Folklore as an Historical Science Part 4

III.--OUR LADY'S CHILD

---------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+-------------- Story Story Added Modern radicals accidentals features gloss ---------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+-------------- Naked forest woman 1. Savage captured elements -- for wife -- -- Suspicion that she is a cannibal ---------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+-------------- Virgin Mary and heaven 3. Rank and the central splendour -- -- -- features of the heroine's adventures ---------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+-------------- 4. Moral Punishment characteristics for -- -- -- curiosity ---------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+--------------

IV.--THE YOUTH WHO WANTS TO LEARN TO SHUDDER

---------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+-------------- Story Story Added Modern radicals accidentals features gloss ---------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+-------------- Winning of wife by service Succession to 1. Savage kings.h.i.+p elements through -- -- -- wife--female kins.h.i.+p Treasure guarded by spirits ---------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+-------------- The adventures 2. Fantastic -- in the -- -- element haunted castle ---------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+-------------- 3. Rank and -- -- -- Kingly state splendour ---------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+-------------- 4. Moral Bravery -- -- -- characteristics ---------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+--------------

V.--THE WOLF AND SEVEN LITTLE KIDS

---------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+-------------- Story Story Added Modern radicals accidentals features gloss ---------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+-------------- Talking Criticism upon animals men as Cutting open compared of the with 1. Savage animal to animals, -- -- elements free the 'truly men swallowed are like kids, and that' refilling the stomach with stones ---------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+--------------

VI.--FAITHFUL JOHN

---------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+-------------- Story Story Added Modern radicals accidentals features gloss ---------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+-------------- Capture of bride Talking of animals Three taboos-- Horse Garment 1. Savage Sucking of -- -- -- elements b.r.e.a.s.t.s Sacrifice of children and sprinkling their blood on a stone Human origin stone pillar ---------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+-------------- Kingly state 3. Rank and and great splendour -- -- -- wealth in gold and riches ---------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+-------------- 4. Moral -- Punishment for -- -- characteristics curiosity ---------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+--------------

IX.--THE TWELVE BROTHERS

---------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+-------------- Story Story Added Modern radicals accidentals features gloss ---------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+-------------- Going [causing to go] away of sons, so that the inheritance should fall 1. Savage to the Forest life elements daughter -- -- Change of brothers into ravens Life dependent on an outside object ---------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+-------------- 3. Rank and -- -- -- Kingly state splendour ---------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+-------------- 4. Moral -- -- -- -- characteristics ---------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+--------------

XI.--BROTHER AND SISTER

---------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+-------------- Story Story Added Modern radicals accidentals features gloss ---------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+-------------- Transformation of hero into 1. Savage roebuck -- -- -- elements after drinking at stream ---------------+--------------+--------------+--------------+--------------

There are thus savage elements in seven out of twelve stories, and the question becomes an important one as to how this is. They are the stories of the nursery, told by mothers to children, stories kept alive by tradition, and the only possible answer to our question is that they contain fragments of the early culture-history of the ancestors, or at all events the predecessors, of those who have preserved them for our use. An occasional savage incident might have been considered a freak of the original narrator, or a borrowing by one of the countless late narrators of these stories brought home from savage countries; but statistics disprove both of these suppositions.

It is not accidental but persistent savagery we meet with in the folk-tale. It is also the savagery to be found amongst modern peoples still in the savage stage of culture.

This is proved in a very complete manner by Mr. MacCulloch, whose study provides the material for a statistical survey of story incidents founded on primitive custom and belief.[110] They are the most ancient history to which we have access. That this history is contained in the folk-tales of modern peasantry shows it to have come from that far-off period which saw the earliest condition of these people. It is still history, if it tells us of a life which preceded the written record. It is history of the most valuable description, for it is to be found nowhere else as relating to the remotest period of European civilisation. The modern savage is better off in this respect. He has an outside historian in the traveller and the anthropologist of modern days. The savage who was ancestor to our own people had no such means of becoming known to history, or had but very limited means, and it is only in the deathless tradition that we can trace him out.

These conclusions have been drawn from that great cla.s.s of tradition preserved by historic peoples in historic times, and yet unmistakably pointing to prehistoric culture. We have been able to show the methods to be adopted for, and the results of, disengaging the myth which has gravitated to the historic person or place from the historic facts which have become part of the legend, and to trace out in the folk-tale facts which belong to a culture far removed from civilised life. There are thus revealed two distinct centres of influence, the traditional centre and the historic centre, and it is obvious that the question must be asked--which is the more important? It seems to me equally obvious that the answer must be given in favour of the historic. History is indebted to tradition for preserving some of the most remote facts of racial or national life, which but for tradition would have been lost, and if we are content to use this tradition as a storehouse from which we may provide ourselves with ancient historical doc.u.ments, we can trace out therefrom points in the history of any given country wherever the traditions have been preserved.

The folk-tale, in point of fact, equally with the personal and local legend, comes into close contact with history. The periods of history in the folk-tales are different from those in the legends, but together these periods reach from prehistoric culture to historic event. We cannot, however, call this extent of time a continuous period, and we cannot point to definite stages within the detached periods. Much more research must be accomplished before it will be possible to claim such results as these. I have indicated some points of difficulty, some methods of treatment which appear to me to be wrong, and to which I shall have again to refer later on; but in the meantime, from the necessarily incomplete evidence which I have been able to produce, it is, I think, abundantly clear that folklore has to be studied from its historical surroundings if we would draw from it all that it is capable of telling.

III

In the meantime it is well to bear in mind that there is one important department of history which has always been frankly and unhesitatingly accepted as history and yet which has no stronger foundation than tradition, and tradition of the most formal kind. I allude to the early laws of most of the peoples who have become possessed of an historic civilisation. These laws have all been preserved by tradition, are in rhyme or rhythm in order to a.s.sist the memory, have become the sacred repository of a school or cla.s.s of priests, and have finally been reduced to writing by a great lawgiver, who by the act of giving the people written laws has had attributed to him supernatural origin and powers. That history should have accepted from tradition such an important section of its material is worth consideration by itself, apart from its bearing on the present study, and I shall proceed, therefore, to set out some of the chief facts in this connection.

There can be no doubt that in the tribal society of Indo-European peoples the laws and rules which governed the various members of the tribe were deemed to be sacred and were preserved by tradition. The opening clauses of the celebrated Laws of Manu ill.u.s.trate this position.

"The great sages approached Manu, who was seated with a collected mind, and having wors.h.i.+pped him spoke as follows: Deign, divine one, to declare to us precisely and in due order the sacred laws of each of the four chief castes and of the intermediate ones. For thou, O Lord, alone knowest the purport, the rites, and the knowledge of the soul taught in this whole ordinance of the self-existent which is unknowable and unfathomable."[111] They were not only sacred in origin but they dealt with sacred things, and Sir Henry Maine has drawn the broad conclusion that "there is no system of recorded law, literally from China to Peru, which, when it first emerges into notice, is not seen to be entangled with religious ritual and observance."[112] In Greece the lawgivers were supposed to be divinely inspired, Minos from Jupiter, Lykurgos from the Delphic G.o.d, Zaleukos from Pallas.[113] The earliest notions of law are connected with Themis the G.o.ddess of Justice.[114] In Rome it is to Romulus himself that is attributed the first positive law, and it is by a college of priests that the laws were preserved.[115] In Scandinavia the laws were in the custody and charge of the temple priests, and the acc.u.mulated evidence for the sacred origin and connection of the laws is to be found in the sagas.[116] Among the Celtic peoples it is well known that the laws were preserved and administered by the Brehons, who are compared with the Hindu Brahmins by Sir Henry Maine, "with many of their characteristics altered, and indeed, their whole sacerdotal authority abstracted by the influence of Christianity."[117] In the Isle of Man the laws were deemed sacred and known only to the Deemsters.[118]

In all cases laws were preserved by tradition and not by writing and evidence, and the superior value attached to the traditional record appears everywhere. The oldest record of Hindu law agrees with the best authority that it was not founded on writing but "upon immemorial customs which existed prior to and independent of Brahminism."[119] In Greece the very nature of the _themistes_ shows that they were judgments dependent upon traditional custom. In Rome it is the subject of definite research that the "greater part of Roman law was founded on the _mores majorum_."[120] In Scandinavia the law speaker was obliged to recite the whole law within the period to which the tenure of his office was limited.[121] The Celtic laws are based upon customs handed down from remote antiquity,[122] and late down in English law it was admitted as a principle that if oral declarations came into conflict with written instruments the former had the more binding authority.[123]

One of the means by which this sacred tradition was preserved was through the medium of rhythm and verse. Thus, as Sir Henry Maine explains,

"The law book of Manu is in verse, and verse is one of the expedients for lessening the burden which the memory has to bear when writing is unknown or very little used. But there is another expedient which serves the same object. This is Aphorism or Proverb.

Even now in our own country much of popular wisdom is preserved either in old rhymes or in old proverbs, and it is well ascertained that during the middle ages much of law, and not a little of medicine, was preserved among professions, not necessarily clerkly, by these two agencies."[124]

In Greece the same word, ????, was used for custom and law as for song. The ??t?a (declared law) of Sparta and Taras was in verse; the laws of Charondas were sung as s????a at Athens,[125] and Strabo refers to the Mazacenes of Cappadocia as using the laws of Charondas and appointing some person to be their law-singer (???d??), who is among them the declarer of the laws.[126]

Sir Francis Palgrave, noticing the same characteristic of Teutonic law, says:--

"It cannot be ascertained that any of the Teutonic nations reduced their customs into writing, until the influence of increasing civilisation rendered it expedient to depart from their primeval usages; but an aid to the recollection was often afforded as amongst the Britons, by poetry or by the condensation of the maxim or principle in proverbial or ant.i.thetical sentences like the Cymric triads. The marked alliteration of the Anglo-Saxon laws is to be referred to the same cause, and in the Frisic laws several pa.s.sages are evidently written in verse. From hence, also, may originate those quaint and pithy rhymes in which the doctrines of the law of the old time are not unfrequently recorded."[127]

Again, the editors of the Brehon Law Tracts point out that early laws are handed down "in a rhythmical form; always in language condensed and antiquated they a.s.sume the character of abrupt and sententious proverbs. Collections of such sayings are found scattered throughout the Brehon Law Tracts."[128] The sagas contain many verses which partake of the character of legal formulae, and in Beowulf there seems to be a definite example. It occurs in the pa.s.sage describing Beowulf engaged in his fatal combat with the fiery dragon, when his "companions," stricken with terror, deserted him, on which Wiglaf p.r.o.nounced the following malediction:--

"Now shall the service of treasure, and the gifts of swords, all joy of paternal inheritance, all support of all your kin depart; every one of your family must go about deprived of his rights of citizens.h.i.+p; when far and wide the n.o.bles shall learn your flight, your dishonourable deed.

Death is better to every warrior than disgraced life."

Mr. Kemble remarks on this pa.s.sage, that it is not improbable that the whole denunciation is a judicial formula, such as we know early existed, and in regular rhythmical measure.[129]

These early examples may be followed up by others preserved to modern times. The most significant of these occurs in the Church ceremony of marriage, which preserves in the vernacular the ancient rhythmical formula of the marriage laws, and the antiquity of the Church ritual is proved from the fact that it is accompanied and enforced by the old rhythmical verse, which is indicative of early legal or ceremonious usage.

"With this rynge I the wed And this gold and silver I the geve, and with my body I the wors.h.i.+pe, and with all my worldely cathel I the endowe."[130]

Sir Francis Palgrave has noticed the subject, and points out that the wife is taken

"to have and to hold[131]

from this day forward for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer,[132]

in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part and thereto I plight thee my troth."

These words are inserted in our service according to the ancient canon of England, and even when the Latin ma.s.s was sung by the tonsured priest, the promises which accompany the delivery of the symbolical pledge of union were repeated by the blus.h.i.+ng bride in a more intelligible tongue.[133] This is a curious and significant fact, and as we trace out these rhythmical lines farther back in their original vernacular, the more clearly distinct is their archaic nature.

According to the usage of Salisbury the bride answered:--

"I take thee, John, to be my wedded husband, to have and to hold fro' this day forward for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sycknesse, in hele, to be b.o.n.e.re and buxom [obedient]

in bedde and at borde till death do us part and thereto I plight thee my trothe."[134]

The Welsh manual in the library of the Dean and Chapter of Hereford has a slight variation in the form, and an older spelling:--

"Ich N. take thee N.

to my weddid wyf, for fayroure for foulore, for ricchere for porer, for betere for wers, in sicknesse and in helthe, forte deth us departe, and only to the holde and tharto ich plygtte my treuthe."[135]

To this may be added the many local examples of the preservation of laws or legal formulae by means of their form in verse. The most interesting of these, perhaps, is that by which the Kentishman redeemed his land from the lord by repeating, as it was said, in the language of his ancestors:--

"Nighon sithe yeld And nighon sithe geld, And vif pund for the were, Ere he become healdere."

The first verse,

"Dog draw Stable stand Back berend And b.l.o.o.d.y hand"

justified the verderer in his punishment of the offender. In King Athelstane's grant to the good men of Beverley, and inscribed beneath his effigy in the Minster,

"Als fre Mak I the As heart may think Or eigh may see,"

we have perhaps the ancient form of manumission or enfranchis.e.m.e.nt,[136] just as we have the surrender by a freeman who gave up his liberty by putting himself under the protection of a master, and becoming his man, still preserved among children, when one of them takes hold of the foretop of another and says:--

"Tappie, tappie, tousie, will ye be my man?"[137]

All over the country we meet with these rhyming or rhythmical formulae which have legal significance. In the north the chief of the Macdonalds gave grants in the following form:--