 
 cannot expect such evidence, as there are probably no 
 texts. Next, after arbitrarily deciding that all Khoi 
 Khois misunderstand their own tongue (for that is 
 what the rendering here of goab by ‘ dawn ’ comes to), 
 Dr. Hahn examines tsu, in Tsui. Tsu means ‘sore,’ 
 ‘wounded,’ ‘painful,’ as in ‘wounded knee’ — Tsui 
 Goab. This does not help Dr. Hahn, for ‘ wounded 
 dawn ’ means nothing. But he reflects that a wound 
 is red, tsu means wounded : therefore tsu means red, 
 therefore Tsui Goab is the Red Dawn. Q.E.D.^ 
 
 This kind of reasoning is obviously fallacious. 
 Dr. Hahn’s point could only be made by bringing 
 forward examples in which tsu is employed to mean 
 red in Khoi Khoi. Of this use of the word tsu he 
 does not give one single instance, and, in fact, does 
 
 ^ Dr. Hahn (p. 27) gives (ava, or jana, as Hottentot for ‘red,’ 
 derived from jau, ‘ to bleed.’ 
 
2o8 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 give another word for ‘ red,’ or ‘ bloody.’ His etymo- 
 logy is not strengthened by the fact that Tsui Goab 
 has once been said to live in the red sky. A red 
 house is not necessarily tenanted by a red man. 
 Still less is the theory supported by the hymn which 
 says Tsui Goab paints himself with red ochre. Most 
 idols, from those of the Samoyeds to the Greek 
 images of Dionysus, are and have been daubed with 
 red.^ By such reasoning is Tsui Goab proved to be 
 the Red Dawn, while his gifts of prophecy (which 
 he shares with all soothsayers) are accounted for as 
 attributes of dawn, of the Vedic Saranyu. 
 
 Turning from Tsui Goab to his old enemy Gaunab, 
 we learn that his name is derived from / / gau, ‘ to 
 destroy,’ and, according to old Hottentot ideas, ‘ no 
 one was the destroyer but the night ’ (p. 126). There 
 is no apparent reason why the destroyer should be 
 the night, and the night alone, any more than why 
 ‘a lame broken knee’ should be ‘red’ (p. 126). 
 Besides (p. 85), Gaunab is elsewhere explained, not as 
 the night, but as the malevolent ghost which is thought 
 to kill people who die what we call a ‘ natural ’ death. 
 Unburied men change into this sort of vampire, just 
 as Elpenor, in the Odyssey, threatens, if unburied, to 
 become mischievous. There is another Gaunab, the 
 mantis insect, which is worshipped by Hottentots and 
 Bushmen (p. 92). It appears that the two Gaunabs 
 are differently pronounced. However that may be, a 
 race which worships an insect might well worship a 
 dead medicine-man. 
 
 ^ Hahn himself (p. gi) mentions a Hottentot god dauhed with red 
 earth, and noticed as long ago as i6gi. 
 
HOTTENTOT MYTHOLOGY. 
 
 209 
 
 The conclusion, then, to be drawn from an exa- 
 mination of Hottentot mythology is merely this, that 
 the ideas of a people will be reflected in their myths. 
 A people which worships the dead, believes in sorcerers 
 and in prophets, and in metamorphosis, will have for 
 its god (if he can be called a god) a being who is 
 looked on as a dead prophet and sorcerer. He will 
 be worshipped with such rites as dead men receive ; 
 he will be mixed up in such battles as living men 
 wage, and will be credited with the skill which 
 living sorcerers claim. All these things meet in the 
 legend of Tsui Goab, the ‘so-called supreme being’ 
 of the Hottentots. His connection with the dawn is 
 not supported by convincing argument or evidence. 
 The relation of the dawn to the Infinite again rests 
 on nothing but a theory of Mr. Max Muller’s.^ His 
 adversary, though recognised as the night, is else- 
 where admitted to have been, originally, a common 
 vampire. Finally, the Hottentots, a people not much 
 removed from savagery, have a mythology full of 
 savage and even disgusting elements. And this is 
 just what we expect from Hottentots. The puzzle is 
 when we find myths as low as the story of the incest 
 of Heitsi Eibib among the Greeks. The reason for 
 this coincidence is that, in Dr. Hahn’s words, ‘ the 
 same objects and the same phenomena in nature 
 will give rise to the same ideas, whether social or 
 mythical, among different races of mankind,’ especially 
 when these races are in the same well-defined state of 
 savage fancy and savage credulity. 
 
 Dr. Hahn’s book has been regarded as a kind of 
 
 1 See ‘ Fetichism and the Inunite ’. 
 
 P 
 
210 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 triumph over inquirers who believe that ancestor- 
 worship enters into myth, and that the purer element 
 in myth is the later. But where is the triumph ? 
 Even on Dr. Hahn’s own showing, ancestor-worship 
 among the Hottentots has swamped the adoration 
 of the Infinite. It may be said that Dr. Hahn has 
 at least proved the adoration of the Infinite to be 
 earlier than ancestor-worship. But it has been shown 
 that his attempt to establish a middle stage, to demon- 
 strate that the worshipped ancestor was really the Red 
 Dawn, is not logical nor convincing. Even if that 
 middle stage were established, it is a far cry from 
 the worship of Dawn (supposed by the Australians 
 to be a woman of bad character in a cloak of red 
 ’possum skin) to the adoration of the Infinite. Our 
 own argument has been successful if we have shown 
 that there are not only two possible schools of mytho- 
 logical interpretation — the Euhemeristic, led by Mr. 
 Spencer, and the Philological, led by Mr. Max 
 Muller. We have seen that it is possible to explain 
 the legend of Tsui Goab without either believing 
 him to have been a real historical person (as Mr. 
 Spencer may perhaps believe), or his myth to have 
 been the result of a ‘ disease of language,’ as Mr. Muller 
 supposes. We have explained the legend and worship 
 of a supposed dead conjurer as natural to a race 
 which believes in conjurers and worships dead men. 
 Whether he was merely an ideal ancestor and 
 warrior, or whether an actual man has been invested 
 with what divine qualities Tsui Goab enjoys, it is im- 
 possible to say ; but, if he ever lived, he has long 
 been adorned with ideal qualities and virtues which 
 
HOTTENTOT MYTHOLOGY. 
 
 2 II 
 
 he never possessed. The conception of the powerful 
 ancestral ghost has been heightened and adorned 
 with some novel attributes of power : the conception 
 of the Infinite has not been degraded, by forgetfulness 
 of language, to the estate of an ancestral ghost with 
 a game leg. 
 
 If this view be correct, myth is a disease of 
 thought, far more than a disease of language. The 
 comparative importance of language and thought was 
 settled long ago, in our sense, by no less a person 
 than Pragapati, the Sanskrit Master of Life. 
 
 ‘ Now a dispute once took place between Mind 
 and Speech, as to which was the better of the two. 
 Both Mind and Speech said : “I am excellent ! ” 
 Mind said : “ Surely I am better than thou, for thou 
 dost not speak anything that is not understood by 
 me ; and since thou art only an imitator of what is 
 done by me and a follower in my wake, I am surely 
 better than thou ! ” Speech said : “ Surely I am 
 better than thou, for what thou knowest I make 
 known, I communicate.” They went to appeal to 
 Pragapati for his decision. He (Pragapati) decided 
 in favour of Mind, saying (to Speech) : “ Mind is 
 indeed better than thou, for thou art an imitator of 
 its deeds, and a follower in its wake ; and inferior, 
 surely, is he who imitates his better’s deeds, and 
 follows in his wake.” ’ 
 
 So saith the ‘ Satapatha Brahmana.’ ^ 
 
 ^ Sacred Books of the East, xii. 130, 13 1. 
 
212 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 FETICH ISM AND THE INFINITE. 
 
 W HAT is the true place of Fetichism, to use a 
 common but unscientific term, in the history of 
 religious evolution ? Some theorists have made 
 fetichism, that is to say, the adoration of odds and 
 ends (with which they have confused the worship of 
 animals, of mountains, and even of the earth), the 
 first moment in the development of worship. Others, 
 a^ain, think that fetichism is ‘ a corruption of religion, 
 in Africa, as elsewhere.’ The latter is the opinion of 
 Mr. Max Muller, who has stated it in his Hibbcrt 
 Lectures, on ‘ The Origin and Growth of Religion, 
 especially as illustrated by the Religions of India.’ 
 It seems probable that there is a middle position 
 between these two extremes. Students may hold 
 that we hardly know enough to justify us in talking 
 about the origin of religion, while at the same time 
 they may believe that Fetichism is one of the earliest 
 traceable steps by which men climbed to higher con- 
 ceptions of the supernatural. Meanwhile Mr. Max 
 Muller supports his own theory, that fetichism is a 
 ‘ parasitical growth,’ a ‘ corruption ’ of religion, by 
 arguments mainly drawn from historical study of 
 savage creeds, and from the ancient religious docu- 
 ments of India. 
 
FETICHISM AND THE INFINITE. 
 
 213 
 
 These documents are to English investigators 
 ignorant of Sanskrit ‘a book sealed with seven seals.’ 
 The Vedas are interpreted in very different ways by 
 different Oriental scholars. It does not yet appear 
 to be known whether a certain word in the Vedic 
 funeral service means ‘goat’ or ‘soul’! Mr. Max 
 Muller’s rendering is certain to have the first claim 
 on English readers, and therefore it is desirable to 
 investigate the conclusions which he draws from 
 his Vedic studies The ordinary anthropologist must 
 first, however, lodge a protest against the tendency 
 to look iov primitive matter in the Vedas. They are 
 the elaborate hymns of a specially trained set of 
 poets and philosophers, living in an age almost of 
 civilisation. They can therefore contain little testi- 
 mony as to what man, while still ‘primitive,’ thought 
 about God, the world, and the soul. One might as 
 well look for the first germs of religion, for primitive 
 religion strictly so called, in Hymns Ancient and 
 Modern as in the Vedas. It is chiefly, however, by 
 way of deductions from the Vedas, that Mr. Max 
 Muller arrives at ideas which may be briefly and 
 broadly stated thus : he inclines to derive religion 
 from man’s sense of the Infinite, as awakened by 
 natural objects calculated to stir that sense. Our 
 position is, on the other hand, that the germs of the 
 religious sense in early man are developed, not so 
 much by the vision of the Infinite, as by the idea of 
 Power. Early religions, in short, are selfish, not dis- 
 interested. The worshipper is not contemplative, so 
 much as eager to gain something to his advantage. 
 In fetiches, he ignorantly recognises something that 
 
CUSTOM ANt) MYTH. 
 
 2 [4 
 
 possesses power of an abnormal sort, and the train of 
 ideas which leads him to believe in and to treasure 
 fetiches is one among the earliest springs of religious 
 belief. 
 
 Mr. Muller’s opinion is the very reverse : he 
 believes that a contemplative and disinterested emo- 
 tion in the presence of the Infinite, or of anything 
 that suggests infinitude or is mistaken for the Infinite, 
 begets human religion, while of this religion fetichism 
 is a later corruption. 
 
 In treating of fetichism Mr. Muller is obliged to 
 criticise the system of De Brosses, who introduced 
 this rather unfortunate term to science, in an admir- 
 able work, Le Culte des Dieux Fetiches (1760). W e call 
 the work ‘ admirable,’ because, considering the con- 
 temporary state of knowledge and speculation, De 
 Brosses’ book is brilliant, original, and only now 
 and then rash or confused. Mr. Muller says that De 
 Brosses ‘ holds that all nations had to begin with 
 fetichism, to be followed afterwards by polytheism 
 and monotheism.’ This sentence would lead some 
 readers to suppose that De Brosses, in his specula- 
 tions, was looking for the origin of religion ; but, in 
 reality, his work is a mere attempt to explain a 
 certain element in ancient religion and mythology. 
 De Brosses was well aware that heathen religions 
 were a complex mass, a concretion of many materials. 
 He admits the existence of regard for the spirits of 
 the dead as one factor, he gives Sabaeism a place as 
 another. But what chiefiy puzzles him, and what he 
 chiefly tries to explain, is the worship of odds and 
 
fp:tichism and the infinite. 
 
 215 
 
 ends of rubbish, and the adoration of animals, moun- 
 tains, trees, the sun, and so forth. When he masses 
 all these worships together, and proposes to call them 
 all Fetichism (a term derived from the Portuguese 
 word for a talisman), De Brosses is distinctly unscien- 
 tific. But De Brosses is distinctly scientific when he 
 attempts to explain the animal-worship of Egypt, and 
 the respect paid by Greeks and Romans to shapeless 
 stones, as survivals of older savage practices. 
 
 The position of De Brosses is this : Old mytho- 
 logy and religion are a tissue of many threads. 
 Sabaeism, adoration of the dead, mythopoeic fancy, 
 have their part in the fabric. Among many African 
 tribes, a form of theism, Islamite, or Christian, or 
 self-developed, is superimposed on a mass of earlier 
 superstitions. Among these superstitions, is the wor- 
 ship of animals and plants, and the cult of rough 
 stones and of odds and ends of matter. What is the 
 origin of this element, so prominent in the religion of 
 Egypt, and present, if less conspicuous, in the most 
 ancient temples of Greece ? It is the survival, answers 
 De Brosses, of ancient practices like those of untutored 
 peoples, as Brazilians, Samoyeds, Negroes, whom the 
 Egyptians and Pelasgians once resembled in lack of 
 culture. 
 
 This, briefly stated, is the hypothesis of De Brosses. 
 If he had possessed our wider information, he would 
 have known that, among savage races, the worships 
 of the stars, of the dead, and of plants and animals, 
 are interlaced by the strange metaphysical processes 
 of wild men. He would, perhaps, have kept the 
 supernatural element in magical stones, feathers. 
 
2i6 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 shells, and so on, apart from the triple thread of 
 Sabaeism, ghost-worship, and totemism, with its 
 later development into the regular worship of plants 
 and animals. It must be recognised, however, that 
 De Brosses was perfectly well aware of the confused 
 and manifold character of early religion. He had a 
 clear view of the truth that what the religious instinct 
 has once grasped, it does not, as a rule, abandon, 
 but subordinates or disguises, when it reaches higher 
 ideas. And he avers, again and again, that men laid 
 hold of the coarser and more material objects of wor- 
 ship, while they themselves were coarse and dull, and 
 that, as civilisation advanced, they, as a rule, subordi- 
 nated and disguised the ruder factors in their system. 
 Here it is that Mr. Max Muller differs from De Brosses. 
 He holds that the adoration of stones, feathers, shells, 
 and (as I understand him) the worship of animals are, 
 even among the races of Africa, a corruption of an 
 earlier and purer religion, a ‘ parasitical development’ 
 of religion. 
 
 However, Mr. Max Muller himself held ‘for a long 
 time’ what he calls ‘De Brosses’ theory of fetichism.’ 
 What made him throw the theory overboard ? It was 
 ‘ the fact that, while in the earliest accessible docu- 
 ments of religious thought we look in vain for any 
 very clear traces of fetichism, they become more and 
 more frequent everywhere in the later stages of reli- 
 gious development, and are certainly more visible in 
 the later corruptions of the Indian religion, beginning 
 with the Atharva7za, than in the earliest hymns of 
 the Rig Veda.’ Now, by the earliest accessible docu- 
 ments of religious thought. Professor Max Muller 
 
FETICHISM AND THE INFINITE. 
 
 217 
 
 means the hymns of the Rig Veda. These hymns 
 are composed in the most elaborate metre, by sages 
 of old repute, who, I presume, occupied a position not 
 unlike that of the singers and seers of Israel. They 
 lived in an age of tolerably advanced cultivation. 
 They had wide geographical knowledge. They had 
 settled government. They dwelt in States. They 
 had wealth of gold, of grain, and of domesticated 
 animals. Among the metals, they were acquainted 
 with that which, in most countries, has been the latest 
 worked — they used iron poles in their chariots. How 
 then can the hymns of the most enlightened singers 
 of a race thus far developed be called ‘ the earliest 
 religious documents’? Oldest they may be, the 
 oldest that are accessible, but this is a very different 
 thing. How can we possibly argue that what is 
 absent in these hymns, is absent because it had not 
 yet come into existence ? Is it not the very office of 
 pa vates et Phcebo digna lociiti to purify religion, to 
 cover up decently its rude shapes, as the unhewn 
 stone was concealed in the fane of Apollo of Delos ? 
 If the race whose noblest and oldest extant hymns 
 were pure, exhibits traces of fetichism in its later 
 documents, may not that as easily result fi'om a I'e- 
 crudescence as fi'om a coiTuption ? Professor Max 
 Muller has still, moreover, to explain how the process 
 of corruption which introduced the same fetichistic 
 practices among Samoyeds, Brazilians, Kaffir's, and 
 the people of the Atharva?/a Veda came to be every- 
 where identical in its results. 
 
 Here an argument often urged against the an- 
 thropological method may be shortly disposed of. 
 
2i8 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 ‘ You examine savages,’ people say, ‘ but how do you 
 know that these savages were not once much more 
 cultivated ; that their whole mode of life, religion 
 and all, is not debased and decadent from an earlier 
 standard ? ’ Mr. Muller glances at this argument, 
 which, however, cannot serve his purpose. Mr. 
 Muller has recognised that savage, or ‘ nomadic,’ 
 languages represent a much earlier state of language 
 than anything that we find, for example, in the oldest 
 Hebrew or Sanskrit texts. ‘ For this reason,’ he 
 says,^ ‘ the study of what I call nomad languages, 
 as distinguished from State languages, becomes so 
 instructive. We see in them what we can no longer 
 expect to see even in the most ancient Sanskrit or 
 Hebrew. We watch the childhood of language with 
 all its childish freaks.’ Yes, adds the anthropologist, 
 and for this reason the study of savage religions, 
 as distinguished from State religions, becomes so 
 instructive. We see in them what we can no longer 
 expect to see even in the most ancient Sanskrit or 
 Hebrew faiths. We watch the childhood of religion 
 with all its childish freaks. If this reasoning be 
 sound when the Kaffir tongue is contrasted with 
 ancient Sanskrit, it should be sound when the Kaffir 
 faith is compared with the Vedic faith. By parity of 
 reasoning, the religious beliefs of peoples as much less 
 advanced than the Kaffirs as the Kaffirs are less ad- 
 vanced than the Vedic peoples, should be still nearer 
 the infancy of faith, still ‘ nearer the beginning.’ 
 
 We have been occupied, perhaps, too long with 
 l)e Brosses and our apology for De Brosses. Let 
 
 1 Lectures on Language. Second Series, p. 41. 
 
FETICHISM AND THE INFINITE. 2ig 
 
 US now examine, as shortly as possible, Mr. Max 
 Muller’s reasons for denying that fetichism is ‘ a 
 primitive form of religion.’ The negative side of 
 his argument being thus disposed of, it will then be 
 our business to consider (i) his psychological theory 
 of the subjective element in religion, and (2) his 
 account of the growth of Indian religion. The con- 
 clusion of the essay will be concerned with demon- 
 strating that Mr. Max Muller’s system assigns little 
 or no place to the superstitious beliefs without which, 
 in other countries than India, society could not have 
 come into organised existence. 
 
 In his polemic against Fetichism, it is not always 
 very easy to see against whom Mr. Muller is contend- 
 ing. It is one thing to say that fetichism is a 
 ‘ primitive form of religion,’ and quite another to say 
 that it is ‘ the very beginning of all religion.’ Occa- 
 sionally he attacks the ‘ Comtian theory,’ which, I 
 think, is not now held by many people who study the 
 history of man, and which I am not concerned to 
 defend. He says that the Portuguese navigators 
 who discovered among the negroes ‘ no other trace of 
 any religious worship ’ except what they called the 
 worship of feitigos^ concluded that this was the whole 
 of the religion of the negroes (p. 61). Mr. Muller 
 then goes on to prove that ‘ no religion consists of 
 fetichism only,’ choosing his examples of higher 
 elements in negro religion from the collections of 
 Waitz. It is difficult to see what bearing this has on 
 his argument. De Brosses (p. 20) shows that he, at 
 least, was well aware that many negro tribes have 
 
220 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 higher conceptions of the Deity than any which are 
 implied in fetich-worship. Even if no tribe in the 
 world is exclusively devoted to fetiches, the argument 
 makes no progress. Perhaps no extant tribe is in the 
 way of using unpolished stone weapons and no others, 
 but it does not follow that unpolished stone weapons 
 are not primitive. It is just as easy to maintain that 
 the purer ideas have, by this time, been reached by 
 aid of the stepping-stones of the grosser, as that the 
 grosser are the corruption of the purer. Mr. Max 
 M tiller constantly asserts that the ‘ human mind 
 advanced by small and timid steps from what is 
 intelligible, to what is at first sight almiost beyond 
 comprehension ’ (p. 126). Among the objects which 
 aided man to take these small and timid steps, he 
 reckons rivers and trees, which excited, he says, 
 religious awe. What he will not suppose is that the 
 earliest small and timid steps were not unaided by 
 such objects as the fetichist treasures — stones, shells, 
 and so forth, which suggest no idea of infinity. 
 Stocks he will admit, but not, if he can help it, 
 stones, of the sort that negroes and Kanekas and 
 other tribes use as fetiches. 1 1 is reason is, that he 
 does not see how the scraps of the fetichist can 
 appeal to the feeling of the Infinite, which feeling is, 
 in his theory, the basis of religion. 
 
 After maintaining (what is readily granted) that 
 negroes have a religion composed of many elements, 
 Mr. Muller tries to discredit the evidence about the 
 creeds of savages, and discourses on the many minute 
 shades of progress which exist among tribes too often 
 lumped together as if they were all in the same con- 
 
FETICHISM AND THE INFINITE. 
 
 221 
 
 dition. Here he will have all scientific students of 
 savage life on his side. It remains true, however, 
 that certain elements of savage practice, fetichism 
 being one of them, are practically ubiquitous. Thus, 
 when Mr. Muller speaks of ‘ the influence of public 
 opinion ’ in biassing the narrative of travellers, we 
 must not forget that the strongest evidence about 
 savage practice is derived from the ‘ undesigned 
 coincidence ’ of the testimonies of all sorts of men, 
 in all ages, and all conditions of public opinion. 
 
 ‘ Illiterate men, ignorant of the writings of each 
 other, bring the same reports from various quarters 
 of the globe,’ wrote Millar of Glasgow. When sailors, 
 merchants, missionaries, describe, as matters unpre- 
 cedented and unheard of, such institutions as poly- 
 andry, totemism, and so forth, the evidence is so 
 strong, because the witnesses are so astonished. They 
 do not know that any one but themselves has ever 
 noticed the curious facts before their eyes. And 
 when Mr. Muller tries to make the testimony about 
 savage faith still more untrustworthy, by talking of 
 the ‘absence of recognised authority among savages,’ 
 do not let us forget that custom (vo/xo^) is a recognised 
 authority, and that the punishment of death is in- 
 flicted for transgression of certain rules. These rules^ 
 generally speaking, are of a religious nature, and the 
 religion to which they testify is of the sort known 
 (too vaguely) as ‘ fetichistic.’ Let us keep steadily 
 before our minds, when people talk of lack of evi- 
 dence, that we have two of the strongest sorts of 
 evidence in the world for the kind of religion which 
 least suits Mr. Muller’s argument — (i) the undesigned 
 
222 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 coincidences of testimony, (2) the irrefutable witness 
 and sanction of elementary criminal law. Mr. Muller’s 
 own evidence is that much-disputed work, where ‘all 
 men see what they want to see, as in the clouds,’ and 
 where many see systematised fetichism — the Veda.^ 
 
 The first step in Mr. Max Muller’s polemic was 
 the assertion that Fetichism is nowhere unmixed. 
 We have seen that the fact is capable of an inter- 
 pretation that will suit either side. Stages of culture 
 overlap each other. The second step in his polemic 
 was the effort to damage the evidence. We have 
 seen that we have as good evidence as can be desired. 
 In the third place he asks. What are the antecedents 
 of fetich-worship ? He appears to conceive himself 
 to be arguing with persons (p. 127) who ‘ have taken 
 for granted that every human being was miraculously 
 endowed with the concept of what forms the pre- 
 dicate of every fetich, call it power, spirit, or god.’ 
 If there are reasoners so feeble, they must be left 
 to the punishment inflicted by Mr. Muller. On the 
 other hand, students who regard the growth of the 
 idea of power, which is the predicate of every fetich, 
 as a slow process, as the result of various impressions 
 and trains of early half-conscious reasoning, cannot 
 be disposed of by the charge that they think that 
 ‘ every human being was miraculously endowed ’ 
 with any concept whatever. They, at least, will 
 agree with Mr. Max Muller that there are fetiches 
 and fetiches, that to one reverence is assigned for one 
 reason, to another for another. Unfortunately, it is 
 
 1 A defence of the evidence for our knowledge of savage faiths, 
 practices, and ideas will be found in Primitive Culture, i. 9-1 1. 
 
FETICHISM AND THE INFINITE. 
 
 223 
 
 less easy to admit that Mr. Max Muller has been 
 happy in his choice of ancient instances. He writes 
 (p. 99) : ‘ Sometimes a stock or a stone was worshipped 
 because it was a forsaken altar or an ancient place 
 of judgment, sometimes because it marked the place 
 of a great battle or a murder, or the burial of a 
 king.’. Here he refers to Pausanias, book i. 28, 5, 
 and viii. 13, 2.^ In both of these passages, Pau- 
 sanias, it is true, mentions stones — in the first passage 
 stones on which men stood octol vire^ovcn Kal 
 
 ol Siay/copre^, in the second, barrows heaped up in 
 
 ^ A third reference to Pausanias I have been unable to verify. 
 There are several references to Greek fetich-stones in Theophrastus’ 
 account of the Superstitious Man, A number of Greek sacred stones 
 named by Pausanias may be worth noticing. In Bceotia (ix. i6), the 
 people believed that Alcmene, mother of Heracles, was changed into 
 a stone. The Thespians worshipped, under the name of Eros, an 
 unwrought stone, ayaX^a TraXaioTaTov, ‘ their most ancient sacred 
 object ’ (ix. 27). The people of Orchomenos ‘ paid extreme regard to 
 certain stones,’ said to have fallen from heaven, ‘or to certain figures 
 made of stone that descended from the sky ’ (ix. 38). Near Chaeronea 
 Rhea was said to have deceived Cronus, by offering him, in place of 
 Zeus, a stone wrapped in swaddling bands. This stone, which Cronus 
 vomited forth after having swallowed it, was seen by Pausanias at 
 Delphi (ix. 41). By the roadside, near the city of the Panopeans, lay the 
 stones out of which Prometheus made men (x. 4). The stone swallowed 
 in place of Zeus by his father lay at the exit from the Delphian temple 
 and was anointed (compare the action of Jacob, Gen. xxviii. 18) with 
 oil every day. The Phocians worshipped thirty squared stones, each 
 named after a god (vii. xxii.). ^ Among all the Greeks rude stones were 
 worshipped before the images of the gods.' Among the Troezenians a 
 sacred stone lay in front of the temple, whereon the Troezenian elders 
 sat, and purified Orestes from the murder of his mother. In Attica 
 there was a conical stone worshipped as Apollo (i. xliv.). Near Argos 
 was a stone called Zeus Cappotas, on which Orestes was said to have 
 sat down, and so recovered peace of mind. Such are examples of the 
 sacred stones, the oldest worshipful objects, of Greece. 
 
224 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 honour of men who fell in battle. In neither case, 
 however, do I find anything to show that the stones 
 were worshipped. These stones, then, have no more 
 to do with the argument than the milestones which 
 certainly exist on the Dover road, but which are not 
 the objects of superstitious reverence. No! the fetich- 
 stones of Greece were those which occupied the holy 
 of holies of the most ancient temples, the mysterious 
 fanes within dark cedar or cypress groves, to which 
 men were hardly admitted. They were the stones 
 and blocks which bore the names of gods, Hera, or 
 Apollo, names perhaps given, as De Brosses says, 
 to the old fetichistic objects of worship, after the 
 anthropomorphic gods entered Hellas. This, at 
 least, is the natural conclusion from the fact that the 
 Apollo and Hera of untouched wood or stone were 
 confessedly the oldest. Religion, possessing an old 
 fetich, did not incur the risk of breaking the run of 
 luck by discarding it, but wisely retained and re- 
 named it. Mr. Max Muller says that the unhewn 
 lump' may indicate a higher power of abstraction than 
 the worship paid to the work of Phidias ; but in that 
 case all the savage adorers of rough stones may be 
 in a stage of more abstract thought than these con- 
 temporaries of Phidias who had such very hard 
 work to make Greek thought abstract. 
 
 Mr. Muller founds a very curious argument on 
 what he calls ‘the ubiquity of fetichism.’ Like De 
 Brosses, he compiles (from Pausanias) a list of the 
 rude stones worshipped by the early Greeks. He 
 mentions various examples of fetichistic superstitions 
 in Rome. He detects the fetichism of popular 
 
FETICHISM AND THE INFINITE. 
 
 225 
 
 Catholicism, and of Russian orthodoxy among the 
 peasants. Here, he cries, in religions the history of 
 which is known to us, fetichism is secondary, ‘ and 
 why should fetiches in Africa, where we do not know 
 the earlier development of religion, be considered as 
 primary ? ’ What a singular argument ! According 
 to Pausanias, this fetichism (if fetichism it is) was 
 primary, in Greece. The oldest temples, in their 
 holiest place, held the oldest fetich. In Rome, it is at 
 least probable that fetichism, as in Greece, was partly 
 a survival, partly a new growth from the primal root 
 of human superstitions. As to Catholicism, the 
 records of Councils, the invectives of the Church, 
 show us that, from the beginning, the secondary 
 religion in point of time, the religion of the Church, 
 laboured vainly to suppress, and had in part to tole- 
 rate, the primary religion of childish superstitions. 
 The documents are before the world. As to the 
 Russians, the history of their conversion is pretty 
 well known. Jaroslaf, or Vladimir, or some other 
 evangelist, had whole villages baptised in groups, and 
 the pagan peasants naturally kept up their primary 
 semi-savage ways of thought and worship, under 
 the secondary varnish of orthodoxy. In all Mr. Max 
 Muller’s examples, then, fetichism turns out to be pri- 
 mary in point of time ; secondary only, as subordinate 
 to some later development of faith, or to some lately 
 superimposed religion. Accepting his statement that 
 fetichism is ubiquitous, we have the most powerful 
 a priori argument that fetichism is primitive. As 
 religions become developed they are differentiated ; it 
 is only fetichism that you find the same everywhere. 
 
 Q 
 
226 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 Thus the bow and arrow have a wide range of distribu- 
 tion: the musket, one not so wide; the Martini-Henry 
 rifle, a still narrower range : it is the primitive stone 
 weapons that are ubiquitous, that are found in the 
 soil of England, Egypt, America, France, Greece, as 
 in the hands of Dieyries and Admiralty Islanders. 
 And just as rough stone knives are earlier than iron 
 ones (though the same race often uses both), so 
 fetichism is more primitive than higher and purer 
 faiths, though the same race often combines fetichism 
 and theism. No one will doubt the truth of this 
 where weapons are concerned ; but Mr. Max Muller 
 will not look at religion in this way. 
 
 Mr. Max Muller’s remarks on ‘Zoolatry,’ as De 
 Drosses calls it, or animal-worship, require only the 
 briefest comment. De Drosses, very unluckily, con- 
 fused zoolatry with other superstitions under the head 
 of I'etichism. This was unscientific ; but is it scien- 
 tific of Mr. Max Muller to discuss animal- worship 
 without any reference to totemism ? The worship 
 of sacred animals is found, in every part of the globe, 
 to be part of the sanction of the most stringent and 
 important of all laws, the laws of marriage. It is an 
 historical truth that the society of Ashantees, Choc- 
 taws, Australians, is actually constructed by the 
 operation of laws which are under the sanction of 
 various sacred plants and animals.^ There is scarcely 
 a race so barbarous that these laws are not trace- 
 able at work in its society, nor a people (especially 
 an ancient people) so cultivated that its laws and 
 
 ^ See Essays on ‘ Apollo and the Mouse ’ and ‘ The Early History 
 of the Family.’ 
 
FETICHISM AND THE INFINITE. 
 
 227 
 
 religion are not full of strange facts most easily 
 explained as relics of totemism. Now note that 
 actual living totemism is always combined with the 
 rudest ideas of marriage, with almost repulsive ideas 
 about the family. Presumably, this rudeness is 
 earlier than culture, and therefore this form of animal- 
 worship is one of the earliest religions that we know. 
 The almost limitless distribution of the phenomena, 
 their regular development, their gradual disappear- 
 ance, all point to the fact that they are all very early 
 and everywhere produced by similar causes. 
 
 Of all these facts, Mr. Max Muller only mentions 
 one — that many races have called themselves Snakes, 
 and he thinks they might naturally adopt the snake 
 for ancestor, and finally for god. He quotes the 
 remark of Diodorus that ‘ the snake may either have 
 been made a god because he was figured on the 
 banners, or may have been figured on the banners 
 because he was a god ’ ; to which De Brosses, with 
 his usual sense, rejoins : ‘ We represent saints on our 
 banners because we revere them ; we do not revere 
 them because we represent them on our banners.’ 
 
 In a discussion about origins, and about the cor- 
 ruption of religion, it would have been well to account 
 for institutions and beliefs almost universally dis- 
 tributed. We know, what De Brosses did not, that 
 zoolatry is inextricably blent with laws and customs 
 which surely must be early, if not primitive, because 
 they make the working faith of societies in which 
 male descent and the modern family are not yet 
 established. Any one who wishes to show that this 
 sort of society is a late corruption, not an early stage 
 
 Q 2 
 
228 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 in evolution towards better things, has a difficult task 
 before him, which, however, he must undertake, before 
 he can prove zoolatry to be a corruption of religion. 
 
 As to the worship of ancestral and embodied 
 human spirits, which (it has been so plausibly argued) 
 is the first moment in religion, Mr. Max Miiller dis- 
 misses it, here, in eleven lines and a half. An isolated 
 but important allusion at the close of his lectures will 
 be noticed in its place. 
 
 The end of the polemic against the primitiveness 
 of fetichism deals with the question, ‘ Whence comes 
 the supernatural predicate of the fetich ? ’ If a negro 
 tells us his fetich is a god, whence got he the idea of 
 ‘god’? Many obvious answers occur. Mr. Muller 
 says, speaking of the Indians (p. 205): ‘ The concept 
 of ^ods was no doubt growing up while men were 
 assuming a more and more definite attitude towards 
 these semi-tangible and intangible objects ’ — trees, 
 rivers, hills, the sky, the sun, and so on, which he 
 thinks suggested and developed, by aid of a kind of 
 awe, the religious feeling of the infinite. We too 
 would say that, among people who adore fetiches and 
 ghosts, the concept of gods no doubt silently grew 
 up, as men assumed a more and more definite attitude 
 towards the tangible and intangible objects they held 
 sacred. Again, negroes have had the idea of god 
 imported among them by Christians and Islamites, 
 so that, even if they did not climb (as De Brosses 
 grants that many of them do) to purer religious ideas 
 unaided, these ideas are now familiar to them, and 
 may well be used by them, when they have to ex- 
 plain a fetich to a European. Mr. Max Muller 
 
FETICHISM AND THE INFINITE. 
 
 229 
 
 explains the origin of religion by a term (‘ the 
 Infinite ’) which, he admits, the early people would 
 not have comprehended. The negro, if he tells a 
 white man that a fetich is a god, transposes terms in 
 the same unscientific way. Mr. Muller asks: ‘How 
 do these people, when they have picked up their stone 
 or their shell, pick up, at the same time, the concepts 
 of a supernatural power, of spirit, of god, and of 
 worship paid to some unseen being ? ’ But who says 
 that men picked up these ideas at the same time ? 
 These ideas were evolved by a long, slow, complicated 
 process. It is not at all impossible that the idea of 
 a kind of ‘ luck ’ attached to this or that object, was 
 evolved by dint of meditating on a mere series of 
 lucky accidents. Such or such a man, having found 
 such an object, succeeded in hunting, fishing, or war. 
 By degrees, similar objects might be believed to 
 command success. Thus burglars carry bits of coal 
 in their pockets, ‘ for luck.’ This random way of 
 connecting causes and effects which have really no 
 inter-relation, is a common error of early reasoning. 
 Mr. Max Muller says that ‘this process of reasoning 
 is far more in accordance with modern thought ’ ; if 
 so, modern thought has little to be proud of. Hero- 
 dotus, however, describes the process of thought as 
 consecrated by custom among the Egyptians. But 
 there are many other practical ways in which the 
 idea of supernatural power is attached to fetiches. 
 Some fetich-stones have a superficial resemblance to 
 other objects, and thus (on the magical system of 
 reasoning) are thought to influence these objects. 
 Others, again, are pointed out as worthy of regard in 
 
230 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 dreams or by the ghosts of the dead.^ To hold these 
 views of the origin of the supernatural predicate of 
 fetiches is not ‘ to take for granted that every human 
 being was miraculously endowed with the concept 
 of what forms the predicate of every fetich.’ 
 
 Thus we need not be convinced by Mr. Max 
 Miiller that fetichism (though it necessarily has its 
 antecedents in the human mind) is ‘ a corruption of 
 religion.’ It still appears to be one of the most 
 primitive steps towards the idea of the supernatural. 
 
 What, then, is the subjective element of religion 
 in man ? How has he become capable of conceiving of 
 the supernatural ? What outward objects first awoke 
 that dormant faculty in his breast ? Mr. Max Miiller 
 answers, that man has ‘ the faculty of apprehending 
 the infinite ’ — that by dint of this faculty he is capable 
 of religion, and that sensible objects, ‘ tangible, semi- 
 tangible, intangible,’ first roused the faculty to reli- 
 gious activit}3 at least among the natives of India. 
 He means, however, by the ‘ infinite ’ which savages 
 apprehend, not our metaphysical conception of the 
 infinite, but the mere impression that there is ‘ some- 
 thing beyond.’ ‘ Everything of which his senses 
 cannot perceive a limit, is to a primitive savage or 
 
 ^ Here I may mention a case illustrating the motives of the fetich- 
 worshipper. My friend, Mr. J. J. Atkinson, who has for many years 
 studied the manners of the people of New Caledonia, asked a native 
 why he treasured a certain fetich-stone. The man replied that, in one 
 of the vigils which are practised beside the corpses of deceased friends, 
 he saw a lizard. The lizard is a totem, a worshipful animal in New 
 Caledonia. The native put out his hand to touch it, when it dis- 
 appeared and left a stone in its place. This stone he therefore held 
 sacred in the highest degree. Here then a fetich-stone was indicated 
 as such by a spirit in form of a lizard. 
 
KETICHISM AND THE INFINITE. 
 
 231 
 
 to any man in an early stage of intellectual activity 
 unlimited or infinite^ Thus, in all experience, the 
 idea of ‘a beyond’ is forced on men. If Mr. Max 
 Muller would adhere to this theory, then we should 
 suppose him to mean (what we hold to be more or 
 less true) that savage religion, like savage science, is 
 merely a fanciful explanation of what lies beyond 
 the horizon of experience. For example, if the Aus- 
 tralians mentioned by Mr. Max Muller believe in 
 a being who created the world, a being whom they 
 do not worship, and to whom they pay no regard 
 (for, indeed, he has become ‘ decrepit ’), their theory 
 is scientific, not religious. They have looked for the 
 causes of things, and are no more religious (in so 
 doing) than Newton was when he worked out his 
 theory of gravitation. The term ‘infinite ’is wrongly 
 applied, because it is a term of advanced thought 
 used in explanation of the ideas of men who, Mr. 
 Max Muller says, were incapable of conceiving the 
 meaning of such a concept. Again, it is wrongly 
 applied, because it has some modern religious associa- 
 tions, which are covertly and fallaciously introduced 
 to explain the supposed emotions of early men. 
 Thus, Mr. Muller says (p. 177) — he is giving his 
 account of the material things that awoke the reli- 
 gious faculty — ‘ the mere sight of the torrent or the 
 stream would have been enough to call forth in the 
 hearts of the early dwellers on the earth ... a 
 feeling that they were surrounded on all sides by 
 powers invisible, infinite, or divine.’ Here, if I under- 
 stand Mr. Muller, ‘ infinite ’ is used in our modern 
 sense. The question is. How did men ever come 
 
232 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 to believe in powers infinite, invisible, divine ? If 
 Mr, Muller’s words mean anything, they mean that 
 a dormant feeling that there were such existences 
 lay in the breast of man, and was wakened into 
 active and conscious life, by the sight of a torrent 
 or a stream. How, to use Mr. Muller’s own manner, 
 did these people, when they saw a stream, have men- 
 tally, at the same time, ‘a feeling of infinite powers’? 
 If this is not the expression of a theory of ‘ innate 
 religion’ (a theory which Mr. M^iiller disclaims), it 
 is capable of being mistaken for that doctrine by 
 even a careful reader. The feeling of ‘ powers in- 
 finite, invisible, divine,’ mnst be in the heart, or the 
 mere sight of a river could not call it forth. How did 
 the feeling get into the heart ? That is the question. 
 
 The ordinary anthropologist distinguishes a mul- 
 titude of causes, a variety of processes, which shade 
 into each other and gradually produce the belief in 
 powers invisible, infinite, and divine. What tribe 
 is unacquainted with dreams, visions, magic, the 
 apparitions of the dead ? Add to these the slow 
 action of thought, the conjectural inferences, the 
 guesses of crude metaphysics, the theories of isolated 
 men of religious and speculative genius. By all these 
 and other forces manifold, that emotion of awe in 
 presence of the hills, the stars, the sea, is developed. 
 Mr. Max Muller cuts the matter shorter. The early 
 inhabitants of the earth saw a river, and the ‘ mere 
 sight ’ of the torrent called forth the feelings which 
 (to us) seem to demand ages of the operation of causes 
 disregarded by Mr. Muller in his account of the origin 
 of Indian religion. 
 
FETICHISM AND THE INFINITE. 
 
 233 
 
 The mainspring of Mr. Muller’s doctrine is his 
 theory about ‘apprehending the infinite.’ Early 
 religion, or at least that of India, was, in his view, 
 the extension of an idea of Vastness, a disinterested 
 emotion of awe.^ Elsewhere, we think, early religion 
 has been a development of ideas of Eorce, an inter- 
 ested search, not for something wide and far and 
 hard to conceive, but for something practically strong 
 for good and evil. Mr. Muller (taking no count in this 
 place of fetiches, ghosts, dreams and magic) explains 
 that the sense of ‘ wonderment ’ was wakened by 
 objects only semi-tangible, trees, which are taller than 
 we are, ‘ whose roots are beyond our reach, and which 
 have a kind of life in them.’ ‘We are dealing with 
 a quartenary, it may be a tertiary troglodyte,’ says 
 Mr. Muller. If a tertiary troglodyte was like a modern 
 Andaman Islander, a Kaneka, a Dieyrie, would he 
 stand and meditate in awe on the fact that a tree 
 was taller than he, or had ‘a kind of life,’ ‘an un- 
 known and unknowable, yet undeniable something’?^ 
 Why, this is the sentiment of modern Germany, and 
 perhaps of the Indian sages of a cultivated period ! 
 A troglodyte would look for a ’possum in the tree, 
 he would tap the trunk for honey, he would poke 
 about in the bark after grubs, or he would worship 
 anything odd in the branches. Is Mr. Muller not 
 unconsciously transporting a kind of modern malady 
 
 1 Much the same theory is propounded in Mr. Muller’s lectures 
 on ‘ The Science of Religion.’ 
 
 - The idea is expressed in a well-known parody of Wordsworth, 
 about the tree which — 
 
 ‘ Will grow ten times as tall as me 
 And live ten times as long.’ 
 
^34 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 of thought into the midst of people who wanted 
 to find a dinner, and who might worship a tree if it 
 had a grotesque shape, that, for them, had a magical 
 meaning, or if hoilyas lived in its boughs, but whose 
 practical way of dealing with the problem of its life 
 was to burn it round the stem, chop the charred 
 wood with stone axes, and use the bark, branches, 
 and leaves as they happened to come handy ? 
 
 Mr. Muller has a long list of semi-tangible objects 
 ‘ overwhelming and overawing,’ like the tree. There 
 are mountains, where ‘ even a stout heart shivers 
 before the real presence of the infinite ’ ; there are 
 rivers, those instruments of so sudden a religious 
 awakening; there is earth; These supply the mate- 
 rial for semi-deities. Then come sky, stars, dawn, sun 
 and moon : ‘ in these we have the germs of what, here- 
 after, we shall have to call by the name of deities.’ 
 
 Before we can transmute, with Mr. Muller, these 
 objects of a somewhat vague religious regard into a 
 kind of gods, we have to adopt Noire’s philological 
 theories, and study the effects of auxiliary verbs on 
 the development of personification and of religion. 
 Noire’s philological theories are still, I presume, under 
 discussion. They are necessary, however, to Mr. 
 Muller’s doctrine of the development of the vague 
 ‘ sense of the infinite ’ (wakened by fine old trees, 
 and high mountains) into devas, and of dcvas (which 
 means ‘shining ones’) into the Vedic gods. Our 
 troglodyte ancestors, and their sweet feeling for the 
 spiritual aspect of landscape, are thus brought into 
 relation with the Rishis of the Vedas, the sages and 
 poets of a pleasing civilisation. The reverence felt 
 
PETICHISM AND THE INEINITE. 
 
 235 
 
 for such comparatively refined or remote things as 
 fire, the sun, wind, thunder, the dawn, furnished a 
 series of stepping-stones to the Vedic theology, if 
 theology it can be called. It is impossible to give 
 each step in detail ; the process must be studied in 
 Mr. Muller’s lectures. Nor can we discuss the later 
 changes of faith. As to the processes which pro- 
 duced the fetichistic ‘ corruption ’ (that universal and 
 everywhere identical form of decay), Mr. Miiller does 
 not afford even a hint. He only says that, when the 
 Indians found that their old gods were mere names, 
 
 ‘ they built out of the scattered bricks a new altar to 
 the Unknown God’ — a statement which throws no 
 light on the parasitical development of fetichism. 
 But his whole theory is deficient if, having called 
 fetichism a corruption, he does not show how cor- 
 ruption arose, how it operated, and how the disease 
 attacked all religions everywhere. 
 
 We have contested, step by step, many of Mr. 
 Muller’s propositions. If space permitted, it would 
 be interesting to examine the actual attitude of certain 
 contemporary savages, Bushmen and others, towards 
 the sun. Contemporary savages may be degraded, 
 they certainly are not primitive, but their legends, at 
 least, are the oldest things they possess. The super- 
 natural elements in their ideas about the sun are 
 curiously unlike those which, according to Mr. 
 Muller, entered into the development of Aryan 
 religion. 
 
 The last remark which has to be made about Mr. 
 Muller’s scheme of the development of Aryan reli- 
 gion is that the religion, as explained by him, does 
 
236 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 not apparently aid the growth of society, nor work 
 with it in any way. Let us look at a sub-barbaric 
 society — say that of Zululand, of New Zealand, 
 of the Iroquois League, or at a savage society 
 like that of the Kanekas, or of those Australian 
 tribes about whom we have very many interesting 
 and copious accounts. If we begin with the Aus- 
 tralians, we observe that society is based on certain 
 laws of marriage enforced by capital punishment. 
 These laws of marriage forbid the intermixing of 
 persons belonging to the stock which worships this 
 or that animal, or plant. Now this rule, as already 
 observed, made the ‘gentile’ system (as Mr. Morgan 
 erroneously calls it) the system which gradually re- 
 duces tribal hostility, by making tribes homogeneous. 
 The same system (with the religious sanction of a 
 kind of zoolatry) is in force and has worked to 
 the same result, in Africa, Asia, America, and Aus- 
 tralia, while a host of minute facts make it a 
 reasonable conclusion that it prevailed in Europe. 
 Among these facts certain peculiarities of Greek and 
 Roman and Hindoo marriage law, Greek, Latin, and 
 English tribal names, and a crowd of legends are the 
 most prominent.^ Mr. Max Muller’s doctrine of the 
 development of Indian religion (while admitting the 
 existence of Snake or Naga tribes) takes no account 
 of the action of this universal zoolatry on religion and 
 society. 
 
 After marriage and after tribal institutions, look 
 at rank. Is it not obvious that the religious elements 
 (magic and necromancy) left out of his reckoning by 
 
 ^ See Essay on ‘ The Early History of the Family.’ 
 
FETICHISM AND THE INFINITE. 237 
 
 Mr. Miiller are most powerful in developing rank? 
 Even among those democratic paupers, the Fuegians, 
 ‘ the doctor-wizard of each party has much influence 
 over his companions.’ Among those other democrats, 
 the Eskimo, a class of wizards, called Angakuts, 
 become ‘ a kind of civil magistrates,’ because they can 
 cause fine weather, and can magically detect people 
 who commit offences. Thus the germs of rank, in 
 these cases, are sown by the magic which is fetichism 
 in action. Try the Zulus : ‘ the heaven is the chief’s,’ 
 he can call up clouds and storms, hence the sanction 
 of his authority. In New Zealand, every Rangatira 
 has a supernatural power. If he touches an article, 
 no one else dares to appropriate it, for fear of terrible 
 supernatural consequences. A head chief is ‘ tapued 
 an inch thick, and perfectly unapproachable.’ Magi- 
 cal power abides in and emanates from him. By this 
 superstition, an aristocracy is formed, and property 
 (the property, at least, of the aristocracy) is secured. 
 Among the Red Indians, as Schoolcraft says, ‘ priests 
 and jugglers are the persons that make war and have 
 a voice in the sale of the land.’ Mr. E. W. Robert- 
 son says much the same thing about early Scotland. 
 If Odin was not a god with the gifts of a medicine- 
 man, and did not owe his chiefship to his talent for 
 dealing with magic, he is greatly maligned. The 
 Irish Brehons also sanctioned legal decisions by 
 magical devices, afterwards condemned by the Church. 
 Among the Zulus, ‘ the Itongo (spirit) dwells with the 
 great man ; he who dreams is the chief of the village.’ 
 The chief alone can ‘read in the vessel of divination.’ 
 The Kaneka chiefs are medicine-men. 
 
238 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 Here then, in widely distant regions, in early 
 European, American, Melanesian, African societies, 
 we find those factors in religion which the primitive 
 Aryans are said to have dispensed with, helping to 
 construct society, rank, property. Is it necessary to 
 add that the ancestral spirits still ‘ rule the present 
 from the past,’ and demand sacrifice, and speak to 
 ‘ him who dreams,’ who, therefore, is a strong force in 
 society, if not a chief? Mr. Herbert Spencer, Mr. 
 Tylor, M. Fustel de Coulanges, a dozen others, have 
 made all this matter of common notoriety. As 
 Hearne the traveller says about the Copper River 
 Indians, ‘it is almost necessary that they who rule 
 them should profess something a little supernatural 
 to enable them to deal with the people.’ The few 
 examples we have given show how widely, and among 
 what untutored races, the need is felt. The rudiment- 
 ary government of early peoples requires, and, by aid 
 of dreams, necromancy, ‘ medicine ’ (i.c.^ fetiches), 
 taptc, and so forth, obtains, a supernatural sanction. 
 
 Where is the supernatural sanction that conse- 
 crated the chiefs of a race which woke to the sense of 
 the existence of infinite beings, in face of trees, rivers, 
 the dawn, the sun, and had none of the so-called late 
 and corrupt fetichism that does such useful social 
 work ? 
 
 To the student of other early societies, Mr. 
 Muller’s theory of the growth of Aryan religion seems 
 to leave society without cement, and without the most 
 necessary sanctions. One man is as good as another, 
 before a tree, a river, a hill. The savage organisers 
 of other societies found out fetiches and ghosts that 
 
FETICHISM AND THE INFINITE. 239 
 
 were ‘ respecters of persons.’ Zoolatry is intertwisted 
 with the earliest and most widespread law of pro- 
 hibited degrees. Plow did the Hindoos dispense with 
 the aid of these superstitions ? Well, they did not 
 quite dispense with them. Mr. Max Miiller remarks, 
 almost on his last page (376), that ‘ in India also . . . 
 the thoughts and feelings about those whom death 
 had separated from us for a time, supplied some of 
 the earliest and most important elements of religion.’ 
 If this was the case, surely the presence of those 
 elements and their influence should have been indi- 
 cated along with the remarks about the awfulness of 
 trees and the suggestiveness of rivers. Is nothing 
 said about the spirits of the dead and their cult in the 
 Vedas ? Much is said, of course. But, were it other- 
 wise, then other elements of savage religion may also 
 have been neglected there, and it will be impossible 
 to argue that fetichism did not exist because it is not 
 mentioned. It will also be impossible to admit that 
 the Hibbert Lectures give more than a one-sided 
 account of the Origin of Indian Religion. 
 
 The perusal of Mr. Max Muller’s book deeply 
 impresses one with the necessity of studying early 
 religions and early societies simultaneously. If it be 
 true that early Indian religion lacked precisely those 
 superstitions, so childish, so grotesque, and yet so 
 useful, which we find at work in contemporary tribes, 
 and which we read of in history, the discovery is even 
 more remarkable and important than the author 
 of the Hibbert Lectures seems to suppose. It is 
 scarcely necessary to repeat that the negative evi- 
 dence of the Vedas, the religious utterances of sages, 
 
240 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 made in a time of what we might call ‘ heroic culture,’ 
 can never disprove the existence of superstitions 
 which, if current in the former experience of the race, 
 the hymnists, as Barth observes, would intentionally 
 ignore. Our object has been to defend the ‘primi- 
 tiveness of fetichism.’ By this we do not mean to 
 express any opinion as to whether fetichism (in the 
 strictest sense of the word) was or was not earlier 
 than totemism, than the worship of the dead, or 
 than the involuntary sense of awe and terror with 
 which certain vast phenomena may have affected 
 the earliest men. We only claim for the powerful 
 and ubiquitous practices of fetichism a place among 
 the early elements of religion, and insist that what 
 is so universal has not yet been shown to be ‘ a cor- 
 ruption ’ of something older and purer. 
 
 One remark of Mr. Max Muller’s fortifies these 
 opinions. If fetichism be indeed one of the earliest 
 factors of faith in the supernatural ; if it be, in its 
 rudest forms, most powerful in proportion to other 
 elements of faith among the least cultivated races 
 (and that Mr, Mliller will probably allow) — among 
 what class of cultivated peoples will it longest hold 
 its ground ? Clearly, among the least cultivated, 
 among the fishermen, the shepherds of lonely dis- 
 tricts, the peasants of outlying lands — in short, 
 2imong the people. Neglected by sacred poets in the 
 culminating period of purity in religion, it will linger 
 among the superstitions of the rustics. There is no 
 real break in the continuity of peasant life ; the 
 modern folklore is (in many points) the savage 
 ritual. Now Mr. Muller, when he was minimising the 
 
FETICHISM AND THE INFINITE. 
 
 241 
 
 existence of fetichism in the Rig Veda (the oldest 
 collection of hymns), admitted its existence in the 
 Atharvawa (p. 60).^ On p. 15 1, we read ‘ the Atharva- 
 veda-Sanhita is a later collection, containing, besides 
 a large number of Rig Veda verses, some curious relics 
 of popular poetry connected with charms, imprecations, 
 and other superstitious usages.' The italics are mine, 
 and are meant to emphasise this fact: — When we 
 leave the sages, the Rishis, and look at what is 
 popidar, look at what that class believed which of 
 savage practice has everywhere retained so much, we 
 are at once among the charms and the fetiches ! This 
 is precisely what one would have expected. If the 
 history of religion and of mythology is to be un- 
 ravelled, we must examine what the unprogressive 
 classes in Europe have in common with Australians 
 and Bushmen, and Andaman Islanders. It is the 
 function of the people to retain in folklore these 
 elements of religion, which it is the high duty of the 
 sage and the poet to purify away in the fire of re- 
 fining thought. It is for this very reason that ritual 
 has (though Mr. Max Miiller curiously says that it 
 seems not to possess) an immense scientific interest. 
 Ritual holds on, with the tenacity of superstition, to 
 all that has ever been practised. Yet, when Mr. 
 Muller wants to know about origins, about actual 
 ancient practice, he deliberately turns to that ‘great 
 collection of ancient poetry’ (the Rig Veda) ‘which 
 has no special reference to sacrificial acts,’ not to the 
 Brahmanas which are full of ritual. 
 
 ^ Bergaigne’s La Religion Vediqiie may be consulted for Vedic 
 Fetichism. 
 
 R 
 
242 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 To sum up briefly: — (i) Mr. Muller’s arguments 
 against the evidence for, and the primitiveness of, 
 fetichism seem to demonstrate the opposite of that 
 which he intends them to prove. (2) His own evi- 
 dence ioY primitive practice is chosen from the docu- 
 ments of a cultivated society. (3) His theory deprives 
 that society of the very influences which have else- 
 where helped the Tribe, the Family, Rank, and 
 Priesthoods to grow up, and to form the backbone of 
 social existence. 
 
THE FAMILY. 
 
245 
 
 THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE 
 FAMILY, 
 
 What are the original forms of the human family? 
 Did man begin by being monogamous or polygamous, 
 but, in either case, the master of his own home and 
 the assured central point of his family relations ? Or 
 were the unions of the sexes originally shifting and 
 precarious, so that the wisest child was not expected 
 to know his own father, and family ties were reckoned 
 through the mother alone ? Again (setting aside the 
 question of what was ‘ primitive ’ and ‘ original ’), did 
 the needs and barbarous habits of early men lead to 
 a scarcity of women, and hence to polyandry (that 
 is, the marriage of one woman to several men), with 
 the consequent uncertainty about male parentage ? 
 Once more, admitting that these loose and strange 
 relations of the sexes do prevail, or have prevailed, 
 among savages, is there any reason to suppose that 
 the stronger races, the Aryan and Semitic stocks, 
 ever passed through this stage of savage customs ? 
 These are the main questions debated between what 
 we may call the ‘historical’ and the ‘ anthropological’ 
 students of ancient customs. 
 
 When Sir Henry Maine observed, in i86i, that it 
 was difficult to say what society of men had not been, 
 
246 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 originally, based on the patriarchal family, he went, of 
 course, outside the domain of history. What occurred 
 in the very origin of human society is a question 
 perhaps quite inscrutable. Certainly, history cannot 
 furnish the answer. Here the anthropologist and 
 physiologist come in with their methods, and even 
 those, we think, can throw but an uncertain light 
 on the very ‘ origin ’ of institutions, and on strictly 
 primitive man. 
 
 For the purposes of this discussion, we shall here 
 re-state the chief points at issue between the adherents 
 of Sir Henry Maine and of Mr. M‘Lennan, between 
 historical and anthropological inquirers. 
 
 1. Did man originally live in the patriarchal 
 family, or did he live in more or less modified pro- 
 miscuity, with uncertainty of blood-ties, and especially 
 of male parentage ? 
 
 2. Did circumstances and customs at some time 
 compel or induce man (whatever his original condi- 
 tion) to resort to practices which made paternity 
 uncertain, and so caused kinship to be reckoned 
 through women ? 
 
 3. Granting that some races have been thus 
 reduced to matriarchal forms of the family — that is, 
 to forms in which the woman is the permanent recog- 
 nised centre — is there any reason to suppose that the 
 stronger peoples, like the Aryans and the Semites, ever 
 passed through a stage of culture in which female, not 
 male, kinship was chiefly recognised, probably as a 
 result of polyandry, of many husbands to one wife ? 
 
 On this third question, it will be necessary to 
 produce much evidence of very different sorts : 
 
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE FAMILY. 247 
 
 evidence which, at best, can perhaps only warrant 
 an inference, or presumption, in favour of one or the 
 other opinion. For the moment, the impartial exami- 
 nation of testimony is more important and practicable 
 than the establishment of any theory. 
 
 (i) Did man originally live in the patriarchal 
 family, the male being master of his female mate or 
 mates, and of his children ? On this first point Sir 
 Henry Maine, in his new volume,^ may be said to come 
 as near proving his case as the nature and matter 
 of the question will permit. Bachofen, McLennan, 
 and Morgan, all started from a hypothetical state 
 of more or less modified sexual promiscuity. Bacho- 
 fen’ s evidence (which may be referred to later) was 
 based on a great mass of legends, myths, and 
 travellers’ tales, chiefly about early Aryan practices. 
 He discovered HeUirismus, as he called it, or promis- 
 cuity, among Lydians, Etruscans, Persians, Thracians, 
 Cyrenian nomads, Egyptians, Scythians, Troglodytes, 
 Nasamones, and so forth. Mr. M‘Lennan’s view is, 
 perhaps, less absolutely stated than Sir Henry Maine 
 supposes. McLennan says^ ‘that there has been a 
 stage in the development of the human races, when 
 there was no such appropriation of women to particular 
 men ; when, in short, marriage, as it exists among 
 civilised nations, was not practised. Marriage, in this 
 sense, was yet undreamt of.’ Mr. M‘Lennan adds 
 (pp. 130, 131), ‘ as among other gregarious animals, 
 the unions of the sexes were probably, in the earliest 
 times, loose, transitory, and, in some degree, pro- 
 miscuous.’ 
 
 ^ Early Law and Custom, Studies in Ancient History, p. 127. 
 
248 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 Sir Henry Maine opposes to Mr. M‘Lennan’s 
 theory the statement of Mr. Darwin : ^ From all we 
 know of the passions of all male quadrupeds, pro- 
 miscuous intercourse in a state of Nature is highly 
 improbable.’ ^ On this first question, let us grant to Sir 
 Henry Maine, to Mr. Darwin, and to common-sense 
 that if the very earliest men were extremely animal 
 in character, their unions while they lasted were 
 probably monogamous or polygamous. The sexual 
 jealousy of the male would secure that result, as it does 
 among many other animals. Let the first point, then, 
 be scored to Sir Henry Maine : let it be granted that 
 if man was created perfect, he lived in the monogamous 
 family before the Fall : and that, if he was evolved as 
 an animal, the unchecked animal instincts would make 
 for monogamy or patriarchal polygamy in the strictly 
 primitive family. 
 
 (2) Did circumstances and customs ever or any- 
 where compel or induce man (whatever his original 
 condition) to resort to practices which made paternity 
 uncertain, and so caused the absence of the patriarchal 
 family, kinship being reckoned through women ? If 
 this question be answered in the affirmative, and if the 
 sphere of action of the various causes be made wide 
 enough, it will not matter much to Mr. M‘Lennan’s 
 theory whether the strictly primitive family was 
 patriarchal or not. If there occurred a fall from the 
 primitive family, and if that fall was extremely general, 
 affecting even the Aryan race, Mr. M‘Lennan’s ad- 
 herents will be amply satisfied. Their object is to show 
 that the family, even in the Aryan race, was developed 
 
 ^ J)esccnt of Man, ii. 362, 
 
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE FAMILY. 249 
 
 through a stage of loose savage connections. If that 
 can be shown, they do not care much about primitive 
 man properly so called. Sir Henry Maine admits, as 
 a matter of fact, that among certain races, in certain 
 districts, circumstances have overridden the sexual 
 jealousy which secures the recognition of male parent- 
 age. Where women have been few, and where 
 poverty has been great, jealousy has been suppressed, 
 even in the Venice of the eighteenth century. Sir H. 
 Maine says : ‘ The usage ’ (that of polyandry — many 
 husbands to a single wife) ‘ seems to me one which cir- 
 cumstances overpowering morality and decency might 
 at anytime call into existence. It is known to have 
 arisen in the native Indian army.*’ The question now 
 is, what are the circumstances that overpower morality 
 and decency, and so produce polyandry, with its 
 necessary consequences, when it is a recognised 
 institution — the absence of the patriarchal family, 
 and the recognition of kinship through women ? Any 
 circumstances which cause great scarcity of women 
 will conduce to those results. Mr. M‘Lennan’s opinion 
 was, that the chief cause of scarcity of women has 
 been the custom of female infanticide — of killing little 
 girls as houches inutiles. Sir Henry Maine admits 
 that ‘the cause assigned by M‘Lennan is a vera 
 causa — it is capable of producing the effects.’ ^ Mr. 
 M‘Lennan collected a very large mass of testimony 
 to prove the wide existence of this cause of paucity 
 of women. Till that evidence is published, I can 
 only say that it was sufficient, in Mr. M‘Lennan’s 
 opinion, to demonstrate the wide prevalence of the 
 
 ^ liarly Law and Custom, p. 210. 
 
250 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 factor which is the mainspring of his whole system.^ 
 How frightfully female infanticide has prevailed in 
 India, every one may read in the official reports of 
 Col. McPherson, and other English authorities, Mr. 
 Fison’s Kamilaroi and Kurnai contains some notable, 
 though not to my mind convincing, arguments on 
 the other side. Sir Henry Maine adduces another 
 cause of paucity of women : the wanderings of our 
 race, and expeditions across sea.‘'^ This cause would 
 not, however, be important enough to alter forms of 
 kinship, where the invaders (like the early English in 
 Britain) found a population which they could conquer 
 and whose women they could appropriate. 
 
 Apart from any probable inferences that may be 
 drawn from the presumed practice of female infanti- 
 
 ^ Here I would like to point out that Mr. M‘Lennan’s theory was 
 not so hard and fast as his manner (that of a very assured believer in 
 his own ideas) may lead some inquirers to suppose. Sir Henry Maine 
 writes, that both Mr. Morgan and Mr. M‘Lennan ‘ seem to me to 
 think that human society went everywhere through the same series of 
 changes, and Mr. M'Lennan, at any rate, expresses himself as if all 
 those stages could be clearly discriminated from one another, and the 
 close of one and the commencement of another announced with the 
 distinctness of the clock-bell telling the end of the hour.’ On the 
 other hand, I remember Mr. M‘Lennan’s saying that, in his opinion, 
 
 ‘ all manner of arrangements probably went on simultaneously in dif- 
 ferent places.’ In Studies in Ancient History, p. 127, he expressly 
 guards against the tendency ‘ to assume that the progress of the various 
 races of men from savagery has been a uniform progress : that all the 
 stages which any of them has gone through have been passed in their 
 order by all.’ Still more to the point is his remark on polyandry 
 among the very early Greeks and other Aryans; ‘ it is quite consistent 
 with my view that in all these quarters (Persia, Sparta, Troy, Lycia, 
 Attica, Crete, etc.) monandry, and even the patria potestas, may have 
 prevailed at points.’ 
 
 “Early Lazo and Custom, p. 212, 
 
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE FAMILY. 
 
 251 
 
 cide, actual ascertained facts prove that many races do 
 not now live, or that recently they did not live, in the 
 patriarchal or modern family. They live, or did live, 
 in polyandrous associations. The Thibetans, the N airs, 
 the early inhabitants of Britain (according to Caesar), 
 and many other races, ^ as well as the inhabitants 
 of the Marquesas Islands, and the Iroquois (according 
 to Lafitau), practise, or have practised, polyandry. 
 
 We now approach the third and really important 
 problem — (3) Is there any reason to suppose that 
 the stronger peoples, like the Aryans and the Semites, 
 ever passed through a stage of culture in which female, 
 not male, kinship was chiefly recognised, probably as 
 a result of polyandry ? 
 
 Now the nature of the evidence which affords a 
 presumption that Aryans have all passed through 
 Australian institutions, such as polyandry, is of 
 extremely varied character. Much of it may un- 
 doubtedly be explained away. But such strength as 
 the evidence has (which we do not wish to exaggerate) 
 is derived from its convergence to one point — namel}', 
 the anterior existence of polyandry and the matri- 
 archal family among Aryans before and after the 
 dawn of real history. 
 
 For the sake of distinctness we may here number 
 the heads of the evidence bearing on this question. 
 We have — 
 
 1. The evidence of inference from the form of 
 capture in bridal ceremonies. 
 
 2. The evidence from exogamy: the law which for- 
 bids marriage between personsof the same family name. 
 
 ^ Studies in Ancient History, pp. 140-147. 
 
252 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 3. The evidence from totemism — that is, the deri- 
 vation of the family name and crest or badge, from 
 some natural object, plant or animal.^ Persons bearing 
 the name may not intermarry, nor, as a rule, may 
 they eat the object from which they derive their family 
 name and from which they claim to be descended. 
 
 4. The evidence from the gens of Rome, or 767-09 
 of ancient Greece, in connection with Totemism. 
 
 5. The evidence from myth and legend. 
 
 6. The evidence from direct historical statements 
 as to the prevalence of the matriarchal family, and 
 inheritance through the maternal line. 
 
 To take these various testimonies in their order, 
 let us begin with — 
 
 (i) The form of capture in bridal ceremonies. 
 That this form survived in Sparta, Crete, in Hindoo 
 law, in the traditions of Ireland, in the popular rustic 
 customs of Wales, is not denied. 
 
 If we hold, with Mr. McLennan, that scarcity of 
 women (produced by female infanticide or otherwise) is 
 the cause of the habit of capturing wives, we may see, 
 in survivals of this ceremony of capture among Aryans, 
 a proof of early scarcity of women, and of probable 
 polyandry. But an opponent may argue, like Mr. J. 
 A. P'arrer in Primitive Manners^ that the ceremony 
 of capture is mainly a concession to maiden modesty 
 among early races. Here one may observe that the 
 girls of savage tribes are notoriously profligate and 
 immodest about illicit connections. Only honourable 
 marriage brings a blush to the cheek of these young 
 
 ^ Totem is the name generally given by travellers and inter- 
 preters to the family crests of the Red Indians. Cf. p. 105. 
 
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE FAMILY. 253 
 
 persons. This is odd, but, in the present state of 
 the question, we cannot lean on the evidence of the 
 ceremony of capture. We cannot demonstrate that 
 it is derived from a time when paucity of women 
 made capture of brides necessary. Thus ‘ honours 
 are easy ’ in this first deal. 
 
 (2) The next indication is very curious, and 
 requires much more prolonged discussion. The cus- 
 tom of Exogamy was first noted and named by Mr. 
 M‘Lennan. Exogamy is the prohibition of marriage 
 within the supposed blood-kinship, as denoted by the 
 family name. Such marriage, among many backward 
 races, is reckoned incestuous, and is punishable by 
 death. Certain peculiarities in connection with the 
 family name have to be noted later. Now, Sir Henry 
 Maine admits that exogamy, as thus defined, exists 
 among the Hindoos. ‘ A Hindoo may not marry a 
 woman belonging to the same gotra, all members of 
 the gotra being theoretically supposed to have de- 
 scended from the same ancestor.’ The same rule 
 prevails in China. ‘ There are in China large bodies 
 of related clansmen, each generally bearing the same 
 clan-name. They are exogamous ; no man will 
 marry a woman having the same clan-name with 
 himself.’ It is admitted by Sir Henry Maine that 
 this wide prohibition of marriage was the early Aryan 
 rule, while advancing civilisation has gradually per- 
 mitted marriage within limits once forbidden. The 
 Greek Church now (according to Mr. M‘Lennan), and 
 the Catholic Church in the past, forbade intermarriages 
 ‘ as far as relationship could be known.’ The Hindoo 
 rule appears to go still further, and to prohibit 
 
254 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 marriage as far as the common gotra name seems 
 merely to indicate relationship. 
 
 As to the ancient Romans, Plutarch says : ‘ For- 
 merly they did not marry women connected with 
 them by blood, any more than they now marry 
 aunts or sisters. It was long before they would even 
 intermarry with cousins.’ ^ Plutarch also remarks 
 that, in times past, Romans did not marry avyyevLSa^, 
 and if we may render this ‘ women of the same gens,' 
 the exogamous prohibition in Rome was as complete 
 as among the Hindoos. I do not quite gather from 
 Sir Henry Maine’s account of the Slavonic house 
 communities (pp. 254, 255) whether they dislike all 
 kindred marriages, or only marriage within the 
 ‘ greater blood ’ — that is, within the kinship on the 
 male side. He says : ‘ The South Slavonians bring 
 their wives into the group, in which they are socially 
 organised, from a considerable distance outside. . . . 
 Every marriage which requires an ecclesiastical dis- 
 pensation is regarded as disreputable.’ 
 
 On the whole, wide prohibitions of marriage are 
 archaic : the widest are savage ; the narrowest are 
 modern and civilised. Thus the Hindoo prohibition 
 is old, barbarous and wide. ‘ The barbarous Aryan/ 
 says Sir Henry Maine, ‘ is generally exogamous. He 
 has a most extensive table of prohibited degrees.’ 
 Thus exogamy seems to be a survival of barbarism. 
 The question for us is. Can we call exogamy a 
 survival from a period when (owing to scarcity of 
 women and polyandry) clear ideas of kinship were 
 
 1 Plutarch, Qucest. Rom., vi. Cf. M‘Lennan, The Patriarchal 
 Theory, pp. 206-208. 
 
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE FAMILY. 255 
 
 impossible ? If this can be proved, exogamous 
 Aryans either passed through polyandrous institutions, 
 or borrowed a savage custom derived from a period 
 when ideas of kinship were obscure. 
 
 If we only knew the origin of the prohibition to 
 marry within the family name all would be plain 
 sailing. At present several theories of the origin of 
 exogamy are before the world. Mr. Morgan, the 
 author of Ancient Society, inclines to trace the 
 prohibition to a great early physiological discovery, 
 acted on by primitive men by virtue of a contrat social. 
 Early man discovered that children of unsound con- 
 stitutions were born of nearly-related parents. Mr. 
 Morgan says : ‘ Primitive men very early discovered 
 the evils of close interbreeding.’ Elsewhere Mr. 
 Morgan writes : ‘ Intermarriage in the ^ens was 
 
 prohibited, to secure the benefits of marrying out with 
 unrelated persons.’ This arrangement ‘ was a product 
 of high intelligence,’ and Mr. Morgan calls it a 
 ‘ reform.’ ^ 
 
 Let us examine this very curious theory. First : 
 Mr. Morgan supposes early man to have made a 
 discovery (the evils of the marriage of near kin) which 
 evades modern physiological science. Modern science 
 has not determined that the marriages of kinsfolk 
 are pernicious. Is it credible that savages should 
 discover a fact which puzzles science ? It may 
 be replied that modern care, nursing, and medical 
 art save children of near marriages from results 
 which were pernicious to the children of early man. 
 Secondly : Mr. Morgan supposes that barbarous man 
 
 ^ Cf. Maine, Early Law and Custom, pp. 227, 228. 
 
256 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 (so notoriously reckless of the morrow as he is) not 
 only made the discovery of the evils of interbreeding, 
 but acted on it with promptitude and self-denial. 
 Thirdly : Mr. Morgan seems to require, for the 
 enforcement of the exogamous law, a contrat social. 
 The larger communities meet, and divide themselves 
 into smaller groups, within which wedlock is for- 
 bidden. This ‘ social pact ’ is like a return to the 
 ideas of Rousseau. Fourthly : The hypothesis credits 
 early men with knowledge and discrimination of 
 near degrees of kin, which they might well possess 
 if they lived in patriarchal families, but which, ex 
 hypothesis they could not possess. But it represents 
 that they did not act on their knowledge. Instead 
 of prohibiting marriage between parents and children, 
 cousins, nephews and aunts, uncles and nieces, they 
 prohibited marriage within the limit of the name of 
 the kin. This is still the Hindoo rule, and, if the 
 Romans really might not at one time marry within 
 the genSf it was the Roman rule. Now observe, this 
 rule fails to effect the very purpose for which ex 
 hypothesi it was instituted. Where the family name 
 goes by the male side, marriages between cousins are 
 permitted, as in India and China. These are the 
 very marriages which some theorists now denounce 
 as pernicious. But, if the family name goes by the 
 female side, marriages between half-brothers and 
 half-sisters are permitted, as in ancient Athens and 
 among the Hebrews of Abraham's time. Once 
 more, the exogamous prohibition excludes, in China, 
 America, Africa, Australia, persons who are in no 
 way akin (according to our ideas) from intermarriage. 
 
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE FAMILY. 257 
 
 Thus Mr. Doolittle writes ? h ‘ Males and females of 
 the same surname will never intermarry in China. 
 Cousins who have not the same ancestral surname 
 may intermarry. Though the ancestors of persons 
 of the same surname have not known each other for 
 thousands of years, they may not intermarry.’ The 
 Hindoo gotra rule produces the same effects. 
 
 For all these reasons, and because of the improb- 
 ability of the physiological discovery, and of the moral 
 ‘ reform ’ which enforced it ; and again, because the 
 law is not of the sort which people acquainted with 
 near degrees of kinship would make ; and once more 
 because the law fails to effect its presumed purpose, 
 while it does attain ends at which it does not aim — we 
 cannot accept Mr. Morgan’s suggestion as to the origin 
 of exogamy. Mr. M‘Lennan did not live to publish 
 a subtle theory of the origin of exogamy, which he 
 had elaborated. In Studies in Ancient History he 
 hazarded a conjecture based on female infanticide : — 
 
 We believe the restrictions on marriage to be con- 
 nected with the practice in early times of female infanticide, 
 which rendering women scarce, led at once to polyandry 
 within the tribe, and the capturing of women from with- 
 out. . . . Hence the cruel custom which, leaving the 
 primitive human hordes with very few young women of their 
 own, occasionally with none, and in any case seriously 
 disturbing the balance of the sexes within the hordes, forces 
 them to prey upon one another for wives. Usage, induced 
 by necessity, would in time establish a prejudice among 
 the tribes observing it, a j)rejudice strong as a principle of 
 religion — as every prejudice relating to marriage is apt to 
 be— against marrying women of their own stock. 
 
 ^Domestic Manners of the Chinese, i. gg. 
 
 S 
 
258 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 Mr. McLennan describes his own hypothesis as ‘ a 
 su^^estion thrown out at what it was worth.’ ^ In 
 his later years, as we have said, he developed a very 
 subtle and ingenious theory of the origin of exogamy, 
 still connecting it with scarcity of women, but making 
 use of various supposed stages and processes in the 
 development of the law. That speculation remains 
 unpublished. To myself, the suggestion given in 
 Studies in Ancient History seems inadequate. I find 
 it difficult to conceive that the frequent habit of 
 stealing women should indispose men to marry the 
 native women they had at hand. That this indis- 
 position should grow into a positive law, and the in- 
 fringement of the law be regarded as a capital offence, 
 seems more inconceivable. My own impression 
 is, that exogamy may be connected with some early 
 superstition or idea of which we have lost the touch, 
 and which we can no longer explain.^ Possibly it 
 may be only one form of the Totem taboo. You may 
 not marry a woman of your totem, as you may not 
 eat an animal of the species. 
 
 Thus far, the consideration of exogamy has thrown 
 no clear light on the main question — the question 
 whether the customs of civilised races contain relics 
 of female kinship. On Mr. Lewis Morgan’s theory 
 of exogamy, that Aryan custom is unconnected with 
 female kinship, polyandry, and scarcity of women. 
 On Mr. M'Lennan’s theory, exogamy is the result of 
 scarcity of women, and implies polyandry and female 
 kinship. But neither theory has seemed satisfactory. 
 
 ^ Fortiii<(htly Review, June t, 1877. 
 
 “ Cf. Sir John Lubbock, Origin of Civilisation, pp. 104, 125 et seq. 
 
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE FAMILY. 259 
 
 Yet we need not despair of extracting some evidence 
 from exogamy, and that evidence, on the whole, is in 
 favour of Mr. M^Lennan’s general hypothesis, (i) 
 The exogamous prohibition must have first come into 
 force when kinship was only reckoned on one side of the 
 family. This is obvious, whether we suppose it to 
 have arisen in a society which reckoned by male or 
 by female kinship. In the former case, the law only 
 prohibits marriage with persons of the father’s, in 
 the second case with persons of the mother’s, family 
 name, and these only it recognises as kindred. (2) 
 Our second point is much more important. The 
 exogamous prohibition must first have come into 
 force when kinship was so little understood that it 
 could best be denoted by the family name. This would 
 be self-evident, if we could suppose the prohibition to 
 be intended to prevent marriages of relations.^ Had 
 the authors of the prohibition been acquainted with 
 the nature of near kinships, they would simply (as we 
 do) have forbidden marriage between persons in those 
 degrees. The very nature of the prohibition, on the 
 other hand, shows that kinship was understood in a 
 manner all unlike our modern system. The limit of 
 kindred was everywhere the family name : a limit 
 which excludes many real kinsfolk and includes many 
 who are not kinsfolk at all. In Australia especially, 
 and in America, India, and Africa, to a slighter extent, 
 that definition of kindred by the family name actually 
 
 ^ We do not, however, make this presumption. Considering what 
 sort of affair truly primitive marriage must have been, there may 
 have risen a prejudice against it within the group. Any one acquainted 
 with New Caledonian and Arab marriage usages will understand this 
 suggestion. 
 
26o 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 includes alligators, smoke, paddy melons, rain, cray- 
 fish, sardines, and what you please.^ Will any one 
 assert, then, that people among whom the exogamous 
 prohibition arose were organised on the system of the 
 patriarchal family, which permits the nature of kin- 
 ship to be readily understood at a glance ? Is it not 
 plain that the exogamous prohibition (confessedly 
 Aryan) must have arisen in a stage of culture when 
 ideas of kindred were confused, included kinship 
 with animals and plants, and were to us almost, if 
 not quite, unintelligible ? It is even possible, as Mr. 
 McLennan says,^ ‘ that the prejudice against marrying 
 women of the same group may have been established 
 before the facts of blood relationship had made any deep 
 impression on the human mind.' How the exogamous 
 prohibition tends to confirm this view will next be 
 set forth in our consideration of Totemism. 
 
 (3) The Evidence from Totemism. — Totemism is the 
 name for the custom by which a stock (scattered 
 through many local tribes) claims descent from and 
 kindred with some plant, animal, or other natural 
 object. This object, of which the effigy is sometimes 
 worn as a badge or crest, members of the stock refuse 
 to eat. As a general rule, marriage is prohibited 
 between members of the stock — between all, that is, 
 who claim descent from the same object and wear 
 the same badge. The exogamous limit, therefore, is 
 denoted by the stock-name and crest, and kinship is 
 kinship in the wolf, bear, potato, or whatever other 
 object is recognised as the original ancestor. Finally, 
 
 ^ Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 169. Natives call these objects their 
 kin, ‘ of one flesh ’ with them. 
 
 ^Studies, p. 1 12. 
 
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE FAMILY. 261 
 
 as a general rule, the stock-name is derived through 
 the mother, and where it is derived through the father 
 there are proofs that the custom is comparatively 
 modern. It will be acknowledged that this sort of 
 kindred, which is traced to a beast, bird, or tree, which 
 is recognised in every person bearing the same stock- 
 name, which is counted through females, and which 
 governs marriage customs, is not the sort of kindred 
 that would naturally arise among people regulated 
 on the patriarchal or monandrous family system. 
 Totemism, however, is a widespread institution prevail- 
 ing all over the north of the American continent, 
 also in Peru (according to Garcilasso de la Vega); 
 in Guiana (the negroes have brought it from the 
 African Gold Coast, where it is in full force, as it 
 also is among the Bechuanas) ; in India among Hos, 
 Garos, Kassos, and Oraons ; in the South Sea Islands, 
 where it has left strong traces in Mangaia; in Siberia, 
 and especially in the great island continent of Aus- 
 tralia. The Semitic evidences for totemism (animal- 
 worship, exogamy, descent claimed through females), 
 are given by Professor Robertson Smith, in the 
 Journal of Philology, ix. 17, Animal Worship and 
 Animal Tribes among the Arabs, and in the Old 
 Testament. Many other examples of totemism might 
 be adduced (especially from Egypt), but we must 
 restrict ourselves to the following questions : — 
 
 I. What light is thrown on the original form of the 
 family by totemism ? 2. Where we find survivals 
 
 of totemism among civilised races, may we conclude 
 that these races (through scarcity of women) had once 
 been organised on other than the patriarchal model ? 
 
262 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 As to the lirst question, we must remember that 
 the origin and determining causes of totemism are still 
 unknown. Mr. M‘Lcnnan’s theory of the origin of 
 totemism has never been published.^ It may be said 
 without indiscretion that Mr. M‘Lennan once thought 
 totemism arose at a period when ideas of kinship 
 scarcely existed at all. ‘ Men only thought of marking 
 one off from another,’ as Garcilasso de la Vega says : 
 the totem was but a badge worn by all the persons 
 who found themselves existing in close relations; per- 
 haps in the same cave or set of caves. People united 
 by contiguity, and by the blind sentiment of kinship 
 not yet brought into explicit consciousness, might 
 mark themselves by a badge, and might thence derive 
 a name, and, later, might invent a myth of their 
 descent from the object which the badge represented. 
 I do not know whether it has been observed that the 
 totems are, as a rule, objects which may be easily 
 drawn or tattooed, and still more easily indicated in 
 gesture-language. Some interesting facts will be 
 found in the First Annual Report of the Bureau of 
 Ethnology, p. 458 (Washington, 1881). Here we 
 read how the ‘ Crow ’ tribe is indicated in sign-lan- 
 guage by ‘ the hands held out on each side, striking 
 the air in the manner of flying.’ The Bunaks (another 
 bird tribe) are indicated by an imitation of the cry 
 of the bird. In mentioning the Snakes, the hand 
 imitates the crawling motion of the serpent, and the 
 fingers pointed up behind the ear denote the Wolves. 
 
 ^ From The Patriarchal Theory (Preface, p. vii.) it appears that Mr. 
 M‘Lennan gave up his hypothesis and ceased to have any view on the 
 origin of totemism. 
 
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE FAMILY. 263 
 
 Plainly names of the totem sort are well suited to the 
 convenience of savages, who converse much in gesture- 
 language. Above all, the very nature of totemism 
 shows that it took its present shape at a time when 
 men, animals, and plants were conceived of as physi- 
 cally akin; when names were handed on through the 
 female line; when exogamy was the rule of marriage, 
 and when the family theoretically included all persons 
 bearing the same family name, that is, all who claimed 
 kindred with the same plant, animal, or object, whether 
 the persons are really akin or not. These ideas and 
 customs are not the ideas natural to men organised 
 in the patriarchal family. 
 
 The second question now arises : Can we infer 
 
 from survivals of totemism among Aryans that these 
 Aryans had once been organised on the full totemistic 
 principle, probably with polyandry, and certainly with 
 female descent ? Where totemism now exists in full 
 force, there we hnd exogamy and derivation of the 
 family name through women, the latter custom in- 
 dicating uncertainty of male parentage in the past. 
 Are we to believe that the same institutions have 
 existed wherever we hnd survivals of totemism ?. If 
 this be granted, and if the supposed survivals of 
 totemism among Aryans be accepted as genuine, 
 then the Aryans have distinctly come through a 
 period of kinship reckoned through women, with all 
 that such an institution implies.^ l"or indications that 
 the Aryans of Greece and India have passed through 
 
 ^ Some critics have understood me to maintain that traces of Aryan 
 totemism survive. I merely point out indications which appear (when 
 taken with other evidence) to point in that direction. What other 
 equally plausible explanation is offered ? 
 
264 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 the stage of totemism, the reader may be referred to 
 Mr. M^Lennan’s ‘Worship of Plants and Animals’ 
 {Fortnightly Review, i86g-, 1870). The evidence 
 there adduced is not all of the same value, and the 
 papers are only a hasty rough sketch based on the first 
 testimonies that came to hand. Probably the most im- 
 portant ‘ survival ’ of totemism in Greek legend is the 
 body of stories about the amours of Zeus in animal 
 form. Various noble houses traced their origin to 
 Zeus or Apollo, who, as a bull, tortoise, serpent, swan, 
 or ant, had seduced the mother of the race. The 
 mother of the Arcadians became a she-bear, like the 
 mother of the bear stock of the Iroquois. As we 
 know plenty of races all over the world who (like 
 Greek royal houses) trace their descent from serpents, 
 tortoises, swans, and so forth, it is a fair hypothesis 
 that the ancestors of the Greeks once believed in the 
 same fables. In later times the swan, serpent, ant, 
 or tortoise was explained as an avatar of Zeus. The 
 process by which an anthropomorphic god or hero 
 succeeds to the exploits of animals, of theriomorphic 
 gods and heroes, is the most common in mythology, 
 and is illustrated by actual practice in modern India. 
 When the Brahmins convert a pig-worshipping tribe 
 of aboriginals, they tell their proselytes that the pig 
 was an avatar of Vishnu. The same process is found 
 active where the Japanese have influenced the savage 
 Ainos, and persuaded them that their bear- or dog- 
 father was a manifestation of a deity. We know 
 from Plutarch {Theseus, vii. viii.) that one Carian 
 76T09, the loxidae, revered the asparagus because it was 
 friendly to their ancestress, as a totem should be. A 
 
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE FAMILY. 
 
 265 
 
 vaguer indication of totemism may perhaps be detected 
 in the ancient tli,eriomorphic statues of Greek gods, 
 as the Ram-Zeus and the Horse-headed Demeter, and 
 in the various animals and plants which were sacred 
 to each god and represented as his companions.^ 
 
 The hints of totemism among the ancient Irish 
 are interesting. One hero, Conaire, was the son of a 
 bird, and before his birth his father (the bird) told 
 the woman (his mother) that the child must never 
 eat the flesh of fowls. ‘ Thy son shall be named 
 Conaire, and that son shall not kill birds.’ ^ The hero 
 Cuchullain, being named alter the dog, might not eat 
 the flesh of the dog, and came by his ruin after trans- 
 gressing this totemistic taboo. Races named after 
 animals were common in ancient Ireland. The red- 
 deer and the wolves were tribes dwelling near Ossory, 
 and Professor Rhys, from the frequency of dog names, 
 inclines to believe in a dog totem in iM'in. According 
 to the ancient Irish ‘ Wonders of Eri,’ in the Book 
 of- Glendaloch, ‘ the descendants of the wolf are in 
 Ossory,’ and they could still transform themselves 
 into wolves.^ As to our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, there 
 is little evidence beyond the fact that the names (in 
 many cases patronymics) of the early settlements of 
 Hillings, Arlings, and the rest, are undeniably de- 
 rived from animals and plants. The manner in 
 which those names are scattered locally is precisely 
 like what results in America, Africa, and Australia 
 
 ^ Cf. ‘ Apollo and the Mouse,’ p. 118. 
 
 - O'CuTTy, Manners of Ancient Irish, 1 . ccclxx., quoting Trin. Coll. 
 Dublin MS. 
 
 ^ See also Elton’s Origins of English History, pp. 299-310. 
 
266 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 from the totemistic organisation.^ In Italy the ancient 
 custom by which animals were the leaders of the Vcr 
 sacrum or armed migration is well known. The Piceni 
 had for their familiar animal or totem (if we may call 
 it so) a woodpecker; the Hirpini were like the ‘de- 
 scendants of the wolf’ in Ossory, and practised a wolf- 
 dance in which they imitated the actions of the animal. 
 
 Such is a summary of the evidence which hints 
 that Aryans may once have been totemists, therefore 
 savages, and therefore, again, had probably been in a 
 stage when women were scarce and each woman had 
 many husbands. 
 
 (4) Evidence from the Gens or <yei/o ^. — There is no 
 more puzzling topic in the history of the ancient world 
 than the origin and nature of the community called by 
 the Romans the gens, and by the Greeks the yevo^. To 
 the present writer it seems that no existing community 
 of men, neither totem kin, nor clan, nor house com- 
 munity, nor gotra, precisely answers to the gens or 
 the yivo<;. Our information about these forms of 
 society is slight and confused. The most essential 
 thing to notice for the moment is the fact that both in 
 Greece and Rome the yevo<^ and gens were extremely 
 
 1 Kemble’s Saxons in England, p. 258. Politics of Aristotle, 
 Holland and Lang, p. gg.* 
 
 *Mr. Grant Allen kindly supplied me some time ago with a list of 
 animal and vegetable names preserve! in the titles of ancient English 
 village settlements. Among them are : ash, birch, bear (as among 
 the Iroquois), oak, buck, fir, fern, sun, wolf, thorn, goat, horse, 
 salmon (the trout is a totem in America), swan (familiar in Australia), 
 and others. It may be argued, as by Mr. Isaac Taylor, that such 
 names, in England, merely described local characteristics, though, in 
 Asia, India, Africa, Australia, Samoa, Egypt, similar names are de- 
 rived from toteniism. 
 
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE FAMILY. 267 
 
 ancient, so ancient that the 76^09 was decaying in 
 Greece when history begins, while in Rome we can 
 distinctly see the rapid decadence and dissolution 
 of the gens. In the laws of the Twelve Tables, the 
 gens is a powerful and respected corporation. In the 
 time of Cicero the nature of the gens is a matter but 
 dimly understood. Tacitus begins to be confused 
 about the gentile nomenclature. In the Empire 
 gentile law fades away. In Greece, especially at 
 Athens, the early political reforms transferred power 
 from the <yevo<^ to a purely local organisation, the 
 Deme. The Greek of historical times did not 
 announce his 761^09 in his name (as the Romans 
 always did), but gave his own name, that of his 
 father, and that of his deme. Thus we may infer 
 that in Greek and Roman society the 76^^09 and gens 
 were dying, not growing, organisations. In very 
 early times it is probable that foreign gentes were 
 adopted en bloc into the Roman Commonwealth. 
 Very probably, too, a great family, on entering the 
 Roman bond, may have assumed, by a fiction, the 
 character and name of a gens. But that Roman 
 society in historical times, or that Greek society, 
 could evolve a new gens or 761/09 in a normal natural 
 way, seems excessively improbable. 
 
 Keeping in mind the antique and ‘ obsolescent ’ 
 character of the gens and 76^^09, let us examine the theo- 
 ries of the origin of these associations. The Romans 
 themselves knew very little about the matter. Cicero 
 quotes the dictum of Scaivola the Pontifex, according 
 to which the gens consisted of all persons of the same 
 gentile name who were not in any way disquali- 
 
268 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 fied.^ Thus, in America, or Australia, or Africa, all 
 persons bearing the same totem name belong to that 
 totem kin. Festus defines members of- a gens as per- 
 sons of the same stock and same family name. Varro 
 says (in illustration of the relationships of words and 
 cases), ‘ Ah Emilio homines orti TEmilii sunt gentiles.’ 
 The two former definitions answer to the conception 
 of a totem kin, which is united by its family name and 
 belief in identity of origin. Varro adds the element, 
 in the Roman gens, of common descent from one 
 male ancestor. Such was the conception of the gens 
 in historical times. It was in its way an association 
 of kinsfolk, real or supposed. According to the Laws 
 of the Twelve Tables the gentiles inherited the pro- 
 perty of an intestate man without agnates, and had 
 the custody of lunatics in the same circumstances. 
 The gens had its own sacellum or chapel, and its own 
 sacra or religious rites. The whole gens occasionally 
 went into mourning when one of its members was 
 unfortunate. It would be interesting if it could be 
 shown that the sacra were usually examples of ances- 
 tor-worship, but the faint indications on the subject 
 scarcely permit us to assert this. 
 
 On the whole. Sir Henry Maine strongly clings to 
 the belief that the gens commonly had ‘ a real core of 
 agnatic consanguinity from the very first.’ But he 
 justly recognises the principle of imitation, which 
 induces men to copy any fashionable institution. 
 Whatever the real origin of the gens, many gentes 
 
 ^ ‘ Gentiles sunt qui inter se eodem nomine sunt. Qui ab ingenii 
 oriundi sunt. Quorum majorum nemo servitutem servivit. Qui capite 
 non sunt deminuti.’ 
 
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE FAMILY. 26q 
 
 were probably copies based on the fiction of common 
 ancestry. 
 
 On Sir Henry Maine’s system, then, the gens 
 rather proves the constant existence of recognised 
 male descents among the peoples where it exists.^ 
 
 The opposite theory of the gens is that to which 
 Mr. McLennan inclined. ‘ The composition and 
 organisation of Greek and Roman tribes and com- 
 monwealths cannot well be explained except on the 
 hypothesis that they resulted from the joint operation, 
 in early times, of exogamy, and the system of kinship 
 through females only.’ ‘ The gens,' he adds, ‘ was 
 composed of all the persons in the tribe bearing the 
 same name and accounted of the same stock. Were 
 the gentes really of different stocks, as their names 
 would imply and as the people believed ? If so, how 
 came clans of different stocks to be united in the 
 same tribe ? . . . How came a variety of such groups, 
 of different stocks, to coalesce in a local tribe ? ’ These 
 questions, Mr. McLennan thought, could not be 
 answered on the patriarchal hypothesis. His own 
 theory, or rather his theory as understood by the 
 present writer, may be stated thus. In the earliest 
 times there were homogeneous groups, which became 
 totem kin. Let us say that, in a certain district, 
 there were groups called woodpeckers, wolves, bears, 
 suns, swine, each with its own little territory. These 
 groups were exogamous, and derived the name through 
 the mother. Thus, in course of time, when sun men 
 married a wolf girl, and her children were wolves, 
 
 ^ The arguments on the other side in M‘Lennan’s Patriarchal 
 Theory seem overpowering. 
 
 ‘^Studies hi Ancient History, p.j,2i2. 
 
270 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 there would be wolves in the territory of the suns, 
 and thus each stock would be scattered through all 
 the localities, just as we see in Australia and America. 
 Let us suppose that (as certainly is occurring in 
 Australia and America) paternal descent comes to be 
 recognised in custom. This change will not surprise 
 Sir Henry Maine, who admits that a system of male 
 may alter, under stress of circumstances, to a system 
 of female descents In course of time, and as know- 
 ledge and common-sense advance, the old superstition 
 of descent from a woodpecker, a bear, a wolf, the sun, 
 or what not, becomes untenable. A human name 
 is assumed by the group which had called itself the 
 woodpeckers or the wolves, or perhaps by a local 
 tribe in which several of these stocks are included. 
 Then a fictitious human ancestor is adopted, and 
 perhaps even adored. Thus the wolves might call 
 themselves Claudii,from their chiefs name, and, giving 
 up belief in descent from a wolf, might look back to 
 a fancied ancestor named Claudius. The result of 
 these changes will be that an exogamous totem kin, 
 with female descent, has become a ^ens, with male 
 kinship, and only the faintest trace of exogamy. An 
 example of somewhat similar processes must have 
 occurred in the Highland clans after the introduction 
 of Christianity, when the chiefs Christian name 
 became the patronymic of the people who claimed 
 kinship with him and owned his sway. 
 
 Are there any traces at all of totemism in what 
 we know of the Roman gcntcs ? Certainly the traces 
 are very slight ; perhaps they are only visible to the 
 eye of the intrepid anthropologist. I give them for 
 
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE FAMILY. • 27I 
 
 what they are worth, merely observinf]^ that they do 
 tally, as far as they go, with the totemistic theory. 
 The reader interested in the subject may consult 
 the learned Streinnius’s Dc Gentibus Romanis, p. 104 
 (Aldus, Venice, 1591). 
 
 Among well-known savage totems none is more 
 familiar than the sun. Men claim descent from the 
 sun, call themselves by his name, and wear his effigy 
 as a badge. ^ Were there suns in Rome ? The Aure- 
 lian gens is thus described on the authority of I'estus 
 Pompeius : ‘ The Aurelii were of Sabine descent. 
 The Aurelii were so named from the sun {aurum, urerc, 
 the burning thing), because a place was set apart 
 for them in which to pay adoration to the sun.’ 
 Here, at least, is an odd coincidence. Among other 
 gentile names, the P'abii, Cornelii, Papirii, Pinarii, 
 Cassii, are possibly connected with plants ; while wild 
 etymology may associate Porcii, Aquilii, and Valerii 
 with swine and eagles. Pliny {H. N xviii. 3) gives a 
 fantastic explanation of the vegetable names of Roman 
 gentes. We must remember that vegetable names are 
 very common in American, Indian, African, and 
 Australian totem kin. Of sun names the Natchez 
 and the Incas of Peru are familiar examples. Turning 
 from Rome to Greece, we find the yevo<=; less regarded 
 and more decadent than the gens. Yet, according 
 to Grote (iii. 54) the yevo<; had — (i) Saera, ‘ in honour 
 of the same god, supposed to be the primitive ances- 
 tor.’ (2) A common burial-place. (3) Certain rights 
 of succession to property. (4) Obligations of mutual 
 help and defence. (5) Mutual rights and obligations 
 
 ^ Fortnightly Review, Oct., i86g : ‘ Archaeologia Americana,’ ii. 13. 
 
272 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 to intermarry in certain cases. (6) Occasionally 
 possession of common property. 
 
 Traces of the totem among the Greek yevrj are, 
 naturally, few. Almost all the known <yev 7 ] bore 
 patronymics derived from personal names. But it is 
 not without significance that the Attic demes often 
 adopted the names of obsolescent and that deme 
 names were, as Mr. Grote says (iii. 63), often ‘ derived 
 from the plants and shrubs which grew in their neigh- 
 bourhood.’ We have already seen that at least one 
 ancient yevo<;, the loxidae, revered the plant which, 
 as the myth ran, befriended their ancestress. One 
 thing is certain, the totem names, and a common ex- 
 planation of the totem names in Australia, corre- 
 spond with the names and Mr. Grote’s explanation 
 of the names of the Attic demes. ‘ One origin 
 of family names,’ says Sir George Grey (ii. 228), 
 
 ‘ frequently ascribed by the natives, is that they 
 were derived from some vegetable or animal being 
 common in the district which the family inhabited.’ 
 Some writers attempt to show that the Attic jevo<; 
 was once exogamous and counted kin on the 
 mother’s side, by quoting the custom which per- 
 mitted a man to marry his half-sister, the child of 
 his father but not of his mother. They infer that 
 this permission is a survival from the time when a 
 man’s father's children were not reckoned as his 
 kindred, and when kinship was counted through 
 mothers. Sir Henry Maine (p. 105) prefers M. Fustel 
 de Coulanges’ theory, that the marriage of half- 
 brothers and sisters on the father’s side was intended 
 to save the portion of the girl to the family estate. 
 
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE FAMILY. 27 J 
 
 Proof of this may be adduced from examination of 
 all the recorded cases of such marriages in Athens. 
 l)ut the reason thus suggested would have equally 
 justified marriage between brothers and sisters on 
 both sides, and this was reckoned incest. A well- 
 known line in Aristophanes shows how intense was 
 Athenian feeling about the impiety of relations with 
 a sister uterine. 
 
 On the whole, the evidence which we have 
 adduced tends to establish some links between the 
 ancient 76^09 and ^ens, and the totem kindreds of 
 savages. The indications are not strong, but they all 
 point in one direction. Considering the high civilisa- 
 tion of Rome and Greece at the very dawn of history 
 — considering the strong natural bent of these peoples 
 toward refinement — it is almost remarkable that even 
 the slight testimonies we have been considering should 
 have survived. 
 
 (5) On the evidence from myth and legend we 
 propose to lay little stress. But, as legends were not 
 invented by anthropologists to prove a point, it is odd 
 that the traditions of Athens, as preserved by Varro, 
 speak of a time when names were derived from the 
 mother, and when promiscuity prevailed. Marriage 
 itself was instituted by Cecrops, the serpent, just as 
 the lizard, in Australia, is credited with this useful 
 invention.^ Similar legends among non-Aryan races, 
 Chinese and Egyptian, are very common. 
 
 (6) There remains the evidence of actual fact 
 and custom among Aryan peoples. The Lycians, 
 according to Herodotus, ‘ have this peculiar custom, 
 
 ^Suidas, 3102. 
 
 T 
 
274 
 
 CUSTOM ANt) MYTH; 
 
 wherein they resemble no other men, they derive thelf 
 names from their mothers, and not from their fathers, 
 and through mothers reckon their kin.’ Status also 
 was derived through the mothers^ The old writer’s 
 opinion that the custom (so common in Australia, 
 America and Africa) was unique, is itself a proof of 
 his good faith. Bachofen (p. 390) remarks that several 
 L3’cian inscriptions give the names of mothers only. 
 Polybius attributes (assigning a fantastic reason) the 
 same custom of counting kin through mothers to the 
 Locrians.^ The British and Irish custom of deriving 
 descents through women is well known,^ and a story 
 is told to account for the practice. The pedigrees of 
 the British kings show that most did not succeed to 
 their fathers, and the various records of early Celtic 
 morals go to prove that no other system of kinship 
 than the maternal would have possessed any value, so 
 uncertain was fatherhood. These are but hints of 
 the prevalence of institutions which survived among 
 Teutonic races in the importance attached to the 
 relationship of a man’s sister’s son. Though no longer 
 his legal heir, the sister’s son was almost closer than 
 any other kinsman.^ 
 
 We have now summarised and indicated the nature 
 of the evidence which, on the whole, inclines us to the 
 belief of Mr. McLennan rather than of Sir Henry Maine. 
 The point to which all the testimony adduced con- 
 verges, the explanation which most readily solves all 
 the difficulties, is the explanation of Mr. M‘Lennan. 
 
 1 Herod., i. 173. It is not agreed that the Lycians were Aryans, 
 but surely the Locrians were ! ^ Cf. Bachofen, p. 309. 
 
 '^Compare the Irish Nennius, p. 127. '^Tacitus, Germania, xx. 
 
THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE FAMILY. 275 
 
 The Aryan races have very generally passed through 
 the stage of scarcity of women, polyandry, absence of 
 recognised male kinship, and recognition of kinship 
 tlfrough women. What Sir Henry Maine admits as 
 the exception, we are inclined to regard as having, in 
 a very remote past, been the rule. No one kind of 
 evidence — neither traces of marriage by capture, of 
 exogamy, of totemism, of tradition, of noted fact 
 among Lycians and Piets and Irish — would alone 
 suffice to guide our opinion in this direction. But 
 the cumulative force of the testimony strikes us as 
 not inconsiderable, and it must be remembered that 
 the testimony has not yet been assiduously collected. 
 
 Let us end by showing how this discussion illus- 
 trates the method of PMlklore. We have found 
 anomalies among Aryans. We have seen the gens an 
 odd, decaying institution. We have seen Greek families 
 claim descent from various animals, said to be Zeus, 
 or another god, in disguise. We have found them 
 tracing kinship and deriving names from the mother. 
 We have found stocks with animal and vegetable 
 names. We have found half-brothers and sisters 
 marrying. We have noted prohibitions to marry any 
 one of the same family name. All these institutions 
 are odd, anomalous, decaying things among Aryans, 
 and the more civilised the Aryans the more they decay. 
 All of them are living, active things among savages, 
 and, far from being anomalous, are in precise harmony 
 with savage notions of the world. Surely, then, where 
 they seem decaying and anomalous, as among Aryans, 
 these customs and laws are mouldering relics of ideas 
 and practices natural and inevitable among savages. 
 
 T 2 
 
276 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 THE ART OF SAVAGES.^ 
 
 ‘Avoid Coleridge, he is useless,' says Mr. Ruskin. 
 Why should the poetry of Coleridge be useful ? The 
 question may interest the critic, but we are only con- 
 cerned with Mr. Ruskin here, for one reason. His 
 disparagement of Coleridge as ‘ useless ’ is a survival 
 of the belief that art should be ‘ useful.’ This is the 
 savage’s view of art. He imitates nature, in dance, 
 song, or in plastic art, for a definite practical purpose. 
 His dances are magical dances, his images are made 
 for a magical purpose, his songs are incantations. Thus 
 the'theory that art is a disinterested expression of the 
 imitative faculty is scarcely warranted by the little we 
 know of art’s beginnings. W e shall adopt, provision- 
 ally, the hypothesis that the earliest art with which 
 we are acquainted is that of savages contemporary 
 or extinct. Some philosophers may tell us that all 
 known savages are only degraded descendants of 
 early civilised men who have, unluckily and inex- 
 plicably, left no relics of their civilisation. But we 
 shall argue on the opposite theory, that the art of Aus- 
 tralians, for example, is really earlier in kind, more 
 
 ^ The illustrations in this article are for the most part copied, by 
 permission of Messrs. Cassell & Co., from the Magazine of Art, in 
 which the Essay appeared. 
 
THE ART OF SAVAGES. 
 
 277 
 
 backward, nearer the rude beginnings of things, than 
 the art of people who have attained to some skill in 
 pottery, like the New Caledonians. These, again, are 
 much more backward, in a state really much earlier, 
 than the old races of Mexico and Peru ; while they, 
 in turn, show but a few traces of advance towards the 
 art of Egypt ; and the art of Egypt, at least after the 
 times of the Ancient Empire, is scarcely advancing in 
 the direction of the flawless art of Greece. We shall 
 be able to show how savage art, as of the Australians, 
 develops into barbarous art, as of the New Zealanders ; 
 while the arts of strange civilisations, like those of 
 Peru and Mexico, advance one step further ; and how, 
 again, in the early art of Greece, in the^Greek art of 
 ages prior to Pericles, there are remains of barbaric 
 forms which are gradually softened into beauty. But 
 there are necessarily breaks and solutions of continuity 
 in the path of progress. 
 
 One of the oldest problems has already risen before 
 us in connection with the question stated : Is art the 
 gratification of the imitative faculty ? Now, among 
 the lowest, the most untutored, the worst equipped 
 savages of contemporary races, art is rather decora- 
 tive on the whole than imitative. The patterns on 
 Australian shields and clubs, the scars which they 
 raise on their own flesh by way of tattooing, are very 
 rarely imitations of any objects in nature. The 
 Australians, like the Red Indians, like many African 
 and some aboriginal Indian races, Peruvians, and 
 others, distinguish their families by the names of 
 various plants and animals, from which each family 
 boasts its descent. Thus you have a family called 
 
278 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 Kangaroos, descended, as they fancy, from the kanga- 
 roo ; another from the cockatoo, another from the 
 black snake, and so forth. Now, in many quarters 
 of the globe, this custom and this superstition, com- 
 bined with the imitative faculty in man, has produced 
 a form of art representing the objects from which the 
 families claim descent. This art is a sort of rude 
 heraldry — probably the origin of heraldry. Thus, if 
 a Red Indian (say a Delaware) is of the family of 
 the Turtle, he blazons a turtle on his shield or coat, 
 probably tattoos or paints his breast with a figure of a 
 
 Fig. I. — An Australian Shield. 
 
 turtle, and always has a turtle, reversed, designed on 
 the pillar above his grave when he dies, just as, in 
 our mediaeval chronicles, the leopards of an English 
 king are reversed on his scutcheon opposite the 
 record of his death. But the Australians, to the best 
 of my knowledge, though they are much governed by 
 belief in descent from animals, do not usually blazon 
 their crest on their fiesh, nor on the trees near the 
 place where the dead are buried. They have not 
 arrived at this pitch of imitative art, though they 
 have invented or inherited a kind of runes which they 
 
THE ART OF SAVAGES. 
 
 279 
 
 notch on sticks, and in which they convey to each 
 other secret messages. The natives of the Upper 
 Darling, however, do carve their family crests on 
 their shields. In place of using imitative art, the 
 Murri are said, I am not quite sure with what truth, 
 to indicate the distinction of families by arrangements 
 of patterns, lines and dots, tattooed on the breast and 
 arms, and carved on the bark of trees near places of 
 burial. In any case, the absence of the rude imita- 
 tive art of heraldry among a race which possesses all 
 the social conditions that produce this art is a fact 
 worth noticing, and itself proves that the native art 
 of one of the most backward races we know is not 
 essentially imitative. 
 
 Any one who will look through a collection of 
 Australian weapons and utensils will be brought 
 to this conclusion. The shields and the clubs are 
 elaborately worked, but almost always without any 
 representation of plants, animals, or the human 
 figure. As a rule the decorations take the simple 
 shape of the ‘ herring-bone ’ pattern, or such other 
 patterns as can be produced without the aid of 
 spirals, or curves, or circles. There is a natural and 
 necessary cause of this choice of decoration. The 
 Australians, working on hard wood, with tools made 
 of flint, or broken glass, or sharp shell, cannot easily 
 produce any curved lines. Every one who, when a 
 boy, carved his name on the bark of a tree, re- 
 members the difficulty he had with S and G, while 
 he got on easily with letters like M and A, which 
 consist of straight or inclined lines. The savage 
 artist has the same difficulty with his rude tools in 
 

THE ART OF SAVAGES. 
 
 281 
 
 producing anything like satisfactory curves or spirals. 
 We engrave above (Fig. i) a shield on which an 
 Australian has succeeded, with obvious difficulty, in 
 producing concentric ovals of irregular shape. It may 
 be that the artist would have produced perfect circles 
 if he could. His failure is exactly like that of a 
 youthful carver of inscriptions coming to grief over 
 his G’s and S’s. Here, however (Fig. 2), we have three 
 shields which, like the ancient Celtic pipkin (the 
 tallest of the three figures in Fig. 3), show the earliest 
 known form of savage decorative art — the forms 
 which survive under the names of ‘ chevron ’ and 
 ‘ herring-bone.’ These can be scratched on clay with 
 the nails, or a sharp stick, and this primeval way of 
 decorating pottery made without the wheel survives, 
 with other relics of savage art, in the western isles of 
 Scotland. The Australian had not even learned to 
 make rude clay pipkins, but he decorated his shields 
 as the old Celts and modern old Scotch women 
 decorated their clay pots, with the herring-bone 
 arrangement of incised lines. In the matter of 
 colour the Australians prefer white clay and red 
 ochre, which they rub into the chinks in the wood- 
 work of their shields. When they are determined on 
 an ambush, they paint themselves all over with white, 
 justly conceiving that their sudden apparition in this 
 guise will strike terror into the boldest hearts. But 
 arrangements in black and white of this sort scarcely 
 deserve the name of even rudimentary art. 
 
 The Australians sometimes introduce crude de- 
 corative attempts at designing the human figure, as 
 in the pointed shield opposite (Fig. 2, a), which, with 
 
Fig. 3. — Savage Ornamentation 
 
THE ART OF SAVAGES. 
 
 283 
 
 the other Australian designs, are from Mr. Brough 
 Smyth’s Aborigines of Victoria. But these ambitious 
 efforts usually end in failure. 
 
 Though the Australians chiefly 
 confine themselves to decorative 
 art, there are numbers of wall- 
 paintings, so to speak, in the 
 caves of the countiy which prove 
 that they, like the Bushmen, 
 could design the human figure in 
 action when they pleased. Their 
 usual preference for the employ- 
 ment of patterns appears to me 
 to be the result of the nature of 
 their materials. In modern art 
 our mechanical advantages and 
 facilities are so great that we 
 are always carrying the method 
 and manner of one art over the 
 frontier of another. Our poetry 
 aims at producing the effects of 
 music ; our prose at producing 
 the effects of poetry. Our sculp- 
 ture tries to vie with painting in 
 the representation of action, or 
 with lace-making in the produc- 
 tion of reticulated surfaces, and 
 so forth. But the savage, in his 
 art, has sense enough to confine 
 himself to the sort of work for 
 which his materials are fitted. Set him in the bush 
 with no implements and materials but a bit of 
 
 Fig. 4. — An” 
 Australian Stele. 
 
284 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 broken shell and a lump of hard wood, and he 
 confines himself to decorative scratches. Place the 
 black in the large cave which Pundjel, the Australian 
 Zeus, inhabited when on earth (as Zeus inhabited the 
 cave in Crete), and give the black plenty of red and 
 white ochre and charcoal, and he will paint the 
 human figure in action on the rocky walls. Later, 
 he will return to the cave-paintings of the Australians 
 and the Bushmen in South Africa. At present we 
 must trace purely decorative art a little further. But 
 we must remember that there was once a race appar- 
 ently in much the same social condition as the Aus- 
 tralians, but far more advanced and ingenious in art. 
 The earliest men of the European Continent, about 
 whom we know much, the men whose bones and 
 whose weapons are found beneath the gravel-drift, 
 the men who were contemporary with the rhinoceros, 
 mammoth and cave-bear, were not further advanced 
 in material civilisation than the Australians. They 
 used weapons of bone, of unpolished stone, and 
 probably of hard wood. I>ut the remnants of their 
 art, the scraps of mammoth or reindeer bone in our 
 museums, prove that they had a most spirited style 
 of sketching from the life. In a collection of draw- 
 ings on bone (probably designed with a flint or a 
 shell), drawings by palaeolithic man, in the British 
 Museum, I have only observed one purely decorative 
 attempt. Even in this the decoration resembles an 
 effort to use the outlines of foliage for ornamental 
 purposes. In almost all the other cases the palaeo- 
 lithic artist has not decorated his bits of bone in the 
 usual savage manner, but has treated his bone as an 
 
THE ART OF vSAVAGES. 
 
 285 
 
 artist treats his sketch-book, and has scratched out- 
 lines of beasts and fishes with his sharp shell as an 
 artist uses his point. These ancient bones, in short, 
 are the sketch-books of European savages, whose 
 untaught skill was far greater than that of the Aus- 
 tralians, or even of the Eskimo. When brought into 
 
 Fig. 5. — a, A Maori Design ; b, Tattoo on a Maori’s Face. 
 
 contact with Europeans, the Australian and Eskimo 
 very quickly, even without regular teaching, learn to 
 draw with some spirit and skill. In the Australian 
 stele, or grave-pillar, which we have engraved (Eig. 4), 
 the shapeless figures below the men and animals are the 
 dead, and the boilyas or ghosts. Observe the patterns 
 in the interstices. The artist had lived with Euro- 
 
286 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 peans. In their original conditions, however, the 
 Australians have not attained to such free, artist-like, 
 and unhampered use of their rude materials as the 
 mysterious European artists who drew the mammoth 
 that walked abroad amongst them. 
 
 We have engraved one solitary Australian attempt 
 at drawing curved lines. The New Zealanders, a 
 race far more highly endowed, and, when Europeans 
 arrived amongst them, already far more civilised than 
 the Australians, had, like the Australians, no metal 
 implements. But their stone weapons were harder 
 and keener, and with these they engraved the various 
 spirals and coils on hard wood, of which we give 
 examples here. It is sometimes said that New 
 Zealand culture and art have filtered from some 
 Asiatic source, and that in the coils and spirals 
 designed, as in our engravings, on the face of the 
 Maori chief, or on his wooden furniture, there may be 
 found debased Asiatic influences.^ This is one of the 
 questions which we can hardly deal with here. Per- 
 haps its solution requires more of knowledge, anthro- 
 pological and linguistic, than is at present within the 
 reach of any student. Assuredly the races of the 
 earth have wandered far, and have been wonder- 
 fully intermixed, and have left the traces of their 
 passage here and there on sculptured stones, and in 
 the keeping of the ghosts that haunt ancient grave- 
 steads. But when two pieces of artistic work, one 
 civilised, one savage, resemble each other, it is always 
 dangerous to suppose that the resemblance bears 
 
 ’ Part of the pattern (Fig. 5, h) recurs on the New Zealand Bull- 
 roarer, engraved in the Essay on the Bull-roarer. 
 
THE ART OE SAVAGES. 287 
 
 Witness to relationship or contact between the races, 
 or to intluences imported by one from the other. 
 New Zealand work may be Asiatic in origin, and 
 debased by the effect of centuries of lower civilisa- 
 tion and ruder implements. Or Asiatic ornament 
 may be a form of art improved out of ruder forms, 
 like those to which the New Zealanders have already 
 attained. One is sometimes almost tempted to regard 
 the favourite Maori spiral as an 
 imitation of the form, not unlike 
 that of a bishop’s crozier at the 
 top, taken by the great native 
 ferns. Examples of resem- 
 blance, to be accounted for by 
 the development of a crude early 
 idea, may be traced most easily 
 in the early pottery of Greece. 
 
 No one says that the Greeks 
 borrowed from the civilised 
 people of America. Only a 
 few enthusiasts say that the 
 civilised peoples of America, especially the Peruvians, 
 are Aryan by race. Yet the remains of Peruvian 
 palaces are often by no means dissimilar in style from 
 the ‘ Pelasgic ’ and ‘ Cyclopean ’ buildings of gigantic 
 stones which remain on such ancient Hellenic sites 
 as Argos and Mycenae. The probability is that men 
 living in similar social conditions, and using similar 
 implements, have unconsciously and unintentionally 
 arrived at like results. 
 
 Pew people who are interested in the question 
 can afford to visit Peru and Mycenae and study 
 
288 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 the architecture for themselves. But any one who 
 is interested in the strange , identity of the human 
 mind everywhere, and in the necessary forms of early 
 art, can go to the British Museum and examine the 
 American and early Greek pottery. Compare the 
 Greek key pattern and the wave pattern on Greek and 
 Mexican vases, and compare the bird faces, or human 
 faces very like those of birds, with the similar faces 
 on the clay pots which Dr. Schliemann dug up at 
 Troy. The latter are engraved in his book on Troy. 
 Compare the so-called ‘ cuttle-hsh ’ from a Peruvian 
 jar with the same figure on the early Greek vases, 
 most of which are to be found in the last of the 
 classical vase-rooms upstairs. Once more, compare 
 the little clay ' whorls ’ of the Mexican and Peruvian 
 room with those which Dr. Schliemann found so 
 numerous at Hissarlik. The conviction becomes 
 irresistible that all these objects, in shape, in purpose, 
 in character of decoration, are the same, because the 
 mind and the materials of men, in their early stages 
 of civilisation especially, are the same everywhere. 
 You might introduce old Greek bits of clay-work, 
 figures or vases, into a Peruvian collection, or might 
 foist Mexican objects among the clay treasures of 
 Hissarlik, and the wisest archaeologist would be 
 deceived. The Greek fret pattern especially seems 
 to be one of the earliest that men learnt to draw. 
 The svastika, as it is called, the cross with lines at 
 right angles to each limb, is found everywhere — in 
 India, Greece, Scotland, Peru — as a natural bit of 
 ornament. The allegorising fancy of the Indians 
 gave it a mystic meaning, and the learned have built 
 
THE ART OF SAVAGES. 289 
 
 I know not what worlds of religious theories on this 
 ‘ pre-Christian cross/ which is probably a piece of 
 hasty decorative work, with no original mystic meaning 
 at all.^ Ornaments of this sort were transferred from 
 wood or bone to clay, almost as soon as people learned 
 that early art, the potter s, to which the Australians 
 have not attained, though it was familiar to the not 
 distant people of New Caledonia. The style of 
 spirals and curves, again, once acquired (as it was by 
 the New Zealanders), became the favourite of some 
 races, especially of the Celtic. Any one who will 
 study either the ornaments of Mycenae, or those of 
 any old Scotch or Irish collection, will readily 
 recognise in that art the development of a system of 
 ornament like that of the Maoris. Classical Greece, 
 on the other hand, followed more in the track of the 
 ancient system of straight and slanted lines, and we 
 do not find in the later Greek art that love of inter- 
 lacing coils and spirals which is so remarkable among 
 the Celts, and which is very manifest in the orna- 
 ments of the Mycenaean hoards — that is, perhaps, of 
 the ancient Greek heroic age. The causes of these 
 differences in the development of ornament, the 
 causes that made Celtic genius follow one track, and 
 pursue to its aesthetic limits one early motif, while 
 classical art went on a severer line, it is, perhaps, 
 impossible at present to ascertain. But it is plain 
 enough that later art has done little more than 
 develop ideas of ornament already familiar to un- 
 tutored races. 
 
 ^ See Schliemann’s Trq/rt, wherein is much learning and fancy 
 about the Aryan Svastika. 
 
2Q0 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 It has been shown that the art which aims at 
 decoration is better adapted to both the purposes 
 and materials of savages than the art which aims at 
 representation. As a rule, the materials of the lower 
 savages are their own bodies (which they naturally 
 desire to make beautiful for ever by tattooing), and 
 
 Fig. 7. — Bushman Dog. 
 
 the hard substances of which they fashion their tools 
 and weapons. These hard substances, when worked 
 on with cutting instruments of stone or shell, are 
 most easily adorned with straight cut lines, and 
 spirals are therefore found to be, on the whole, a 
 comparatively late form of ornament. 
 
 We have now to discuss the efforts of the savage 
 to represent. Here, again, we have to consider the 
 purpose which animates him, and the materials which 
 are at his service. His pictures have a practical 
 purpose, and do not spring from what we are apt, 
 perhaps too hastily, to consider the innate love of 
 imitation for its own sake. In modern art, in modern 
 times, no doubt the desire to imitate nature, by paint- 
 ing or sculpture, has become almost an innate im- 
 pulse, an in-born instinct. But there must be some 
 ‘ reason why ’ for this ; and it does not seem at all 
 
THE ART OF SAVAGES. 
 
 29T 
 
 unlikely that we inherit the love, the disinterested 
 love, of imitative art from very remote ancestors, 
 whose habits of imitation had a direct, interested and 
 practical purpose. The member of Parliament who 
 mimics the crowing of a cock during debate, or the 
 street boy who beguiles his leisure by barking like a 
 dog, has a disinterested pleasure in the exercise of his 
 skill ; but advanced thinkers seem pretty well agreed 
 that the first men who imitated the voices of dogs, 
 and cocks, and other animals, did not do so merely 
 for fun, but with the practical purpose of indicating 
 to their companions the approach of these creatures. 
 Such were the rude beginnings of human language ; 
 and whether that theory be correct or not, there are 
 certainly practical reasons which impel the savage to 
 attempt imitative art. I doubt if there are many 
 savage races which do not use representative art for the 
 purposes of writing — that is, to communicate informa- 
 tion to persons whom they cannot reach by the voice, 
 and to assist the memory, which, in a savage, is perhaps 
 not very strong. To take examples. A savage man 
 meets a savage maid. She does not speak his lan- 
 guage, nor he hers. How are they to know whether, 
 according to the marriage laws of their race, they are 
 lawful mates for each other ? This important ques- 
 tion is settled by an inspection of their tattooed 
 marks. If a Thlinkeet man of the Swan stock meets 
 an .Iroquois maid of the Swan stock they cannot 
 speak to each other, and the ‘ gesture-language ’ is 
 cumbrous. But if both are tattooed with the swan, 
 then the man knows that this daughter of the 
 swan is not for him. He could no more marry her 
 
 u 2 
 
2Q2 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 than Helen of Troy could have married Castor, the 
 tamer of horses. Both are children of the Swan, as 
 were Helen and Castor, and must regard each other 
 as brother and sister. The case of the Thlinkeet man 
 and the Iroquois maid is extremely unlikely to occur; 
 but I give it as an example of the practical use, among 
 savages, of representative art. 
 
 Among the uses of art for conveying intelligence 
 we notice that even the Australians have what the 
 Greeks would have called the aKvrdXrj, a staff on 
 which inscriptions, legible to the Aborigines, are 
 engraven. I believe, however, that the Australian 
 (TKvrdXri is not usually marked with picture-writing 
 but with notches — even more difficult to decipher. 
 As an example of Red Indian picture-writing we 
 publish a scroll from Kohl’s book on the natives of 
 North America. This rude work of art, though the 
 reader may think little of it, is really a document 
 as important in its way as the Chaldsean clay tab- 
 lets inscribed with the record of the Deluge. The 
 coarsely-drawn figures recall, to the artist’s mind, 
 much of the myth of Manabozho, the Prometheus 
 and the Deucalion, the Cain and the Noah of the 
 dwellers by the great lake. Manabozho was a great 
 chief, who had two wives that quarrelled. The two 
 stumpy half-figures (4) represent the wives ; the 
 mound betweenthem is the displeasure of Manabozho. 
 Further on (5) you see him caught up between two 
 trees — an unpleasant fix, from which the wolves and 
 squirrels refused to extricate him. The kind of pyra- 
 mid with a figure at top (8) is a mountain, on which, 
 when the flood came, Manabozho placed his grand- 
 
THE ART OF SAVAGES. 
 
 293 
 
 Fig. 8. — Red Indian Picture-writing: the Legend of 
 Manabozho. 
 
294 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 mother to be out of the water’s way. The somewhat 
 similar object is Manabozho himself, on the top of his 
 mountain. The animals you next behold (lo) were 
 sent out by Manabozho to ascertain how the deluge 
 was faring, and to carry messages to his grandmother. 
 This scroll was drawn, probably on birch bark, by a 
 Red Man of literary attainments, who gave it to Kohl 
 (in its lower right-hand corner (ii) he has pictured the 
 event), that he might never forget the story of the 
 Manabozhian deluge. The Red Indians have always, 
 as far as European knowledge goes, been in the habit 
 of using this picture-writing for the purpose of retain- 
 ing their legends, poems, and incantations. It is 
 unnecessary to say that the picture-writing of Mexico 
 and the hieroglyphics of ancient Egypt are derived 
 from the same savage processes. I must observe 
 that the hasty indications of the figure used in pic- 
 ture-writing are by no means to be regarded as 
 measures of the Red Men’s skill in art. They can 
 draw much better than the artist who recorded the 
 Manabozhian legend, when they please. 
 
 In addition to picture-writing. Religion has fostered 
 savage representative art. If a man worships a lizard 
 or a bear, he finds it convenient to have an amulet 
 or idol representing a bear or a lizard. If one adores 
 a lizard or a bear, one is likely to think that prayer 
 and acts of worship addressed to an image of the 
 animal will please the animal himself, and make him 
 propitious. Thus the art of making little portable 
 figures of various worshipful beings is fostered, and 
 the craft of working in wood or ivory is born. As a 
 rule, the savage is satisfied with excessively rude re- 
 
Fig. c. — Bushman Wall-painting. 
 
296 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 presentations of his gods. Objects of this kind— rude 
 hewn blocks of stone and wood — were the most sacred 
 effigies of the gods in Greece, and were kept in the 
 dimmest recesses of the temple. No Demeter wrought 
 by the craft of Phidias would have appeared so holy 
 to the Phigalians as the strange old figure of the god- 
 dess with the head of a mare. The earliest Greek 
 sacred sculptures that remain are scarcely, if at all, 
 more advanced in art than the idols of the naked 
 Admiralty Islanders. But this is anticipating; in the 
 meantime it may be said that among the sources of 
 savage representative art are the need of something 
 like writing, and ideas suggested by nascent religion. 
 
 The singular war-picture (Fig. 9) from a cave in 
 South Africa, which we copy from the Cape Monthly 
 Magazine, probably represents a magical ceremony. 
 Bushmen are tempting a great water animal — a 
 rhinoceros, or something of that sort — to run across 
 the land, for the purpose of producing rain. The 
 connection of ideas is scarcely apparent to civilised 
 minds, but it is not more indistinct than the connec- 
 tion between carrying a bit of the rope with which a 
 man has been hanged and success at cards — a common 
 French superstition. The Bushman cave-pictures, 
 like those of Australia, are painted in black, red, 
 and white. Savages, like the Assyrians and the early 
 Greeks, and like children, draw animals much better 
 than the human figure. The Bushman dog in our little 
 engraving (Fig. 7) is all alive — almost as full of life as 
 the dog which accompanies the centaur Chiron, in that 
 beautiful vase in the British Museum which represents 
 the fostering of Achilles. The Bushman wall-paintings, 
 
THE ART OF SAVAGES. 2Q7 
 
 like those of Australia, seem to prove that savage art 
 is capable of consider- 
 able freedom, when 
 supplied with fitting 
 materials. Men seem 
 to draw better when 
 they have pigments 
 and a flat surface of 
 rock to work upon, 
 than when they are 
 scratching on hard 
 wood with a sharp 
 edge of a broken 
 shell. Though the 
 thing has little to do 
 with art, it may be 
 worth mentioning, as 
 a matter of curiosity, 
 that the labyrinthine 
 Australian caves are 
 decorated, here and 
 there, with the mark 
 of a red hand. The 
 same mysterious, or 
 at least unexplained, 
 red hand is impressed 
 on the walls of the 
 ruined palaces and 
 temples of Yucatan — 
 the work of a vanished 
 people. 
 
 . . Fig. io. — Palaeolithic Art. 
 
 1 here is one sin- 
 
2q8 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 gular fact in the history of savage art which reminds 
 us that savages, like civilised men, have various de- 
 grees of culture and various artistic capacities. The 
 oldest inhabitants of Europe who have left any traces 
 of their lives and handiwork must have been savages. 
 Their tools and weapons were not even formed of 
 polished stone, but of rough-hewn hint. The people 
 who used tools of this sort must necessarily have 
 enjoyed but a scanty mechanical equipment, and the 
 
 life they lived in 
 caves from which 
 they had to drive 
 the cave-bear, and 
 among snows where 
 they stalked the 
 reindeer and the 
 mammoth, must 
 have been very 
 rough. These ear- 
 liest known Euro- 
 peans, ‘ palaeolithic 
 men,’ as they are 
 called, from their 
 use of the ancient unpolished stone weapons, appear 
 to have inhabited the countries now known as Erance 
 and hmgland, before the great Age of Ice. This 
 makes their date one of incalculable antiquity ; they 
 are removed from us by a ‘ dark backward and abysm 
 of time.’ The whole Age of Ice, the dateless period 
 of the polishers of stone weapons, the arrival of men 
 using weapons of bronze, the time which sufficed to 
 change the climate and fauna and llora of Western 
 
 TTg. II. — Red Indian Art: the 
 Thunder-bird. 
 
THE ART OF SAVAGES. 2g() 
 
 r2urope, lie between us and palseolithie man. Yet 
 in him we must re- 
 cognise a skill more 
 akin to the spirit of 
 modern art than is 
 found in any other 
 savage race. Palaeo- 
 lithic man, like other 
 savages, decorated his 
 weapons ; but, as I 
 have already said, he 
 did not usually de- 
 corate them in the 
 common savage man- 
 ner with ornamental 
 patterns. He scratch- 
 ed on bits of bone 
 spirited representa- 
 tions of all the ani- 
 mals whose remains 
 are found mixed with 
 his own. He designed 
 the large-headed horse 
 of that period, and 
 science inclines to 
 believe that he drew 
 the breed correctly. 
 
 His sketches of the 
 mammoth, the rein- 
 deer, the bear, and of i2.-PAL^:oLirnic Art: a 
 
 , , Knife-handle. 
 
 many hshes, may be 
 
 seen in the British Museum, or engraved in such 
 
300 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 works as Professor Boyd Dawkins’s Early Man in 
 Britain. The object from which our next illustration 
 (Fig. 12) was engraved represents a deer, and was 
 a knife-handle. Eyes at all trained in art can readily 
 observe the wonderful spirit and freedom of these 
 ancient sketches. They are the rapid characteristic 
 work of true artists who know instinctively what to 
 select and what to sacrifice. 
 
 Some learned men, Mr. Boyd Dawkins among 
 them, believe that the Eskimo, that stunted hunting 
 and fishing race of the Western Arctic circle, are de- 
 scendants of the palaeolithic sketchers, and retain their 
 artistic qualities. Other inquirers, with Mr. Geikie 
 and Dr. Wilson, do not believe in this pedigree 
 
 Fig. 13. — Eskimo Drawing: a Reindeer Hunt. 
 
 of the Eskimo. I speak not with authority, but 
 the submission of ignorance, and as one who has no 
 right to an opinion about these deep matters of geology 
 and ethnology. But to me, Mr. Geikie’s arguments 
 appear distinctly the more convincing, and I cannot 
 think it demonstrated that the Eskimo are descended 
 from our old palaeolithic artists. But if Mr. Boyd 
 Dawkins is right, if the Eskimo derive their lineage 
 from the artists of the Dordogne, then the Eskimo are 
 sadly degenerated. In Mr. Dawkins’s Early Man is 
 an Eskimo drawing of a reindeer hunt, and a palaeo- 
 lithic sketch of a reindeer; these (by permission 
 
THE ART OF SAVAGES. 
 
 301 
 
 of the author and Messrs. Macmillan) we repro- 
 duce. Look at the vigour and life of the ancient 
 drawing — the feathering hair on the deer’s breast, his 
 head, his horns, the very grasses at his feet, are touched 
 with the graver of a true artist (Fig. 14). The design is 
 like a hasty memorandum of Leech’s. Then compare 
 the stiff formality of the modern Eskimo drawing (Fig. 
 
 a, 
 
 13). It is rather like a record, a piece of picture-writing, 
 than a free sketch, a rapid representation of what is 
 most characteristic in nature. Clearly, if the Eskimo 
 come from palaeolithic man, they are a degenerate 
 race as far as art is concerned. Yet, as may be seen 
 in Dr. Rink’s books, the Eskimo show considerable 
 skill when they have become acquainted with Euro- 
 pean methods and models, and they have at any 
 
302 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 rate a greater natural gift for design than the Red 
 Indians, of whose sacred art the Thunder-bird brooding 
 over page 298 is a fair example. The Red Men believe 
 in big birds which produce thunder. Quahteaht, the 
 Adam of Vancouver’s Island, married one, and this 
 (Fig. ii) is she. 
 
 We have tried to show how savage decorative art 
 supplied the first ideas of patternswhich were developed 
 in various ways by the decorative art of advancing 
 civilisation. The same progress might be detected in 
 representative art. Books, like the guide-book to 
 ancient Greece which Pausanias wrote before the glory 
 had quite departed, prove that the Greek temples were 
 museums in which the development of art might be 
 clearly traced. Furthest back in the series of images 
 of gods came things like that large stone which was 
 given to Cronus when he wished to swallow his infant 
 child Zeus, and which he afterwards vomited up with 
 his living progeny. This fetich-stone was preserved 
 at Delphi. Next came wild bulks of beast-headed 
 gods, like the horse-headed Demeter of Phigalia, and 
 it seems possible enough that there was an Artemis 
 with the head of a she-bear. Gradually the bestial 
 characteristics dropped, and there appeared such rude 
 anthropomorphic images of Apollo — more like South 
 Sea idols than the archer prince — as are now pre- 
 served in Athens. Next we have the stage of semi- 
 savage realism, which is represented by the metopes 
 of Selinus in Sicily, now in the British Museum, and 
 by not a few gems and pieces of gold work. Greek 
 temples have fallen, and the statues of the gods exist 
 only in scattered fragments. But in the representative 
 
THE ART OF SAVAGES. 
 
 303 
 
 collection of casts belonging to the Cambridge Arch- 
 aeological Museum, one may trace the career of Greek 
 art backwards from Phidias to the rude idol. 
 
 ‘ Jf^avage realism ’ is the result of a desire to repre- 
 sent an object as it is known to be, and not as it 
 appears. Thus Catlin, among the Red Indians, found 
 that the people refused to be drawn in profile. They 
 knew they had two eyes, and in profile they seemed 
 only to have one. Look at the Selinus marbles, and 
 you will observe that figures, of which the body is 
 seen in profile, have the full face turned to the spec- 
 tator. Again, the savage knows that an animal has 
 two sides ; both, he thinks, should be represented, but 
 
 Fig. 15. — Archaic Greek Gems. 
 
 he cannot foreshorten, and he finds the profile view 
 easiest to draw. To satisfy his need of realism he 
 draws a beast’s head full-face, and gives to the one 
 head two bodies drawn in profile, h^xamples of this 
 are frequent in very archaic Greek gems and gold 
 work, and Mr. A. S. Murray suggests (as I under- 
 stand him) that the attitude of the two famous lions, 
 which guarded vainly Agamemnon’s gate at Mycenae, 
 is derived from the archaic double-bodied and single- 
 headed beast of savage realism. \^ery good ex- 
 amples of these oddities may be found in the Journal 
 of the Hellenic Society, 1881, pi. xv. Here are 
 
304 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 double-bodied and single-headed birds, monsters, and 
 sphinxes. We engrave (Fig. 15) three Greek gems from 
 the islands as examples of savagery in early Greek art. 
 In the oblong gem the archers are rather below the 
 Red Indian standard of design. The hunter figured 
 in the first gem is almost up to the Bushman mark. 
 In his dress ethnologists will recognise an arrange- 
 ment now common among the natives of New Cale- 
 donia. In the third gem the woman between two 
 swans may be Leda, or she may represent Leto in 
 Delos. Observe the amazing rudeness of the design, 
 and note the modern waist and crinoline. The 
 artists who engraved these gems on hard stone had, 
 of necessity, much better tools than any savages 
 possess, but their art was truly savage. To discover 
 how Greek art climbed in a couple of centuries from 
 this coarse and childish work to the grace of the 
 ^gina marbles, and thence to the absolute freedom 
 and perfect unapproachable beauty of the work of 
 Phidias, is one of the most singular problems in the 
 history of art. Greece learned something, no doubt, 
 from her early knowledge of the arts the priests of' 
 Assyria and Egypt had elaborated in the valleys of 
 the Euphrates and the Nile. That might account 
 for a swift progress from savage to formal and hieratic 
 art ; but whence sprang the inspiration which led 
 her so swiftly on to art that is perfectly free, natural, 
 and god-like? It is a mystery of race, and of a 
 divine gift. ‘ The heavenly gods have given it to 
 mortals.’ 
 
% 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 ACC 
 
 Accadia, 62, 137, 151, 154 
 
 Achbor, 115 
 
 Acosta, 19 
 
 Adityas, 135 
 
 ACetes, 95 
 
 ^Elian, 109 
 
 iE^schines, 39 
 
 Africa, 149 
 
 — customs of women in, 72 
 
 — divining rod in, 184-186 
 Aleutians, 74 
 
 Amazon, Indians of, 13 1 
 Ancestor worship among Hotten- 
 tots and elsewhere, 197-21 1 
 Ancestors in stars, 129, 130 
 Animal bride, 76 
 
 — deities, 103-120 
 
 — worship, 1 18 
 Animals — 
 
 bear in religion, 176 
 descent claimed from, 104, 128 
 in stars, 121-142 
 sacred, 103-120 
 sun regarded as a beast, 133 
 Apollo and the mouse, 103-120 
 Apollodorus, 49 
 Apollonius Rhodius, 95 
 Apsaras, 65 
 Apsyrtos, 95 
 Apuleius, 64, 75 
 Arcadians, 128 
 Ares, 126 
 Argives, no 
 Aristophanes, 133 
 Arktos, 141 
 Arnobius, 39 
 Art, early Greek, 303 
 -• gods in, 118 
 
 BEA 
 
 Art of Ojibways, 293 
 
 — of savages, 276, 304 
 
 — Palaeolithic, 297 
 Artemis Orthia, 33 
 
 Aryan myths parallel with sav- 
 age, 83, 96, 97, 103-120, 141 
 
 — nuptial etiquette, 76 
 
 — race, 117 
 
 Aryans and savages, 134- 135 
 
 — sensitive to ‘loud’ colours, 69 
 Ashanti, 24 
 
 Assyria, army of, destroyed, ii2 
 Assyrian etymologies, 28 
 Astley, 72 
 
 Atharva Veda, 216, 217 
 Athens, owl of, no 
 Aurelii, 104 
 Australia, 72 
 
 — arts of, 283 
 
 — divination in, 170 
 
 — Herbert Spencer on, 125 
 
 — moon myth, 54 
 
 — native stratagem, 41 
 
 — religion of, 231 
 
 — swallowing myth, 54 
 Aymar, Jacques, 191-195 
 
 Baal, 62 
 
 — Hamon, 61 
 
 Ballad of ‘ Bonny Hind,’ 175 
 Ballads, 156-179 
 Bernier (Abbe), 197 
 Barbadoes, 20 
 Bear among stars, 121 
 
 — Callisto changed into, 128 
 
 — in P'innish and other reli- 
 gions, 176 
 
 X 
 
3o6 
 
 CUSTOM ANU MYTH. 
 
 BEA 
 
 Bear, Max Muller, Mr. on Great, 
 
 139 
 
 — Totem of Iroquois, no 
 
 — tribes, 128 
 Beaver, myth of, 79-81 
 Bergaigne, 241 
 Berosos, 60 
 
 Bheki, 77-80 
 Bible, 183 
 Bleek, 54, 131 
 Bongoes, 150 
 Boyd, Dawkins, 299 
 Brahmana Aitareya, 134 
 
 — Satapatha, 134 
 Brahmanas, 69 
 Brazil, mysteries in, 43 
 Brown, Mr. Robert, 60 
 
 — on Moly, 151-153 
 
 — on star myths, 137 
 Buddhist story, 132 
 Bull-roarer, 29-44 
 Bushmen, 41, 53, 147 
 
 — art of, 295 
 
 — their star myths, 122, 124, 13 1 
 
 — swallowing myth of, 53 
 
 Callaway, 84 
 Callisto, 132 
 Campbell, J. F., 93 
 Cannibals, 88 
 Cappadocia, 152 
 Castor and Pollux, in Australia, 
 128 
 
 Castren, 78 
 Catlin, 40 
 
 Cat, recognised as the moon, 117 
 Celts, art of, 289 
 Chanson de Geste, 161 
 Chepparas, 34 
 
 Chevreuil on divining rod, 188 
 China, planchette in, 187 
 Circe, 147, 154 
 Clemens of Alexandria, 39 
 Coins, no 
 
 Combs in Myths, 92, 98 
 ‘ Comparative Mythology,’ 58 
 Congo, mysteries on, 40 
 Costigan, Captain, 41 
 
 DEM 
 
 Crests, 109, no 
 Cronus, myth of, 45-63 
 
 — sickle of, 61 
 Crow, 126 
 Culture-Hero, 55 
 
 ‘ Cupid and Psyche,’ 64-86 
 Curtius, 3 
 Cushing, 37 
 
 Customs, savage Greek of 
 piation, 96 
 
 Customs of women, 71, 73 
 
 — of savages, 72 
 
 — among Yorubas, 73 
 
 — in Australia, 72 
 
 — Aleutian, 74 
 
 — Bulgarian, 73 
 
 — Breton, 75 
 
 — Carib, 73 
 
 — Carian, 74 
 
 — Circassian, 73 
 
 — Futa, 72 
 
 — Fijian, 73, 74 
 
 — Iroquois, 73 
 
 — Kaffir, 74 
 
 — Milesian, 74 
 
 — in Naz, 75 
 
 — Spartan, 73 
 
 — Timbuctoo, 72 
 
 — Welsh, 74 
 
 — Zulu, 74 
 
 Dacotah, 117 
 Dalton, 81 
 
 Dancing, Lucian on, 41 
 Dawn, 203, 210 
 
 — myth, 56 
 
 — Urvasi recognised as, 68 
 Dead, the home of the, 171 
 
 — worship of, 197-21 1, 239 
 De Brosses, 214-216, 
 
 227 
 
 De Cara, 3 
 
 De Gubernatis, 117, 148 
 Delphi, fetich-stone of, 52 
 Deluge myth, 34 
 Demeter, 19 
 
 — and the ram, 6 
 Demosthenes, 39, 40 
 
INDEX. 
 
 307 
 
 DEV 
 
 Devas, 234 
 
 ‘ Dionysiak Myth,’ 60 
 Divination in Australia, 170 
 Divining rod, i8o-ig6 
 Dog-star, 154 
 Dozon, 73 
 Dumuzi, 137 
 
 Edomites, 115 
 Egypt, 27, 1 13 
 
 — cats sacred in, 113 
 
 — mouse myth in, iii 
 
 — rats sacred in, 113 
 Emerald, worship of, 105 
 Eos, 69 
 
 Epic, Greek, its origin, 161 
 
 — of Finns, 156-179 
 Eratosthenes, 125 
 Eskimo, 130 
 
 — art of, 285 
 
 — moon myths, 132 
 Euhemerism, 199 
 Euhemeros, 197, 198 
 Eustathius, 103 
 Euthyphro, 46, 47 
 Exogamy, 24, 102, 245-275 
 
 — in Finland, 164 
 Ezekiel, 115 
 
 F'aiky-bkide, 82 
 
 Family, the history of, 245- 
 
 275 
 
 gods, 1 19 
 Farrer, 82 
 F'auriel, 178 
 
 F'etich-stone of Delphi, 52 
 F'etich-stones, 224 
 F'etichism, 212-242 
 Finns, poetry of, 156-179 
 F'olklore, 6 
 
 — method of, 10-28 
 
 — of plants, 143-155 
 F'ood of dead men, 171 
 
 — tabooed, 115, 119 
 F'rog, myths of, 77, 80 
 
 F'rog, descent claimed from, 
 104 
 
 F'uta, 72 
 
 HIT 
 
 Gallinomeros, 133 
 Gandharvas, 66, 67 
 Gaunab, 205-21 1 
 Garcilasso de la Vega, 103- 
 107 
 
 Gats (see ‘ F'amily ’) 
 
 FeVos (see ‘ F'amily’) 
 
 ‘ Gentile system,’ 236 
 Gervase (of Tilbury), 76 
 Ghosts, 143, 233 
 — (ancestral), 199 
 Giant, 90-92 
 Giordano Bruno, 139 
 Glacial age, 298 
 Gods, family, 119 
 
 — horned, 60 
 
 — in art, 1 18 
 
 — in bestial form, 134 
 
 — in Samoa, 119 
 
 — lame, 206 
 
 — of Greece, 27 
 
 — of Hottentots, 197-21 1 
 
 — Vedic, 234 
 
 — Vedic and Brahmanic, 27 
 Greece, fetich-stones in, 224 
 Greeks, their star myths, 136 
 Grimm, 56, 147 
 Grohmann, 116, 117 
 Guiana swallowing myth, 55 
 
 Hades, 65 
 Hahn, 149, 202-2 ii 
 Halevy, 155 
 Hamelin, Piper of, 114 
 Hare and moon, 132 
 — in Zulu myths, 168 
 Harpocration, 40 
 Hartung, 61 
 
 Harvest home, superstitions of, 
 18 
 
 Heaven and earth, 45 
 
 Indian myth of, 50 
 
 Heitsi Eibib, 209 
 Hephaestus, iii, 112 
 Herodotus, 41, iii 
 Hesiod, 53, 94, 128 
 Hittites, 153 
 
 X 2 
 
3o8 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 HOM 
 
 Homer, 6g, 103, 122 
 Horned gods, 60 
 Horus, 113 
 Hottentots, 197-21 1 
 
 — Herb-lore of, 143-155 
 Howitt and Fison, 34 
 Huacas, 105 
 
 Human sacrifice, 61 
 
 Ice, Age of, 298 
 II, 60 
 Iliad, 103 
 Inca, 103 
 Indra, 134 
 
 — a ‘ shape-shifter,’ 126 
 Infinite, the, 206 
 Initiation {see ‘ Mysteries ’) 
 loxidas, 1 19 
 
 Iron, a tabooed metal, 64 
 
 — the birth of, 169 
 
 — in Vedic India, 217 
 Iroquois, 36, no 
 Isaiah, 115 
 
 Isis, 130 
 
 Israel, Totems of, 115 
 
 Jacob, Verge dc, 187 
 Japanese, 93 
 Jason, 5 
 
 — the myth of, 87-102 
 
 — the Red Indian parallel, 99 
 
 — Samoan parallel, 97 
 
 Job Ben Solomon never saw his 
 wife, 72 
 Jonah, 55 
 Jurupari pipes, 43 
 
 Kaffir swallowing myth, 54 
 
 Kaffirs, 38, 218 
 
 Kalevala, 100, 156-179 
 
 Kamilaroi, 34 
 
 Karnos, Karnn, Keren, 60 
 
 Kathasarit sagara, 92 
 
 Kohl, 80 
 
 Keifj/os, 39 
 
 Krana, 59 
 
 Krishna, 170 
 
 MAR 
 
 KpoyiSrjs 57, 58 
 Kpoviwy, 57 
 Kpopos, 57, 61 
 Kuhn, 59, 68, 69 
 
 — diff^ers from Mr. Max Miiller 
 on etymology of Urvasi and 
 Pururavas, 70 
 
 — sees fire myths everywhere, 70 
 Kurnai, 34 
 
 Kwai Hemm, 53 
 
 Lafitau, 36, 73 
 Language and thought, 21 1 
 — childhood of, 218 
 Liebrecht, 70, 71, 112 
 Lightning, 117 
 Loftie, Mr., 113 
 Long on ‘Totamism,’ 105 
 Lonnrot, 160 
 Lucian, 41 
 
 Lyons, murder at, 191 
 
 M‘Lennan, Mr., on the family, 
 
 245-275 
 
 Magic, 146 
 
 — Algonquin, 99 
 
 — in Vedas, 241 
 
 — note of lower culture, 78 
 Maine, Sir Henry, on the family, 
 
 245-275 
 
 Maize, superstition about, 20 
 Malagasy Miirchen, 93 
 Malebranche, 190 
 Mandragora, 143-155 
 Mandrake, 144-152 
 Manabozho, 293 
 Mantis insect, 53, 208 
 Maoris, art of, 286 
 
 — myths of, 45-50 
 Miirchen — 
 
 Algonquin, 82 
 Bornoese, 82 
 Dutch, 76 
 
 features of, 157, 158, 163 
 of Nicht Nought Nothing, 89 
 of Swan Maidens, 82 
 Russian, 93, 171 
 
INDEX. 
 
 309 
 
 MAR 
 
 M iirchen — 
 
 Scotch, 8g 
 South African, 171 
 West Highland, 93 
 Marriage, early, 245-275 
 
 — law of exogamy in, 24, 102 
 
 — in connection with Totemism, 
 106-107 
 
 Master of Life, 105 
 
 Medea recognised as Moon, g6 
 
 — as Lightning, g6 
 Melanesia, 55, 146 
 Melanesian myths, 56 
 Melusinc, 117 
 
 — myth of, 76 
 Merman, forsaken, 76 
 Mexico, 16 
 
 Meyer, 66 
 Milky Way, 122 
 Mimnermus, 95 
 Moloch, 62 
 
 Moluna, Christoval de, 105 
 Moly, 143-155 
 
 Mongols, divining rod among, 
 184 
 
 Moon and hare, 132 
 
 — Australian myth of, 54 
 
 — man in, 132 
 
 — Medea thought to be, 96 
 
 — myths, 132 
 
 ‘ Moon-cat,’ 117 
 Mouse and Apollo, 103- 120 
 ‘ Mouse of Night,’ 117 
 Mouse tribe, 114 
 Mouse-Apollo, 103-120 
 Muir, 50 
 
 Miiller, Mr. Max, 57, 66, 67 
 
 — on childhood of language, 
 74. 218 
 
 — on etymology of Urvasi, 
 68, 69 
 
 — on fetichism, 212-242 
 
 — on Great Bear, 139, 140 
 
 — on Hottentot myths, 197- 
 211 
 
 — on Hyperion, 132 
 
 — on myth of sun-frog, 77, 78 
 
 — on Ote, 105 
 
 MYT 
 
 Muller, Mr. Max — 
 
 — on spelling of Totem, 105 
 
 — version of Vedic hymn, 83 
 Muller, C. O., 128 
 
 Murri, 127 
 Mysteries, 29-44 
 
 — Dionysiac, 39 
 
 — in Brazil, 43 
 
 — of Bushman, 42 
 Myths, Accadian, 137 
 
 — Algonquin, gg 
 
 — Australian, 130 
 
 — Brazilian, 131 
 
 — Bushman, 131 
 
 — Chinese, of mice, 112 
 
 — diffusion of, 23, 24 
 
 — Egyptian, of mice, 112; of 
 stars, 130 
 
 — Eskimo, 130, 132 
 
 — Finnish, loi 
 
 — Indian, of serpent, 81 
 
 — Japanese, 93 
 
 — names of taboo on, 82 
 
 — of animal bride, 76-80 
 
 — of beaver (Ojibway), 79 
 
 — of Cronus, 45-63 
 
 — of Finland, 156-179 
 
 — of Hottentots, 196-211 
 
 — of Jason, 87-102 
 
 — of Melanesia, 56 
 
 — of Melusine, 76 
 
 — of mice, 103-120 
 
 — of night, 55 
 
 — of plants, 143-155 
 
 — of ‘ sun frog,’ 77-80 
 
 — of swallowing, 53, 54 
 
 — of tabooed names, 82 
 
 — of wind, 55 
 
 — Peruvian, 129 
 
 — Samoan, 97 
 
 — Samoyed, 88 
 
 — solar, 131-133 
 
 — star, 121-142 
 
 — Zulu, 84, 85, 88, 93 
 Mythology — 
 
 a ‘ disease of language,’ i 
 philological method of, 201- 
 211 
 
310 
 
 CUSTOM AND MYTH. 
 
 MYT 
 
 Mythology — 
 
 systems of interpretation of, 
 
 I -9 
 
 views of Grohmann, 117 
 — of Gubernatis, 117 
 
 Naga (or serpent) race, 81 
 Names as germs of myths, i 
 
 — arguments against, 2, 3 
 
 — of husbands not to be uttered 
 by wives, 74 
 
 Naz, a fabulous country, 75 
 New Caledonia, 230 
 New Mexico, 31 
 New Zealand, 35, 143 
 Nicht Nought Nothing, 89 
 Night myth, 55 
 
 OcEANUS, 48 
 Odin, 27 
 Odysseus, 20 
 ‘ Odyssey,’ 144, 147 
 CKdipous, 5 
 Ojibways, art of, 293 
 
 — myths, 79 
 Orion, 121 
 
 Osiris, barrows of, 205 
 Osiris, 130 
 Ovahereroes, 20 
 Owl of Athens, no 
 
 — sacred in Samoa, 119 
 
 Pacarissa, Peruvian word for 
 Totem, 104 
 Pachacamac, 105 
 Palaeolithic man, his art, 299 
 Pausanias, 33, 52, 223 
 Pauthier, 50 
 Paoli, no 
 Papa, 45, 46 
 Peau d’Ane, 64 
 Persephone, 19, 65, 171 
 Perseus, 5 
 Peru, art in, 288 
 
 — religion of, 103- 107 
 Pezazi, 15 
 Philistines, 115, 116 
 
 RIK 
 
 Philology, method of, in mytho- 
 logy, 97, 201 
 
 Phocians, 41 
 Picture-writing, 292 
 Pindar, 95 
 Piper, the Pied, 114 
 Plcmchctte, in China, 187 
 Plants, folklore of, 143-155 
 Pleiades, 23, 121 
 
 — in Australia, 126 
 
 Popular element in myth and 
 religion, 178, 179 
 
 — tales {sec ‘ Miirchen ’) 
 Poseidon, 126 
 
 — swallowing of, 51 
 
 Pottery, common features of 
 early, 22 
 
 — early, 289 
 Pragapati, 59, 134, 2ii 
 Preller, 61, 96 
 Psyche, 171 
 Puang-ku, 50 
 Pundjel, 73, 130 
 
 — Australian god, 35 
 Pururavas, 65-67, 76 
 
 — etymology of, disputed, 68, 
 69, 71 
 
 Qat, 55 
 Qing, 42 
 
 Ra, 113 
 
 — rat of, 115 
 Rainbow, 117 
 Ram, in stars, 129 
 
 — Zeus and the, 6 
 
 Rat, sacred in Egypt, 113 
 Red Indians, 21, 152 
 
 — swallowing myth, 55 
 Religion, Aryan, 212-242 
 
 — Greek and Egyptian, 118 
 
 — origins of, 212-242 
 Rhodes, 61 
 
 p 6 /j.fios, 39 
 Rhys, 82 
 Riddles, 14 
 Rikshas, 140 
 
INDEX. 
 
 3II 
 
 RIT 
 
 Ritual, 1 13 
 
 Robertson Smith on Totems, 115 
 Rome, sun worship in, 104 
 Roth differs from Miiller and 
 Kuhn as to etymology of 
 Urvasi, 70 
 Rowan, 154 
 
 Rudra, mouse sacred to, 116 
 Rue, 152 
 
 Sacrifice, human, 61 
 Sahagun, 16 
 St. Gertrude, iig 
 Samoa, 33 
 
 — animal worship in, iig 
 Samoans, 152 
 Samoyeds, myths of, 88 
 Sampo, i6g 
 
 Sanskrit, 77, 140 
 Saturn, 61 
 
 Savage ideas in Greece, iig 
 Savages, 72 
 
 — and Aryans, 135 
 
 — art of, 276-304 
 
 — fancy of,creates myths,/><Z5s/;/i 
 
 — their astronomy, 138 
 
 — their customs in regard to 
 marriage etiquette, 73, 74 
 
 Sayce, Prof., 62, 141, 151 
 
 — on myth of mice, 112 
 
 — on Totemism in Egypt, 118 
 Scandinavia, gods of, 27 
 Scarabs, 113 
 
 Schliemann, 288 
 Schrader, 4 
 Schwartz, 61, g6 
 
 — sees storm myths everywhere, 
 
 71 
 
 Seb, 60 
 
 Semitic peoples, Totemism of, 
 
 115 
 
 — sacrifice, 61 
 Sennacherib, 112 
 Serpent, 117 
 
 — myth of, 81 
 
 — dance, 21 
 Servius, 37 
 Sethos, III, 1 12 
 
 TAB 
 
 Shaman, 136 
 
 Siati, the Samoan Jason, g7 
 Sickle of Cronus, 61 
 ' 2 ,fjiivdios, ^fuvOevs, 103-120 
 ^fiivdos, 108 
 
 Snakes as ancestors, 227 
 Sneezing, superstition of, 14 
 Sparta, 33 
 
 Spencer, Herbert, 125, igg 
 
 Spiritualism, 36 
 
 Socrates, 46 
 
 Solar myth {see ‘ Sun ’) 
 
 Sophocles, 61 
 
 Sorcerers, 130 
 
 Star myths, 121-142 
 
 Stone Age, implements of, 12 
 
 — fetich, 224 
 
 — knives of, 226 
 
 — weapons, 125 
 Strabo, 108-113 
 
 Sun adored by Incas and Au- 
 relii, 104 
 
 — as a beast, 133 
 
 — frog, 64-86 
 
 — god (Ra as), 113 
 
 — Medea and Jason explained 
 as sun myth, 87-102 
 
 — myth in New Zealand, 133 
 
 — America, 133 
 
 — myth of, 13 1- 133 
 
 — myths of frog explained as 
 sun myth, 77 
 
 — Ra and Rudra as, 113-116 
 
 — worshipped in Peru and 
 Rome, 104 
 
 Svastika, 288, 28g 
 Swallowing myths, Indian, Ba- 
 suto, Jewish, Zulu, Eskimo, 
 55 
 
 — of Australians, 54 
 
 — of Bushmen, 53 
 
 — of Kaffirs, 54 
 Swan, Zeus as a, 126 
 
 Tabooed meats in Israel, 115 
 Taboo, 85 
 
 — on food of dead, 17 1 
 
 — on iron, 64 
 
312 
 
 CUSTOM ANO MYTH. 
 
 TAB 
 
 Taboos, 73, 75 
 
 — on food, 1 13, iig 
 Tale, far-travelled, 87-102 
 
 ‘ Tales of West Highlands,’ 93 
 Tales, Popular [see ‘ Marchen ’) 
 Taylor, Mr. Isaac, 62, 81 
 Temples, Egyptian, 112 
 
 — Greek, in 
 
 — Peruvian, 105 
 Thamyris, 97 
 Theal, 38 
 Theocritus, 29 
 
 — on Adonis’ feast, 105 
 Thunder-bird, 117 
 Tiele, 3, 62 
 
 Toots, Mr., quoted, 65 
 Tortures inflicted on boys, 33 
 Totam, spelling of Totem in 
 1792, 105 
 
 Totem, or Ote, or Otem, 105 
 
 — in Egypt, 118 
 
 — in Greece (?), 109, no 
 
 — in Israel, 115 
 
 — in Peru, 105 
 Totemism, 227, 278, 279 
 
 — explained, 106, 107, 245-275 
 
 — in Egypt, 107 
 
 — in Greece, 107 
 
 — in relation to the family, 245- 
 
 275 
 
 — of Semitic people, 115 
 Totem not to be eaten, 113 
 Troad, mice myths connected 
 
 with, 103-120 
 Tsui Goam, 149, 197-21 1 
 Tumatuenga, 45 et seq. 
 
 Tuoni, Hades of Finns, 171 
 Turndun {see ‘ Bull-roarer ’) 
 Turner, his ‘ Samoa,’ 119 
 Turtle, Totems of Iroquois, no 
 Tutenganahau, 45 
 Tylor, 38, 50, 127 
 
 — on star myths, 142 
 
 Uranus, 48, 61 
 
 ZUN 
 
 Urvasi, 65, 66, 67, 77 
 
 — etymology of, disputed, 68- 
 71, 72 
 
 Vannus Iacchi, 36, 37 
 Veda, gods of, 212-242 
 
 — Rig, 65, 66 
 
 Vedas, 213, 216, 217, 234, 241 
 Vishnu Purana, 67 
 Volks-lieder, 157, 159 
 
 Wainamoinen {see ‘ Kalevala ’ ) 
 Wiiinamdinen, 100 
 Wallace, Alfred, 43, 44 
 Water tabooed to frog and 
 beaver brides, 77-80 
 Welsh, 74 
 
 — fairy, 82 
 
 ‘ West Highlands, Tales of,’ 93 
 Wind, charms to raise, 35 
 
 — god of New Zealand, 45 
 
 — myth, 55 
 
 Wives not to be seen, 72, 73, 
 
 — not to use husband’s name, 74 
 Wolf and Kid, story of, 54 
 
 — Totem of Iroquois, no 
 Women, customs of, 71-75 
 
 Yorubas, 73 
 
 Zend Avesta, 117 
 Zeus, 6, 47 
 
 — and the ram, 6 
 
 — as a beast, 134 
 
 — as medicine man, 200 
 
 — loves one of Pleiades, 126 
 
 — shares accomplishments of 
 savage medicine men, 83 
 
 — swallowing myth of, 53 
 Zoolatry, 226 
 
 Zulu, myth of, 84 
 Zulus, 117 
 Zuni, 37 
 
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