Custom and Myth

124

Spanheim, ad Fl. Joseph., vi. 1, p. 312.

125

Della Rel., p. 174.

126

Herodotus, ii. 141.

127

Liebrecht (Zur Volkskunde, p. 13, quoting Journal Asiatique, 1st 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 distressed 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).

128

Herodotos, p. 204.

129

Wilkinson, iii. 249, quoting the Ritual xxxiii.: ‘Thou devourest the abominable rat of Ra, or the Sun.’

130

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 collection. 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.

131

Strabo, xiii. 604.

132

Eustathius on Iliad, i. 39.

133

A Strange and True Relation of the Prodigious Multitude of Mice, 1670.

134

Journal of Philol., xvii. p. 96.

135

Leviticus xi. 29.

136

Samuel i. 5, 6.

137

Zool. Myth., ii. 68.

138

Mélusine, N.S. i.

139

De Iside et Osiride, lxxvi.

140

This hypothesis does not maintain that totemism prevailed in Greece during historic times. Though Plutarch mentions a Carian γένος, the Ioxidæ, of Attic descent, which revered asparagus, it is probable that genuine totemism had died out of Greece many hundreds of years before even Homer’s time. But this view is not inconsistent with the existence of survivals in religion and ritual.

141

Rolland, Faune populaire.

142

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.

143

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.

144

See C. O. Müller (Prolog. zur Mythol., Engl. transl., p. 17): ‘Callisto is just nothing else than Artemis and her sacred animal comprehended in one idea.’ See also pp. 201-4. Müller (C. O.) very nearly made the discovery that the gods of Greece may in some cases have a bestial ancestry.

145

Brugsch, History of Egypt, i. 32.

146

Brough Smyth.

147

Amazonian Tortoise Myths, p. 39.

148

Sahagun, vii. 3.

149

Grimm, D. M., Engl. transl., p. 716.

150

Hartt, op. cit., p. 40. For a modern sun-man and his myth in the Cyclades, see J. T. Bent, in the Athenæum, Jan. 17, 1885.

151

Kaegi, Der Rig Veda, p. 217.

152

Mainjo-i-Khard, 49, 22, ed. West.

153

Op. cit., p. 98.

154

Prim. Cult., i. 357.

155

Lectures on Language, pp. 359, 362.

156

Ideler (Untersuchungen ueber den Ursprung der Sternnamen) may also be consulted.

157

Grimm, D. M., Engl. transl., p. 1202.

158

Tom Sawyer, p. 87.

159

Rep., vi. 488. Dem., 10, 6.

160

Journal Anthrop. Inst., Feb., 1881.

161

Gregor, Folklore of North-east Counties, p. 40.

162

Wars of Jews, vii. 6, 3.

163

Var. Hist., 14, 27.

164

Max Müller, Selected Essays, ii. 622.

165

There is no end to Aryan parallels of savage practices. The famous soma of the Veda is apparently now used like the Hottentot roots. By the Zoroastrians ‘it is used at incantations and sacrifices, and thrown into the fire.’ See Mr. Hootum Schindler, Academy, Jan. 31, 1885, p. 83.

166

Myth of Kirkê, p. 80.

167

Turner’s Samoa.

168

Josephus, loc. cit. For this, and many other references, I am indebted to Schwartz’s Prähistorisch-anthropologische Studien. In most magic herbs the learned author recognises thunder and lightning – a theory no less plausible than Mr. Brown’s.

169

Lib. xxviii.

170

Schoolcraft, v.

171

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 Kirkê 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?’

172

Talvj, Charakteristik der Volkslieder, p. 3.

173

Fauriel, Chants de la Grèce moderne.

174

Thus Scotland scarcely produced any ballads, properly speaking, after the Reformation. The Kirk suppressed the dances to whose motion the ballad was sung in Scotland, as in Greece, Provence, and France.

175

L. Preller’s Ausgewählte Aufsätze. 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 Brasseur de Bourbourg’s Notes on the Popol Vuh.

176

See essay on Early History of the Family.

177

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 historical meaning. Even if the myth be an elementary one, its constructors must have been in the exogamous stage of society.

178

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.

179

Fortnightly Review, 1869: ‘The Worship of Plants and Animals.’

180

Mr. M‘Lennan in the Fortnightly Review, February, 1870.

181

M. Schmidt, Volksleben der Neugriechen, finds comparatively few traces of the worship of Zeus, and these mainly in proverbial expressions.

182

Preller, Ausgewählte Aufsätze, p. 154.

183

Tylor, Prim. Cult., ii. 156. Pinkerton, vii. 357.

184

Universities Mission to Central Africa, p. 217. Prim. Cult., ii. 156, 157.

185

Quoted in Jacob’s Rod: London, n.d., a translation of La Verge de Jacob, Lyon, 1693.

186

Lettres sur la Baguette, pp. 106-112.

187

Turner’s Samoa, pp. 77, 119.

188

See examples in ‘A Far-travelled Tale,’ ‘Cupid and Psyche,’ and ‘The Myth of Cronus.’

189

Trübner, 1881.

190

Hahn, p. 23.

191

Ibid., p. 45.

192

Expedition, i. 166.

193

Dr. Hahn (p. 27) gives /ava, or /ana, as Hottentot for ‘red,’ derived from /au, ‘to bleed.’

194

Hahn himself (p. 91) mentions a Hottentot god daubed with red earth, and noticed as long ago as 1691.

195

See ‘Fetichism and the Infinite’.

196

Sacred Books of the East, xii. 130, 131.

197

Lectures on Language. Second Series, p. 41.

198

A defence of the evidence for our knowledge of savage faiths, practices, and ideas will be found in Primitive Culture, i. 9-11.

199

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 Bœotia (ix. 16), the people believed that Alcmene, mother of Heracles, was changed into a stone. The Thespians worshipped, under the name of Eros, an unwrought stone, ἄγαλμα παλαιότατον, ‘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 Chæronea 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 Trœzenians a sacred stone lay in front of the temple, whereon the Trœzenian 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.

200

See Essays on ‘Apollo and the Mouse’ and ‘The Early History of the Family.’

201

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 disappeared 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.

202

Much the same theory is propounded in Mr. Müller’s lectures on ‘The Science of Religion.’

203

The idea is expressed in a well-known parody of Wordsworth, about the tree which —

‘Will grow ten times as tall as meAnd live ten times as long.’

204

See Essay on ‘The Early History of the Family.’

205

Bergaigne’s La Religion Védique may be consulted for Vedic Fetichism.

206

Early Law and Custom.

207

Studies in Ancient History, p. 127.

208

Descent of Man, ii. 362.

209

Early Law and Custom, p. 210.

210

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 different 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.’

211

Early Law and Custom, p. 212.

212

Studies in Ancient History, pp. 140-147.

213

Totem is the name generally given by travellers and interpreters to the family crests of the Red Indians. Cf. p. 105.

214

Plutarch, Quæst. Rom., vi. Cf. M‘Lennan, The Patriarchal Theory, pp. 206-208.

215

Cf. Maine, Early Law and Custom, pp. 227, 228.

216

Domestic Manners of the Chinese, i. 99.

217

Fortnightly Review, June 1, 1877.

218

Cf. Sir John Lubbock, Origin of Civilisation, pp. 104, 125 et seq.

219

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.

220

Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 169. Natives call these objects their kin, ‘of one flesh’ with them.

221

Studies, p. 112.

222

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.

223

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?

224

Cf. ‘Apollo and the Mouse,’ p. 118.

225

O’Curry, Manners of Ancient Irish, l. ccclxx., quoting Trin. Coll. Dublin MS.

226

See also Elton’s Origins of English History, pp. 299-310.

227

Kemble’s Saxons in England, p. 258. Politics of Aristotle, Bolland and Lang, p. 99.240

228

‘Gentiles sunt qui inter se eodem nomine sunt. Qui ab ingenii oriundi sunt. Quorum majorum nemo servitutem servivit. Qui capite non sunt deminuti.’

229

The arguments on the other side in M‘Lennan’s Patriarchal Theory seem overpowering.

230

Studies in Ancient History, p. 212.

231

Fortnightly Review, Oct., 1869: ‘Archæologia Americana,’ ii. 13.

232

Suidas, 3102.

233

Herod., i. 173. It is not agreed that the Lycians were Aryans, but surely the Locrians were!

234

Cf. Bachofen, p. 309.

235

Compare the Irish Nennius, p. 127.

236

Tacitus, Germania, xx.

237

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.

238

Part of the pattern, recurs on the New Zealand Bull-roarer, engraved in the Essay on the Bull-roarer.

239

See Schliemann’s Troja, wherein is much learning and fancy about the Aryan Svastika.

240

Mr. Grant Allen kindly supplied me some time ago with a list of animal and vegetable names preserved 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 derived from totemism.