Folklore as an Historical Science

by George Laurence Gomme

But if we have been able to look through the very portals of Christianity to the regions of paganism behind, can we not boldly pass through altogether and recover from folklore much of the lost evidence of our prehistoric ancestors? I put the question in this way purposely, because it is the way which is indicated by the methods and data of folklore, and it is a question which has much to do with the different views held of the province of folklore.

I will answer by referring to the pre-baptismal rites of washing. In Northumberland we meet with the analogue of the sixteenth-century Irish practice, for there the child's right hand is left unwashed that it may gather riches better[448]—the golden coin taking the place of the ancient weapon in this as in other phases of civilisation. Not only is the water used for this purpose heated in the old-fashioned way by placing red-hot irons in it (i.e. the modern equivalent for stone-boiling), but in Yorkshire we have the custom that the newborn infant must be placed in the arms of a maiden before any one else touches it, two practices represented exactly in the customs of the Canary Islanders, who were in the stone age of culture and are considered to be the last remnants of a race which once included Britain among its lands of occupation.[449]

The Rev. C. O'Connor, in his third letter of Columbanus, gives a very interesting statement of Irish well-worship in a letter addressed to his brother, the late Owen O'Connor Don, and which shows the living antagonism between Christian and pagan belief. He says:—

"I have often enquired of your tenants what they themselves thought of their pilgrimage to their wells of Kill Orcht, Tobbar-Brighde, Tobbar-Muire, near Elphin, and Moore, near Castlereagh, where multitudes assemble annually to celebrate what they, in broken English, termed Patterns; and when I pressed a very old man—Owen Hester—to state what possible advantage he expected to derive from the singular custom of frequenting in particular such wells as were contiguous to an old blasted oak, or an upright unhewn stone, and what the meaning was of the yet more singular custom of sticking rags in the branches of such trees and spitting on them, his answer, and the answer of the oldest men, was that their ancestors always did it; that it was a preservative against Geasa-Dravideacht, i.e. the sorceries of Druids; that their cattle was preserved by it from infectious disorders; that the davini maithe, i.e. the fairies, were kept in good humour by it; and so thoroughly persuaded were they of the sanctity of these pagan practices that they would travel bareheaded and barefooted from ten to twenty miles for the purpose of crawling on their knees round these wells and upright stones and oak trees westward as the sun travels, some three times, some six, some nine, and so on, in uneven numbers until their voluntary penances were completely fulfilled. The waters of Logh-Con were deemed so sacred from ancient usage that they would throw into the lake whole rolls of butter as a preservation for the milk of their cows against Geasa-Dravideacht."[450]

Scarcely less important than the effect of the antagonism of the Church in the production of arrested development is the effect of the toleration of the Church for pagan custom and belief. This toleration took the shape either of allowing the continuation of pagan custom and belief as a matter not affecting Christian doctrine or of actual absorption into Church practice and ritual. The story told to the full is a long and interesting one. And it still awaits the telling. Gibbon, in a few sentences, has told us the outline.[451] Other authorities have told us small episodes. I am, of course, not concerned here with anything more than to adduce sufficient evidence to establish the fact that Christian tolerance of paganism has been one of the assistant causes for the long continuance of pagan survivals.

I shall not hesitate to begin by quoting at length a luminous passage from Grimm's great work. In the preface to his second edition he writes as follows:—

"Oftentimes the Church prudently permitted, or could not prevent, that heathen and Christian things should here and there run into one another; the clergy themselves would not always succeed in marking off the bounds of the two religions: their private leanings might let some things pass which they found firmly rooted in the multitude. In the language, together with a stock of newly-imported Greek and Latin terms, there still remained, even for ecclesiastical use, a number of Teutonic words previously employed in heathen services, just as the names of gods stood ineradicable in the days of the week; to such words old customs would still cling silent and unnoticed and take a new lease of life. The festivals of the people present a tough material: they are so closely bound up with its habits of life that they will put up with foreign additions if only to save a fragment of festivities long loved and tried. In this way Scandinavia, probably the Goths also for a time, and the Anglo-Saxons down to a late period, retained the heathenish Yule as all Teutonic Christians did the sanctity of Easter-tide; and from these two the Yule-boar and Yule-bread, the Easter pancake, Easter-sword, Easter-fire, and Easter-dance could not be separated. As faithfully were perpetuated the name and in many cases the observances of Midsummer. New Christian feasts, especially of saints, seem purposely, as well as accidentally, to have been made to fall on heathen holidays. Churches often rose precisely where a heathen god or his sacred tree had been pulled down, and the people trod their old paths to the accustomed site; sometimes the very walls of the heathen temple became those of the church, and cases occur in which idol images still found a place in a wall of the porch, or were set up outside the door, as at Bamberg Cathedral there lie Slavic heathen figures of animals inscribed with runes. Sacred hills and fountains were rechristened after saints, to whom their sanctity was transferred; sacred woods were handed over to the newly-founded convent or the king, and even under private ownership did not lose their long-accustomed homage. Law usages, particularly the ordeals and oath-takings, but also the beating of bounds, consecrations, image processions, spells and formulas, while retaining their heathen character, were simply clothed in Christian forms. In some customs there was little to change: the heathen practice of sprinkling a newborn babe with water closely resembled Christian baptism; the sign of the hammer, that of the cross; and the erection of tree crosses the irmensûls and world trees of paganism."[452]

This passage, written in 1844, has been abundantly illustrated by the research of specialists since that date, and, of course, Mr. Frazer's monumental work will occur to every reader. But, after all, the chief authority for the action of the Church towards paganism in this country is the famous letter of Pope Gregory to the Abbot Mellitus in A.D. 601, as preserved by the historian Beda. It is worth while quoting this once again, for it is an English historical document of priceless value. "We have been much concerned," writes the good St. Gregory,

"since the departure of our congregation that is with you, because we have received no account of the success of your journey. When, therefore, Almighty God shall bring you to the most reverend Bishop Augustine our brother, tell him what I have, upon mature deliberation on the affair of the English, determined upon, namely, that the temples of the idols [fana idolorum] in that nation [gente] ought not to be destroyed; but let the idols that are in them be destroyed; let holy water be made and sprinkled upon the said temples, let altars be erected and relics placed. For if these temples be well built, it is requisite that they be converted from the worship of devils [dæmonum] to the worship of the true God; that the nation seeing that their temples are not destroyed may remove error from their hearts, and knowing and adoring the true God may the more familiarly resort to the places to which they have been accustomed. And because they have been used to slaughter many oxen in the sacrifices to devils some solemnity must be exchanged for them on this account, so that on the day of the dedication, or the nativities of the holy martyrs whose relics are there deposited, they may build themselves huts of the boughs of trees, about those churches which have been turned to that use from temples and celebrate the solemnity with religious feasting and no more offer beasts to the devil [diabolo], but kill cattle to the praise of God in their eating, and return thanks to the giver of all things for their sustenance."[453]

The church of St. Pancras at Canterbury is claimed to be one of the temples so preserved,[454] and there have survived down to our own times examples of the animal sacrifice which in early Christian days may well have been preserved by this famous edict.[455] But beyond these illustrations of the two stated objects of Pope Gregory's letter there are innumerable additional results from such a policy,[456] results which prove that British pagandom was not stamped out by edict or by sword, but was rather gradually borne down before the strength of the new religion—borne down and pushed into the background out of sight of the Church and the State, relegated to the cottage homes, the cattle-sheds and the cornfields, the countryside and the denizens thereof.[457]