Folklore as an Historical Science Part 10

[163] _History of England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings_, i. 14.

[164] Innes' _Critical Essay_, 45, 51, 56, 240.

[165] O'Curry's _Manners and Customs of Ancient Irish_, i. p. vi. Dr.

Whitley Stokes has criticised O'Curry's translations as bad, "not from ignorance, but to a desire to conceal a fact militating against theories of early Irish civilisation."--_Revue Celtique_, iii. 90-101.

[166] Turner, _Hist. of Anglo-Saxons_, i. 64-74; Palgrave, _Eng. Com._, i. 467-8.

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

[168] Elton, _Origins of English History_, 82.

[169] Rhys, _Celtic Britain_, 55.

[170] _Celtic Heathendom_, 320, note.

[171] I have dealt with this in my _Ethnology in Folklore_, 36-40.

[172] Skene, _Celtic Scotland_, i. 59, 84.

[173] Pearson, _Hist. of England during the Early and Middle Ages_, i.

15, 21, 35.

[174] Ramsay, _Foundations of England_, i. 9, 11, 30.

[175] Lang, _Hist. of Scotland_, i. 3-5.

[176] Joyce, _Social Hist. of Ireland_, i. 19.

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

_Mythology of the British Islands_, 30.

[178] _Village Communities_, 17.

[179] _Principles of Sociology_, i. 714.

[180] _Arch. Cambrensis_, 6th ser. v. 3.

[181] _Journ. Anthrop. Inst._, xx. 259.

CHAPTER II

MATERIALS AND METHODS

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

The consideration of the relations.h.i.+p of history and folklore has cleared the ground for definitions and method. Before the material of which folklore consists can be considered by the light of method, we must get rid of definitions which are often applied to folklore in its attributed sense. Folk-tales are not fiction or art, were not invented for amus.e.m.e.nt, are not myth in the sense of being imaginative only.[182] Customs and superst.i.tions are not the result of ignorance and stupidity. These attributes are true only if folk-tales, customs, and superst.i.tions are compared with the literary productions and with the science and the culture of advanced civilisation; and this comparison is exactly that which should never be undertaken, though unfortunately it is that which is most generally adopted. The folk-tale may be lent on occasion to the artist--to Mr. Lang, to Mr.

Jacobs, and their many copyists; and these artists may rejoice at the wonderful results of the unconscious art that resides in these products of tradition, but the folk-tale must not be wholly surrendered. It does not belong to them. It does not belong to art at all, but to science. That it is artistic in form is an addition to its characteristics, but has nothing whatever to do with its fundamental features. Similarly with legend. It may be lent to Malory, to Tennyson, to Longfellow, to the literary bards of the romance period, for the purpose of weaving together their story of the wonderful; but it must not be surrendered to the romancist, and, above all things, the romances must never be allowed to enter the domain of folklore.

Romances may be stripped of their legends so that the source of legendary material may be fully utilised, but the romances themselves belong to literature, and must remain within their own portals. And so with customs. They may be pleasing and reveal some of the beauties of the older joyousness of life which has pa.s.sed away, it is to be regretted, from modern civilisation; they may be revived in May-day celebrations, in pageants, in providing our schools with games which tell of the romance of living. But they do not belong to the lover of the beautiful or to the revivalists. Equally with the folk-tale they belong to science. And so also with superst.i.tions. The Psychical Research Society, the spiritualists, the professional successors of the mediaeval witch and wizard, may turn their attention to traditional superst.i.tions; but the folklorist refuses to hand them over, and claims them for science.

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

Doc.u.mentary material is examined as to its palaeographical features, as to the testimony afforded by its author or a.s.sumed author, as to its credibility in dealing with contemporary events or persons, as to its date, and in other ways according to the nature of the doc.u.ment.

Traditional material has nothing to do with all this. It has no palaeography; it has no author, and if a personal author is a.s.signed to any given fragment or element it is generally safe to ignore the tradition as the product of a later age; it does not deal with persons nor, as a rule, with specific events; it has no date. It has therefore to undergo a process of its own before it can be accepted as historical evidence, and this process, if somewhat tedious, is all the more necessary because of the tender material of which tradition is composed. This will be made clearer if we understand exactly what the different cla.s.ses of tradition are and how they stand to each other.

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

The first position has resulted in a wholesale appropriation of the folk-tale to the cause of the mythologists; the second position has. .h.i.therto resulted either in a disastrous appropriation of the entire tradition to mythology, or in a still more disastrous rejection both of the tradition and the historical event round which it cl.u.s.ters.

Historians doubting the myth doubt too the history; mythologists doubting the history reject the myth from all consideration, and in this way much is lost to history which properly belongs to it, and something is lost to myth.

If, therefore, I have hitherto laid undue stress upon the foundation of tradition in the actual facts of life, and upon the close a.s.sociation of tradition with historic fact, it is because this side of the question has been so generally neglected. Everything has been turned on to the mythic side. Folk-tales have been claimed as the exclusive property of the mythologists, and those who have urged their foundation on the facts of real life have scarcely been listened to.

There is, however, no ground for the converse process to be advocated. If tradition is not entirely mythology it is certainly not all founded on sociology, and the mythic tradition in the possession of a people advanced in culture has to be considered and accounted for. It is myth in contact with history, and the contact compels consideration of the result.

I

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

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

Traditions which are properly cla.s.sed as myth are those which are too ancient to be identified with historical personages, and too little realistic to be a relation of historical episodes. They are rather the explanations given by primitive philosophers of events which were beyond their ken, and yet needed and claimed explanation. In this cla.s.s of tradition we are in touch with the struggles of the earliest ancestors of man to learn about the unknown. Our own research in the realms of the unknown we dignify by the name and glories of science.

The research of our remote ancestors was of like kind, though the domain of the unknown was so different from our own. It was primitive science.

The best type of this cla.s.s of myth is, I think, the creation myth.[184] Everywhere, almost, man has for a moment stood apart and asked himself the question, Whence am I?--stood apart from the struggle for existence when that struggle was in its most severe stages. The answer he has given himself was the answer of the Darwin of his period. From the narrow observation of the natural man and his surroundings, governed by the enormous impressions of his own life, the answer has obviously not been scientific in our sense of the term.

But it was scientific. It was the science of primitive man, and if we have to reject it as science not so good as our science, nay, as not science at all judged by our standard, we must not deny to primitive man the claim of having preceded modern man in his observation and interpretation of the world of nature.

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

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

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

The New Zealand answer to these questions is a great one, by whatever standard it is measured. Heaven and earth, they say, were husband and wife, so locked in close embrace that darkness everywhere prevailed.

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

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

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

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

"'In the beginning, when Twashtri came to the creation of woman, he found that he had exhausted his materials in the making of man, and that no solid elements were left. In this dilemma, after profound meditation, he did as follows. He took the rotundity of the moon, and the curves of creepers, and the clinging of tendrils, and the trembling of gra.s.s, and the slenderness of the reed, and the bloom of flowers, and the lightness of leaves, and the tapering of the elephant's trunk, and the glances of deer, and the cl.u.s.tering of rows of bees, and the joyous gaiety of sunbeams, and the weeping of clouds, and the fickleness of the winds, and the timidity of the hare, and the vanity of the peac.o.c.k, and the softness of the parrot's bosom, and the hardness of adamant, and the sweetness of honey, and the cruelty of the tiger, and the warm glow of fire, and the coldness of snow, and the chattering of jays, and the cooing of the _kokila_, and the hypocrisy of the crane, and the fidelity of the _chakrawaka_, and compounding all these together, he made woman and gave her to man. But after one week, man came to him and said: Lord, this creature that you have given me makes my life miserable. She chatters incessantly and teases me beyond endurance, never leaving me alone; and she requires incessant attention, and takes all my time up, and cries about nothing, and is always idle; and so I have come to give her back again, as I cannot live with her. So Twashtri said: Very well; and he took her back. Then after another week, man came again to him and said: Lord, I find that my life is very lonely, since I gave you back that creature. I remember how she used to dance and sing to me, and look at me out of the corner of her eye, and play with me, and cling to me; and her laughter was music, and she was beautiful to look at, and soft to touch; so give her back to me again. So Twashtri said: Very well; and gave her back again. Then after only three days, man came back to him again and said: Lord, I know not how it is; but after all I have come to the conclusion that she is more of a trouble than a pleasure to me; so please take her back again. But Twashtri said: Out on you! Be off! I will have no more of this. You must manage how you can. Then man said: But I cannot live with her.

And Twashtri replied: Neither could you live without her. And he turned his back on man, and went on with his work. Then man said: What is to be done? for I cannot live either with her or without her.'"[189]

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