Folklore as an Historical Science

by George Laurence Gomme

At Hitchin, which is Mr. Seebohm's famous example, we meet with the manorial type. But its features are in no way peculiar. There is nothing which has not its counterpart, in more or less well-defined degree, in the other types which are not manorial. In short, the manorial framework within which it is enclosed does little more than fix the details into an immovable setting, accentuating some at the expense of others, legalising everything so as to bring it all under the iron sovereignty which was inaugurated by the Angevin kings.

My suggestion is that these examples are but varying types of one original. The Teutonic people, and their Celtic predecessors, came to Britain with a tribal, not an agricultural, constitution. In the outlying parts of the land this tribal constitution settled down, and was only slightly affected by the economical conditions of the people they found there; in the more thickly populated parts this tribal constitution was superimposed upon an already existing village constitution in full vigour. We, therefore, find the tribal constitution everywhere—in almost perfect condition in the north, in Wales, and in Ireland; in less perfect condition in England. We also find the village constitution everywhere—in almost embryo form in the north, Wales, and in Ireland; in full vigour and force in England, especially in that area which, as already noted, has been identified as the constant occupation-ground of all the races who have settled in Britain.

Now the factor which is most apparent in all these cases is the singular dual constitution which I have called tribal and village. It is only when we get to such cases as Rothwell and Hitchin that almost all traces of the tribal element are lost, the village element only remaining. But inasmuch as this village element is identical in kind, if not in degree, with the village element in the other types, and inasmuch as topographically they are closely connected, we are, I contend, justified in concluding that it is derived from the same original—an original which was composed of a tribal community with a village community in serfdom under it.

This dual element should, I think, be translated into terms of ethnology by appealing to the parallel evidence of India. There the types of the village community are not, as was thought by Sir Henry Maine and others, homogeneous. There the dual element appears, the tribal community at the top of the system, the village community at the bottom of the system. But in India a new factor is introduced by the equation of the two elements with two different races—the tribal element being Aryan, and the village element non-Aryan. Race-origins are there still kept up and rigidly adhered to. They have not been crushed out, as in Europe, by political or economical activity.

But if crushed out of prominent recognition in Europe, are we, therefore, to conclude that their relics do not exist in peasant custom? My argument is that we cannot have such close parallels in India and in England without seeing that they virtually tell the same story in both countries. It would require a great deal to prove that customs, which in India belong now to non-Aryan aborigines and are rejected by the Aryans, are in Europe the heritage of the Aryan race.

The objections to my theory have been formulated by Mr. Ashley, who follows Mr. Seebohm and M. Fustel de Coulanges as an adherent of the chronological method of studying institutions. Like the old school of antiquaries, this new school of investigators into the history of institutions gets back to the period of Roman history, and there stops. Mr. Ashley suggests that because Cæsar describes the Celtic Britons as pastoral, therefore agriculture in Britain must be post-Celtic. I will not stop to raise the question as to who were the tribes from which Cæsar obtained his evidence. But it will suffice to point out that if Cæsar is speaking of the Aryan Celts of Britain—and this much seems certain—he only proves of them what Tacitus proves of the Aryan Teutons, what the sagas prove of the Aryan Scandinavians, what the vedas prove of the Aryan Indians, what philology, in short, proves of the primitive Aryans generally, namely, that they were distinctly hunters and warriors, and hated and despised the tillers of the soil.

It does not, in point of fact, then, help the question as to the origin of agricultural rites and usages to turn to Aryan history at all. In this emergency Roman history is appealed to. But this is just one of those cases where a small portion of the facts are squeezed in to do duty for the whole.

Both M. Fustel de Coulanges and Mr. Seebohm think that if a Roman origin can be primâ facie shown for the economical side of agricultural institutions, there is nothing more to be said. But they leave out of consideration a whole set of connected institutions. Readers of Mr. Frazer's Golden Bough are now in possession of facts which it would take a very long time to explain. They see that side by side with agricultural economics is agricultural religion, of great rudeness and barbarity, of considerable complexity, and bearing the stamp of immense antiquity. The same villagers who were the observers of those rules of economics which are thought to be due to Roman origin were also observers of ritual and usages which are known to be savage in theory and practice. Must we, then, say that all this ritual and usage are Roman? or must we go on ignoring them as elements in the argument as to the origin of agricultural institutions? One or the other of these alternatives must, I contend, be accepted by the inquirer.

Because the State has chosen or been compelled for political reasons to lift up peasant economics into manorial legal rules, thus forcibly divorcing this portion of peasant life from its natural associations, there is no reason why students should fix upon this arbitrary proceeding as the point at which to begin their examination into the origin of village agriculture. Manorial tenants pay their dues to the lord, lot out their lands in intermixed strips, cultivate in common, and perform generally all those interesting functions of village life with which Mr. Seebohm has made us familiar. But, in close and intimate connection with these selfsame agricultural economical proceedings, it is the same body of manorial tenants who perform irrational and rude customs, who carry the last sheaf of corn represented in human or animal form, who sacrifice animals to their earth deities, who carry fire round fields and crops, who, in a scarcely disguised ritual, still worship deities which there is little difficulty in recognising as the counterparts of those religious goddesses of India who are worshipped and venerated by non-Aryan votaries. Christianity has not followed the lead of politics, and lifted all this portion of peasant agricultural life into something that is religious and definite. And because it remains sanctioned by tradition, we must, in considering origins, take it into account in conjunction with those economic practices which have been unduly emphasised in the history of village institutions. In India primitive economics and religion go hand in hand as part of the village life of the people; in England primitive economics and survivals of old religions, which we call folklore, go hand in hand as part of the village life of the people. And it is not in the province of students to separate one from the other when they are considering the question of origin.

This is practically the whole of my argument from the folklore point of view. But it is not the whole of the argument against the theory of the Roman origin of the village community. I cannot on this occasion re-state what this argument is, as it is set forth at some length in my book. But I should like to point out that it is in reality supported by arguments to be drawn from ethnological facts. Mr. Ashley surrenders to my view of the question the important point that ethnological data, derived from craniological investigation, fit in "very readily with the supposition that under the Celtic, and therefore under the Roman rule, the cultivating class was largely composed of the pre-Celtic race; and allows us to believe that the agricultural population was but little disturbed." Economically it was certainly not disturbed by the Romans. If the agricultural implements known to and used by the Romans were never used in Britain after their departure; if the old methods of land-surveying under the agrimensores is not to be traced in Britain as a continuing system; if wattle and daub, rude, uncarpentered trees turned root upwards to form roofs, were the leading principles of house-architecture, it cannot be alleged that the Romans left behind any permanent marks of their economical standard upon the "little disturbed agricultural population." Why, then, should they be credited with the introduction of a system of lordship and serf-bound tenants, when both lordship and serfdom are to be traced in lands where Roman power has never penetrated, under conditions almost exactly similar to the feudal elements in Europe? If it be accepted that the early agricultural population of Britain was non-Aryan; if we find non-Aryan agricultural rites and festivals surviving as folklore among the peasants of to-day; why should it be necessary, why should it be accepted as a reasonable hypothesis, to go to the imperial and advanced economics of Rome to account for those other elements in the composition of the village community which, equally with the rites and festivals, are to be found paralleled among the non-Aryan population living under an Aryan lordship in India? The only argument for such a process is one of convenience. It does so happen that the Roman theory may account for some of the English phenomena. But, then, the Celtic and Teutonic, or Aryan theory also accounts for the same English phenomena, and, what is more, it accounts for other phenomena not reckoned by the Roman theory. My proposition is that the history of the village community in Britain is the history of the economical condition of the non-Aryan aborigines; that the history of the tribal community is the history of the Aryan conquerors, who appear as overlords; and that the Romans, except as another wave of Aryan conquerors at an advanced stage of civilisation, had very little to do with shaping the village institutions of Britain.[495]