Comparative Folk-Lore.

FOLK-LORE has been well called the débris of ancient mythology, but the expression, though probably true of so much of traditional lore as still survives in legends and fairy tales, seems of doubtful application to those popular superstitions yet so prevalent among us, of which our kitchens, our cottages, and our nurseries are the chief depositories. We allude to those beliefs, fancies, and customs, which, however trivial in themselves, gain an interest from the area they cover and the races they connect. However locally absurd, they acquire significance from their geographical extent. For they suggest past unions between nations now remote, in the same way as the smallest weeds are capable of telling, by their geographical dispersion, of lands that once stretched where seas now roll. To take some instances. The English tradition that a swallow's nest is lucky, and its life protected by imaginary penalties, is one that in isolation we should naturally and rightly disregard. But when we find that the belief belongs to the Germanic race, and that the supposed penalties are the same in Yorkshire as they are in Swabia, our wonder is aroused; and when we further learn that in China, too, the swallow's nest is lucky and its life inviolate, we become aware of a possible history and antiquity attaching to the superstition, which offer an inviting field for speculation and study. So the belief, that the first appearance of mice in a house be tokens death, becomes of interest when it is found in Russia as well as in Devonshire. Mothers there are both in Germany and in England who fear their children may grow up to be thieves if their nails are cut before their first year is over. Such superstitions, as we call them, had, without doubt, once a reason; in some cases still to be traced, in others effaced by the wear and tear of time. By the application to them of the comparative method not only may we hope to explain and connect ideas otherwise inexplicable, but also to come to conclusions not uninteresting from an archæological point of view. For we believe it can be shown that they are the débris of ancient barbarism rather than of ancient mythology, and that as such they corroborate the evidence already given by the more material remains and witnesses of early times.

For the existence of similar traditions in widely remote districts there are three possible hypotheses. These are, migration, community of origin, or similarity of development. Either they have spread from one place to another, or they are the legacies of times when the people possessing them were actually united, or they have sprung up independently in different localities, in virtue of the natural laws of mental growth. It may be

difficult of any given belief to say to which of these three classes it belongs but there are many beliefs, so alike in general features, yet so divergent in detail, as best to accord with the theory of a common descent or a common development. Some, for instance, common apparently to most nations of the Aryan stock, may consequently date back to periods long anterior to the separation; whilst others, yet more widely spread than these, suggest relationships between races of men more fundamental and remote than can be detected in language, and point to an affinity that is older and stronger than mere affinity of blood, an affinity, that is, in the conceptions and fancies of primitive thought. For where actual relationship is not proved by language, analogies in tradition are better accounted for by supposing similar grooves of mental development than by any other theory. Philology may prove a relationship between, let us say, the Nixens of Germany and the Nisses of Scandinavia: but there is no relationship beyond similarity of conception between the Nereids of antiquity and the mermaids of the North, or between the Brownies of Scotland and the Lares of Latium. Children, of whatever race or country they may be, dislike the dark, nor do we think it necessary to account for this common trait by any theory of connection or descent. So with nations. They are or were, in the face of nature, as children in the dark, and the nearly similar phenomena of sun and storm, breeze and calm, may have sufficed to create in them, in their several homes, many of those fears and fancies we find common to all.

It is in so far as Comparative Folk-Lore can prove to us the existence of similar laws of thought, apparent alike in the superstitions which have descended to us from the remote past and in those of modern savage races, that it becomes of special interest. For the fact that there still survive among civilised people ideas and practices, corresponding in structure to those found in the various stages of the lower races, is of the same force to prove that we once went through those several stages, as the survival of traits in the growth of the individual, similar to those actually found in lower animals, point to our gradual ascent from a lower scale of being. The belief in, and dread of, evil spirits, the endeavour to affect them by acting on their fetishes or substitutes, the worship of natural objects, as trees, animals, water or even stones, the mistaking of mere sequence in time for causal connection and the consequent importance attached to such occurrences as have been observed to precede remarkable phenomena, these and many other characteristics of modern savages find abundant representation in modern civilisation, and it is more likely they are there as survivals than as importations. And thereby is corroborated the idea, already so widely propagated by other sciences, that the history of humanity has been a rise and not a fall, not a degradation from completeness to imperfection, but a constantly accelerating progress from savagery to culture; that in short the iron age of the world belongs to the past, its golden one to the future.

No one indeed, who has not turned special attention to the subject,

can form any conception of the mass of purely pagan ideas, which, varnished over by Christianity, but barely hidden by it, grow in rank profusion in our very midst and exercise a living hold, which it is impossible either to realise or to fathom, on the popular mind. Like old Roman or British remains, buried under subsequent accumulations of earth and stones, or superficially concealed by an overgrowth of herbage, uninjured during all the length of time they have lain unobserved, there they lie just beneath the surface of nineteenth-century life, as indelible records of our mental history and origin. It is only in the higher social strata that they can be deemed extinct. Though it can no longer be said, as it was in the seventeenth century, that most houses of the West-end of London have the horse-shoe on the threshold,* yet it may still be said of many a farm or cottage in the country. The astronomer Tycho Brahe, if he met an old woman or hare on leaving home, would take the hint to turn back but it seems to be only the working population of England, Scotland, or Germany who still do the same. Statistics show that the receipts of omnibus and railway companies in France are less on Friday than on any other day; and many a German that lay dead on the carnage fields of the late war was found to have carried his word-charm against sword and bullet. Most English villages still have their wise men or women, whose powers range from ruling the planets to curing rheumatics or detecting thieves; and so lately as 1863, an old man of eighty was "swum" for a wizard in the mill stream at Little Hedingham in Essex, and died in consequence of this cruel superstition.†

We who have been brought up to look upon the classification of things into animal, vegetable, and mineral, as primary, or indeed intuitive, are apt to forget that savages never classify, and that animate and inanimate to them are both alike. Sir John Lubbock has collected conclusive evidence that so inconceivable a confusion of thought exists. The Tahitians, who sowed some iron nails that young ones might grow from them; the Esquimaux, who thought a musical-box the child of a small hand-organ; the Bushmen, who mistook a large waggon for the mother of some smaller ones, show the tendency of savages to identify motion with life, and to attribute feelings and relations such as actuate or connect themselves to everything that moves of itself or is capable of being moved. A native sent by one missionary to another with some

* Aubrey's Miscellanies, 197.

Those who doubt the existence of much popular superstition in this century may judge of the amount and value of the evidence by referring to the following books: 1. All the volumes of Notes and Queries, Index, Folk-Lore. 2. Harland and Wilkinson, Lancashire Folk-Lore, 1867. 3. Henderson's Notes on the Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders, 1886. 4. Kelly's Curiosities of IndoEuropean Tradition and Folk-Lore, 1863. 5. Stewart's Popular Superstitions of the Highlanders of Scotland, 1851. 6. Sternberg's Dialect and Folk-Lore of Northamptonshire, 1851. 7. Thorpe's Northern Mythology, 1851. 8. Birlinger, Volksthümliches aus Schwaben, 1861. 9. Koehler, Volksbrauch im Voigtlande, 1867. 10. Bosquet, La Normandie Romanesque, 1845,

loaves, and a letter stating the number, having eaten two of them and been detected through the letter, took the precaution the next time to put the letter under a stone that it might not see the theft committed. Now there are numerous superstitions connected with bees, which there is reason to think are relics of this savage state of thought, when all that existed existed under the same conditions as man himself, capable of the same feelings, and subject to the same wants and sorrows. For bees are credited with a perfect comprehension of all that men do and utter, and, as members themselves of the family they belong to, they must be treated in every way as human in their emotions. French children are taught that the inmates of the hive will come out to sting them for any bad language uttered within their hearing, and many of our readers have probably at some time of their lives, on seeing a crape-covered hive, learnt on inquiry that the bees were in mourning for some member of their owner's family. In Suffolk, when a death occurs in a house, they immediately inform the bees, ask them formally to the funeral, and fix crape on their hives; otherwise it is believed they would die or desert. And the same custom, for the same reason, prevails, with local modifications, not only in nearly every English county, but very widely over the continent. In Normandy and Brittany may be seen, as in England, the crape-set hives; in Yorkshire some of the funeral bread, in Lincolnshire some cake and sugar, may be seen at the hive door; and we have read of a Devonshire nurse on her way to a funeral sending back a child to perform the duty she herself had forgotten, of telling the bees. The usual explanation of these customs and ideas is that they originated long ago with the death or flight of some bees, consequent on the neglect they incurred when the hand that once tended them could do so no longer. Yet a wider survey of analogous facts leads to the explanation above suggested; for, not to dwell on the fact that in some places in England they are informed of weddings as well as of funerals, and their hives are decorated with favours as well as with crape, the practice of giving information of deaths extends in some parts not only to other animals as well, but, in addition, to inanimate things. In Lithuania, deaths are announced, not only to the bees, but to horses and cattle, by the rattling of a bunch of keys, and the same custom is reported from Dartford in Kent. In the North Riding, not long since, a farmer gravely attributed the loss of a cow to his not having told it of his wife's death. In Cornwall, the indoor plants are often put into mourning as well as the hives, and at Rauen, in North Germany, not only are the bees informed of their master's death, but the trees also, by means of shaking them. Near Speier, not only must the bees be moved, but the wine and vinegar must be shaken, if it is wished that they shall not turn bad. Near Wurtemburg, the vinegar must be shaken, the bird-cage hung differently, the cattle tied up differently, and the beehive transposed. Near Ausbach the flower-pots must also be moved, and the wine-casks knocked three times; while at Gernsheim, not only must the wine in the cellar be shaken

to prevent it turning sour, but the corn in the loft must be moved if the sown corn is to sprout.* But all these customs are too much alike to be unrelated, and too widely spread to have sprung up without some reason, by some mere caprice or coincidence, and it is difficult to suggest any other reason for them than that they go back to a time when not only bees and cattle, but trees and flowers, vinegar and wine, were, like human beings, considered liable to take offence, and their spirits accordingly to be pacified by kind treatment, since, according as their several temperaments predisposed them, they were able, by deserting, dying, turning sour, or other untoward conduct, to resent neglect or disrespect on the part of their owners.

Other popular traditions strengthen this interpretation. In Normandy and Brittany it is thought that bees will not suffer themselves to be bought or sold; in other words, that they would take offence if made the subjects of sale and barter. The same belief prevails in Cheshire, Suffolk, Hampshire, Cornwall, and Devonshire. The value of bees is measured, not by money, but by corn, hay, or some other exchangeable commodity; in Sussex, if any money is given for bees, it must be gold. Connected with this idea of the quasi-humanity of bees is the worldwide fear of slighting dangerous animals by calling them by their human names. Mahometan women dare not call a snake a snake lest they should be bitten by one; Swedish women avert the wrath of bears by calling them old men. Livonian fishermen, when at sea, fear to endanger their nets by calling any animal by its common name. At Mecklenburg, in the twelve days after Christmas, the fox goes by the appellation of the "Long Tail;" even the timid mouse by that of the "Floor-runner." The Esthonians at all times call the fox "Gray Coat," the bear "Broadfoot," and should they take the liberty of too often mentioning the hare, their flax crops would be in peril. In Sweden people dare not mention to any one in the course of the day the number of fish they have caught, if they would catch any more; a feeling to which is probably related the North Country prejudice against counting one's fish before the day's sport Many savages, when they kill any animal, apologise to it for the injury, of which their weapons and not themselves, they tell it, have been the cause. But, what is still more curious, there are some customs even in relation to trees which seem only explicable on the theory of their being endowed with a conscious personality, as, for instance, the old Saxon habit of praying to the Elder before lopping it of its branches, or the attempt to secure the continued favours of fruit trees by presents and prayers. It is, or was, customary in Devonshire and Cornwall, on Christmas Eve, for the parishioners to walk in procession to the chief orchards, and after singling out the chief tree, to salute it with set words, and to

is over.

* Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, "Aberglaube," cases 576, 664, 698, 898. These practices, even if no longer existent, throw light upon those that still are. † Amélie Bosquet, La Normandie pittoresque, p. 217.