Storyology: Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore

by Benjamin Taylor

So much, however, for popular superstitions; and, as regards folk-tales, we must, in speculating as to their origin,[1] 'look not into the clouds, but upon the earth; not in the various aspects of nature, but in the daily occurrences and surroundings.' The process of diffusion must always remain uncertain. 'Much may be due to the identity everywhere of early fancy, something to transmission,' but 'household tales occupy a middle place between the stories of savages and the myths of early civilization.'[2] And as nursery-rhymes are but the simplified form of household or folk-tales, let us consider with Mr. Lang the relation between savage customs and ancient myths.

The foundation of the method of comparative mythology is the belief that 'myths are the result of a disease of language, as the pearl is the result of a disease of the oyster.' The method of inquiry is to examine the names which occur in the stories, and having found or invented a meaning for these names, to argue back from them to a meaning in the myths. But then almost each scholar has his peculiar fancy in etymology, and while one finds a Sanskrit root, another finds a Greek, a third a Semitic, and so on. Even when they agree upon the derivation of the proper names, the scholars seldom agree upon the interpretation of them, and thus the whole system is full of perplexity and confusion to all who approach its study with unbiassed minds. There is a further division among the mythologists, for there are some who have a partiality for sun-myths, others for cloud-myths, sky-myths and fire-myths, and each seeks to work out an interpretation of an old-world story to suit his own taste in myths. How can they be all right? And in whom can we have confidence when we find so much disagreement, first, on the derivation of names, and second, on their meaning after the derivation is discovered? And then, how do we know that words had the same meaning to the ancients as they have to us? Was the sky, for instance, to the original story-makers 'an airy, infinite, radiant vault,' as it is to us, or was it a material roof, or even a person? And, further, how is it that we find the same myth, with slight alterations, in various parts of the world, but with totally different names?

In opposition to the method of reading myths by the philological analysis of names, there is the method of reading them by folk-lore, i.e., by a comparison of the folk-tales and customs of primitive peoples. The student of folk-lore has to collect and compare the similar relics of old races, the surviving superstitions and traditions, and the ideas which still live. He is thus led to compare the usages, myths, and ideas of savages with those which remain among the European peasantry—classes which have least altered by education, and have shown the smallest change in progress. It is thus that we find even in our own country and in our own day such things as the beliefs in fairies and divination by smoke, which are as old as time. Similarly, the harvest-custom which is still practised by the children in parts of rural England and Scotland—the dressing up of the last gleaning in human shape, and conducting it home in musical procession—is parallel with a custom in ancient Peru, and with the Feast of Demeter of the Sicilians. But that does not necessarily prove any original connection between Peruvians, Scotch and Sicilians, any more than the fact that the negroes of Barbadoes make clay figures of their enemies and mutilate them, as the Greeks and Accadians of old used to do, proves any connection between the negroes and the Greeks and Accadians. If we find the Australians spreading dust round the body of a dead man in order to receive the impression of the footprints of any ghostly visitor, the same custom has been observed among the Jews, among the Aztecs, among the French, and even among the Scotch. Where we find, therefore, an apparently irrational and anomalous custom in any country, we must look for a country where a similar custom prevails, and where it is no longer irrational and anomalous, but in harmony with the manners and ideas of the people among whom it prevails. When we read of Greeks dancing about in their 'mysteries' with live serpents, it seems unintelligible, but when we read of Red Indians doing the same thing with live rattlesnakes, we can understand the meaning because we can see implied a test of physical courage. May not a similar motive have originated the Greek practices?

The method of folk-lore, then, is 'to compare the seemingly meaningless customs or manners of civilized races with the similar customs and manners which exist among the uncivilized, and still retain their meaning. It is not necessary for comparison of this sort that the uncivilized and the civilized race should be of the same stock, nor need we prove that they were ever in contact.'[3] Similar conditions of mind produce similar practices, apart from identity of race, or borrowing of ideas and manners. In pursuing this method we have to compare the customs and tales of the most widely separated races, whereas the comparative mythologists, who hold it correct to compare Greek, Slavonic, Celtic and Indian stories because they occur in languages of the same family, and Chaldean and Greek stories because the Chaldeans and the Greeks are known to have been in contact, will not compare Greek, Chaldean, Celtic, or Indian stories with those of the Maoris, the Eskimos, or the Hottentots, because these last belong to a different language-family, and are not known to have ever been in contact with Aryan races.

The 'bull-roarer,' a toy familiar to most children, is one example selected by Mr. Lang. It is a long, thin, narrow piece of wood, sharpened at both ends; attached to a piece of string, and whirled rapidly and steadily in the air, it emits a sound which gradually increases to an unearthly kind of roar. The ancient Greeks employed at some of their sacred rites a precisely similar toy, described by historians as 'a little piece of wood, to which a string was fastened, and in the mysteries it is whirled round to make a roaring noise.' The performers in the 'mysteries' at which this implement was used daubed themselves all over with clay. Demosthenes describes the mother of Æschines as a dabbler in mysteries, and tells how Æschines used to assist her by helping to bedaub the initiate with clay and bran. Various explanations have been offered of these practices, but let us see how they tally with any prevailing customs. First, the bull-roarer is to be found in almost every country in the world, and among the most primitive peoples. It is so simple an instrument that it is within the scope of the mechanical genius of the most degraded savages, and therefore it is quite unnecessary to suppose that the idea of it was ever transmitted from race to race. And as an instrument employed in religious rites or mysteries, it is found in New Mexico, in Australia, in New Zealand and in Africa, to this day. Its use in Australia is to warn the women to keep out of the way when the men are about to celebrate their tribal mysteries. It is death for women to witness these rites, and it is also forbidden for them to look upon the sacred turndun, or bull-roarer. In the same way, among the Greeks, it was forbidden for men to witness the rites of the women, and for women to witness those of the men. Among the Indians of Zuni, Mr. Cushing found the same implement used by the priests to summon the tribe to the sacrificial feasts. In South Africa, Mr. Tylor has proved that the bull-roarer is employed to call the men only to the celebration of sacred functions, and the instrument itself is described in Theal's Kaffir Folklore.

Now, the same peoples who still employ the bull-roarer as a sacred instrument also bedaub their bodies with clay, for no apparent reason unless it may be to frighten their enemies or repel intruders. We thus find still prevailing in our own time among savage races practices which are perfectly analogous to practices which prevailed among the Greeks. The reasonable inference, therefore, is not that the bull-roaring and body-daubing were first used in the rites of a civilized race of Greeks, and thence transmitted to Africa, Australia and America, but that the employment of these things by the Greeks was a survival of the time when the Greeks were in the same savage condition as are the peoples among whom we find the same things now.

The Greek story of Saturn is familiar to every schoolboy. Saturn, it will be remembered, wounds and drives away his father, Uranus, because of his unkindness to himself and his brothers. Afterwards Saturn marries his sister Rhea, and has several children—Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon and Zeus—whom he swallowed as they were born, lest they might serve him as he served Uranus. But Rhea didn't like this, and at the time when Zeus was born she ran away to a distant place. Saturn followed, and, asking for the child, was given a stone, which he swallowed without looking at it. Zeus grew up in security, and in due time gave his father a dose which made him disgorge, first, the stone (which was placed at Delphi, where it became an object of public worship), and then the children, one after another, all living and hearty.

The tale is told in various ways, but these are the main incidents. It is interpreted by the mythologists to typify, in its first part, the birth of the world and the elements; and the second part is held by some to typify the operations of time, by others the alternations of night and day—the stone swallowed by Saturn being the sun, which he afterwards disgorges at daybreak. By others Saturn is held to be the sun and ripener of the harvests; by others, again, the storm-god, who swallows the clouds, whose sickle is the rainbow, and whose blood is the lightning; by others still Saturn is regarded as the sky, which swallows and reproduces the stars, and whose sickle is the crescent moon. There is a great deal of diversity of opinion, it will be observed, about this myth of Saturn, or Cronus, but it is curious to note how all the leading incidents of this myth may be traced in various parts of the world.[4] Among the Maoris, the story of Tûtenganahaû is told, and this is a story of the severing of heaven and earth, very similar to the Greek story. In India and in China, legends tell of the former union of heaven and earth, and of their violent separation by their own children. As regards the swallowing performances of Saturn, they find analogues in tales among the Australians, among the Red Indians, among the natives of British Guiana, and among the Kaffirs.

The conclusion, then, is that the first part of the Saturn myth is evidently the survival of an old nature-myth which is common to races who never had any communication with the Greeks. The second part is unintelligible, except as just such a legend as might be evolved by persons in the same savage intellectual condition as, say, the Bushmen, who account for celestial phenomena by saying that a big star has swallowed his daughter and spat her out again.

Any myth which accounts for the processes of nature or the aspects of natural phenomena may, says Mr. Lang, conceivably have been invented separately, therefore it is not surprising to find the star-stories of savages closely resembling those of civilized races. The story of the lost sister of the Pleiades, according to the Greek myth, finds a parallel in a tradition among the Australians. Of star-lore generally, it may be said that it is much the same even among the Bushmen of Africa, as it was among the Greeks and Egyptians, and as it is among the Australians and Eskimos.