Folklore as an Historical Science

by George Laurence Gomme

If, however, history from the written records is thus at fault, so too is history from the traditional records. No systematic effort has been made to treat the traditional story or the traditional custom and belief as part of the tribal history of our race, and yet in the few cases where it has been so treated the results are obviously satisfactory. I can illustrate the value of this point of view by an example drawn from the period which witnessed the earliest struggles of our race. I think with Mr. Keary that in those German stories "which delight above all things in that portrait of the youngest son of the house—he is the youngest of three—who is left behind despised and neglected when his brothers go forth to seek their fortunes," we have traces of a veritable fact, of an historical condition where the elder sons actually went forth to conquest and to settlement and the youngest son remained in the original home as the hearth-child.[439] The position of hearth-child, surviving as it does in our law of Borough English, is of great significance, and that we can by the aid of tradition reach a state of society which gave birth to it is a point of the greatest importance, even if we could go no further. But there is a stage beyond it. The majority of these youngest-son stories relate to events not to be identified with any particular tribe or people, but which belong to all the tribes and peoples whose course of conquest and settlement took the common form. But if apart from these all-world stories there exist stories, or if there be but one story which has become identified with an episode, a person, or a place belonging to a particular people, we may claim it as part of the history of that particular people. It may be that the general story has become specialised in this one case, or it may be that an entirely new story has sprung out of the special case. But whichever be the origin of such a story attached to a particular people, it must tell us something of that people at a period when its history was being made rather than recorded. What it tells may be very little, may not lead up to anything very great or definite, so far as later history is concerned; but that for the period to which it belongs it relates to an episode worthy to have been kept in the memories of the descendants of the chief actors in the events is the point to bear in mind.

There is one such story which belongs to English history. One of the most famous of these youngest-son stories is that of Childe Rowland, and Mr. Jacobs, on examining its incidents and details, suggests that "our story may have a certain amount of historic basis and give a record which history fails to give of the very earliest conflict of races in these isles."[440] Mr. Jacobs gives good grounds for this conclusion, and shows up a picture of earliest English history which is certainly not contained elsewhere, and we are able by this means to pass from that large group of youngest-son stories, which have brought with them living testimony of an ancient institution of our race in its oldest home, to the narrower but more direct example which comes to us from events which happened just at the dawn of history in our own land. It is not necessary to emphasise the importance of this service to history at the instance of tradition, for it will be obvious to every student that many a struggle must have remained unrecorded and many a hero must have died unnamed in the events which belong to the period of tribal conquest and settlement. And to have still with us the far-off echo of these events is no slight encouragement to an inquiry which has for its object the reconstruction of the conditions under which such events took place.

This would be all the better understood if we could get a concrete case for illustration, and, fortunately, this is possible by turning to the evidence of India. "What we know of the manner in which the states of Upper India were founded," says Sir Alfred Lyall,

"gives a very fair sample of the movements and changes of the primitive world. When the dominant Rajput families lost their dominion in the rich Gangetic plains one part of their clan seems to have remained in the conquered country, having submitted to the foreigner, cultivating in strong communities of villages and federations of villages and paying such land tax as the ruler could extract. Another part of the clan, probably the near kinsmen of the defeated chief, followed his family into exile, and helped him to carve out another, but a much poorer, dominion. Here the chief built himself a fort upon the hill; his clansmen slew or subdued the tribes they found in possession of the soil, and the lands were all parcelled off among the chief's kinsfolk, the indigenous proprietors being subjected to payment of a land tax, but not otherwise degraded. When the land grew too strait for the support of the chief's family or of the sept—that is, when there were no vacant allotments, a landless son of the chief would assemble a band, and set forth to make room for himself elsewhere."[441]

The evidence from India is fact, the evidence from England is tradition, and yet I do not think any student will deny that both fact and tradition are part and parcel of the same conditions of society, the same forces operating upon the same material. The conditions of society in both cases are tribal conditions, and the common factor having thus been discovered, it is possible to determine not only the inter-relationship between fact and tradition, but the means by which we may estimate the value of both.

We cannot, however, stop here. I carry on the same argument from the traditional legend to the traditional custom and belief, and affirm that it is only by their position as part of the tribal system that custom and belief in survival must be tested. If they have descended from early Celtic or Teutonic custom and belief, they have descended from tribal custom and belief, and somewhere in the stages of descent will be found the link which connects them definitely with the tribe. That not all custom and belief has so descended is due to the fact that much of it belongs to the pre-Celtic period, which was not tribal; some of it, no doubt, to comparatively modern times, when, as we have already seen, superstition had taken the place of thought, while some phases of early belief belong to conditions which transcend the division between pre-Aryan and Aryan folk. On this I will say something by way of explanation presently. In the meantime it is an extremely important task to classify survivals into tribal and non-tribal groups. Those which belong to Celtic or Teutonic origins must show their tribal origin, for they could not have come into existence apart from the tribe, and apart from the tribe they could not have survived after the break-up of the tribe consequent upon the development of national and political life. Custom and belief which do not fit into the ancient tribal system, therefore, cannot be recognised as ancient Celtic or ancient Teutonic custom and belief, and contrariwise when it is seen that they naturally fall into this system it may be argued that there we must search for their origin. Our Anglo-Saxon forefathers have left a curious testimony to this view of the question in their word "holy" or wholesome. What is wholesome is so for the whole group. The Anglo-Saxon idea of holiness implies as its chief element relation to the tribal life.[442]

The classification of survivals in folklore into tribal and non-tribal items is a lengthy and intricate process. Some years ago I made a start in a study of fire worship which I presented to the British Association,[443] and I hope shortly to be ready with a volume on Tribal Custom, which will embody a fuller study of fire worship and its accompanying beliefs, together with a complete study of all the remains of traditional custom, rite, and belief, which only as the detritus of the ancient tribal organisation receive adequate explanation of their presence in the midst of modern political and religious institutions. If I leave this part of my subject without further illustration in this present volume, I must add one important note upon the persistence of survivals of both kinless and kinship societies. I have shown that the tribal system of the advanced races included provision for non-tribesmen, provision which kept non-tribesmen outside the tribal bond, and at the same time kept them tied to the tribe by using them as the necessary dependent adjunct of the tribe, using them as bondmen and serfs in point of fact. This extremely important factor in the history of the tribal organisation, which has not been properly noticed by the few authorities who have investigated tribal institutions, receives additional importance when viewed from the standpoint of folklore, for it allows for the preservation of non-tribal cults side by side with tribal cults. Non-tribesmen preserved their custom, belief, and rite simply because they were not admitted to the custom, belief, and rite of the tribe, and this is the explanation of the existence, in survival, of folklore which goes back to pre-Celtic times. Some of this pre-Celtic folklore we have already had before us, and some of it I have studied in my Ethnology in Folklore. Later on I shall have something more to say on the subject. Here it is only necessary to emphasise the importance of having ascertained why it is that the Celtic conquerors of Britain and the earliest tribal conquerors of the Indo-European world generally permitted to live in their midst what in a sense was opposed to all that they believed, to all that they practised, to all that governed them in thought and action.

I think this is a strong position upon which to conduct folklore research. It includes the whole of the historical position; it takes due count of historical facts instead of ignoring them. It is based upon a scientific conception of the meaning of a survival of culture. A survival is that which has been left stranded amidst the development that is going on around. Its future life is not one of development but of decay. We are not dealing with the evolution of society, but with the decaying fragments of a social system which has passed away. We have to trace out its line of decay from the point where it almost vanishes as the mere superstition or practice of a peasant or an outcast, back to phases where it exists in more strenuous fashion, and finally back to its original position as part and parcel of a living social fabric. Moreover, the strength of our position is based upon a scientific conception of the development of the nation or people among whom survivals exist. It is not all parts of the nation which develop at the same rate, at the same time, and for the same period. There are social strata in every country, and it is the observance of these strata which has made it possible for the inquirer of to-day to use the evidence they afford for historical purposes.

FOOTNOTES:

[427] Religion of the Semites, 30. It is worth while quoting here Merivale's note in his Boyle lectures, Conversion of the Northern Nations, 122. "Pagan temples were always the public works of nations and communities. They were national buildings dedicated to national purposes. The mediæval churches, on the other hand, were the erection of individuals, monuments of personal piety, tokens of the hope of a personal reward." Cf. Stanley, Hist. Westminster Abbey, 12.