The rite has thus a practical purpose. The grubs or other creatures are not prematurely destroyed, like trout on the Border. In fact, trout themselves are sensible enough not to begin feeding on May fly prematurely. 'Throughout the previous week,' says Sir Herbert Maxwell, 'a few May flies had been seen ... but not a trout would point his nose at one.... This hesitation on the part of the trout to begin their annual banquet is one of the best known and, at the same time, least explicable features of the May fly fortnight.'[9] The Arunta also let the grub come on to its full rise before feeding. When a certain bulb is ripe, the men of its totem rub off and blow away the husks, then the general public may begin feeding. There is nothing sacramental in this ceremony, which merely opens the season for tuber eating. The taboo is off. And so in other cases: the kangaroo men are smeared with the fat of the kangaroo, and eat a little of the animal.[10] The non-kangaroo tribesmen may then eat kangaroo. The traditions of the Arunta represent their mythical ancestors as in some cases feeding solely on their totems. But this cannot possibly be true. A grub man would die, when grubs were out, of starvation, and so with the rest. 'When fruits is in, cats is out,' and a man of the gooseberry totem, who only ate gooseberries, would perish miserably.
The Arunta eating of the totem has nothing to do with consecrating the first-fruits of grubs or kangaroos to a god or with absorbing the qualities of a spirit. When Swedish peasants bake a cake shaped like a girl, from the last sheaf of the new corn, they perhaps originally ate the cake 'as the body of the corn spirit.'[11] But when the Lithuanian farmer takes the first swig of the new beer—'the second brew was for the servants'—perhaps he is only declaring his ownership, and opening the beer season.[12] In an unnamed part of Yorkshire the parson cuts the first corn; he is the Alatunja, and opens the harvest. In the Celebes the priest opens the rice harvest; all eat of it; 'after this every one is free to get in his rice.' At St. Andrews on the Medal Day (which is in harvest time) the Alatunja (that is the new captain) drives a ball from the first tee; after this every one is free to drive off in his turn—but not before. In some places, as in Indo-China, the first-fruits are offered to a god; in Zululand the king pops a little into the mouth of every man present, who 'may immediately get in his crops.' If he began harvest before he would die, or, if detected, would be speared, or forfeited. Sometimes the first-fruits are offered to 'the holy spirit of fire.' There are all sorts of ways and ceremonies of opening the season and taking off the taboo. I really don't think it follows that the first fruits are dangerous to eat, before the ceremony, because 'they are regarded as instinct with a divine virtue, and consequently the eating of them is a sacrament or communion.[13] I It is dangerous to eat them, as it would be dangerous to steal a tabooed umbrella. They are tabooed because it is close-time.
The other ideas may come to be entertained, an automatic punishment may be thought to follow the breach of the taboo, though we do not learn that this is the case among the Arunta. But the origin of the taboo on the immature food, I think, is the perfectly practical idea of a close-time; plants are not to be gathered, nor animals killed, prematurely. The more or less supreme being of the Fuegians is angry—if you shoot flappers. 'Very bad to shoot little duck, come rain, come wind, blow, very much blow.'[14] The 'great black man, who cannot be escaped, and who influences the weather according to men's conduct,' is right about the flappers. He sanctions a necessary game law. The How (king), in Tonga, used to wait till the yams were ripe, then he fixed a day for gathering them, and had a religious function. The sort of function depends on the stage at which local religion has arrived; but a close-time—no premature killing or gathering—is the practical idea at the base of all these affairs of first-fruits. Any other superstition, sacrificial or sacramental, may crystallise round the practical primitive prohibition, especially when it was sanctioned by the good old device of automatic punishment, following on infringement of taboo.
If Sir Herbert Maxwell could persuade Mr. Thomas Shaw, M.P., that the proverbially execrable weather on the Border is the direct result of fishing, especially with salmon-roe, out of season; if there was to be no fishing till Mr. Shaw, after tasting of the first trout, declared the season open; if the clergy of all denominations lent their presence to the imposing ceremony, then I believe that Tweed, Ettrick, Teviot, Yarrow, Ail, and Kale would be worth fishing in again.
Taboo, as Mr. Frazer and Mr. Jevons agree, has had its uses in the evolution of morality; but remark that strictly moral offences are nowhere under taboo. You may steal (as long as the object stolen is not tabooed and does not belong to a chief or priest), you may kill, you may interfere with the domestic bliss of your neighbour, you may lie, but the automatic punishment of taboo-breaking nowhere follows. Baiame or Pundjel may punish you; but there is no instant mechanical penalty, as under taboo.
After writing this paper, I found that Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson's experience of tapu, in the Pacific, led him to form the same opinions as are here expressed. 'The devil-fish, it seems, were growing scarce upon the reef; it was judged fit to interpose what we should call a close season ... a tapu had to be declared.' The tapus described 'are for thoroughly sensible ends.' There are tapus which, to us, appear absurd, 'but the tapu is more often the instrument of wise and needful restrictions.'[15]
These taboos are imposed from above, by Government. In other cases, where the taboo expresses an inference from savage superstition (say that a baby or a corpse is dangerous), the taboo is not imposed except by public opinion. That opinion is sanctioned (as in the case of first-fruits) by the action of the Alatunja, or headman: in more advanced societies, by the king. In many cases, taboos are imposed on the king himself by the priestly colleges. But the greatest authority is tradition, resting on fancied experience.
[1] Introduction to the History of Religion, p. 82.
[2] Spencer and Gillen, pp. 10-16.