Folklore as an Historical Science

by George Laurence Gomme

The Greek and Latin authors who have stated of peoples living in Britain many characteristics which do not belong to civilisation or even to the borders of civilisation, range from Pytheas the Greek in the middle of the fourth century before our era down to the Latin poets of the early fifth century anno Domini. They all refer to the British savage. He is cannibalistic, incestuous, naked, possesses his wives in common, lives on wild fruits and not cultivated cereals, indulges in head-hunting, has no settled living-place which can be called a house, and generally betrays the characteristics of pure savagery.[162] Altogether there is a fairly substantial range of material for the formation of a reasonable conception of the condition of savagery in Britain.

We need not dwell long upon the earlier of our historians who have neglected or contested the statements of the authorities they use. They hardly possessed the material for scientific treatment, and personal predilections were the governing factors of any opinion which is expressed. John Milton, in his brave attempt to tell the story of early England, does not so much as allude to these disagreeable points. Hume disdainfully passes by the whole subject and practically begins with the Norman conquest. Lappenberg says of the group marriage of the Britons that it "is probably a mere Roman fable."[163] Innes accepts the views of the classical authorities and argues from them in his own peculiar way,[164] but Sullivan will have it that the materials afforded from classical sources are worthless: "they consist of mere hearsay reports without any sure foundation, and in many cases not in harmony with the results of modern linguistic and archæological investigations."[165] Neither Turner nor Palgrave has any doubt as to the authority of these early accounts,[166] and Dr. Giles accepts the accounts which he so usefully collected from the original authorities.[167]

The modern historian cannot, however, be so incidentally treated. He lives in the age of the comparative sciences and of anthropological research. He sometimes uses, though in a half-hearted and incomplete fashion, the results of inquirers in these fields of research, but he nowhere deals with the problem fully. His sins are not general, but special. He agrees with one statement of his original authority and disagrees with another, and we are left with a chaos of opinion founded upon no accepted principle. If the earlier historians accepted or rejected historical records without much reason for either course, the later historians have no right to follow them. The terms "savage" and "barbarian," indulged in by the Greek and Roman writers, cannot be rejected by modern authorities simply because they are too harsh. They cannot be considered merely in the nature of accusations against the standing and position of our ancestors, made by advocates anxious to blacken the national character. Even scholars like Mr. Skene, Mr. Elton, and Sir John Rhys, though inclined to weigh these passages by the light of ethnographic research, throw something like doubt upon the exact extent to which they may be taken as evidence. Mr. Elton, though admitting that the early "romances of travel" afford some evidence as to the habits of our barbarian ancestors, cannot quite get as far in his belief as to think that the account of "the Irish tribes who thought it right to devour their parents" is much more than a traveller's tale.[168] Sir John Rhys is not quite sure that the account by Cæsar of the communal marriages of the British is "not a passage from some Greek book of imaginary travels among imaginary barbarians which Cæsar had in his mind,"[169] though he notes elsewhere that "the vocabulary of the Celts will be searched in vain for a word for son or daughter as distinguished from boy or girl" as a fact of no little negative importance in relation to Cæsar's "ugly account;"[170] and he has similar doubts to express, noteworthy among them being the passage from Pliny which illustrates the Godiva story.[171] Mr. Skene lays stress upon the fact that Tacitus "neither alludes to the practice of their staining their bodies with woad nor to the supposed community of women among them;" and he offers some kind of excuse for the Roman evidence as to the tattooing with representations of animals,[172] evidence which Sir John Rhys, too, is chary of accepting in its full sense. Mr. Pearson reluctantly accepts Cæsar's account of the group marriage and the human sacrifice of the Druids, but he ignores all else, including the attested cannibalism of the Atticotti, though he mentions that tribe in another connection.[173] Sir James Ramsay agrees that the Britons tattooed their bodies with woad, recognises the fact that their matrimonial customs were polyandric, and that brother-and-sister marriage obtained, and generally accepts the prevalent ideas as to Celtic Druidism with its sacrificial rites and the system of "state worship." He rests his views for much of this upon the anthropological evidence in support of it.[174] Mr. Lang on behalf of Scotland, and Dr. Joyce on behalf of Ireland, have their say on the evidence. Mr. Lang seems to accept Cæsar's evidence "if correctly reported," throws doubts upon the ethnological value of such customs, and declares roundly that to found theories upon such evidence as archæology provides "is the province of another science, not of history."[175] Dr. Joyce says that in early Greek and Roman writers there is not much reliable information about Ireland, though he believes them when they talk of students from Britain residing in Ireland and of books existing in Ireland in the fourth century.[176]

This meagre result from the historians seems to me to be most unfortunate. Even when the testimony of early writers is accepted, it is accepted without the necessary filling in which such an acceptance warrants. Bare acceptance does not tell us much. Each recorded fact has a relationship to surrounding facts, should lead us to associated facts which, escaping observation by early writers, can nevertheless be restored. In history they are isolated and unconnected, because of the faults of the historian who records them. Anthropologically they belong to a wider grouping, reveal a connection with each other which is otherwise unsuspected, and prepare themselves for treatment on a larger platform. The historian has used them for the unprofitable controversy ranging round the question of early Celtic civilisation, whereas they clearly belong to the history of early man, and even the folklorist does not disdain to cast them on one side when they do not suit his purpose.[177]

It is still more unfortunate that Sir Henry Maine should have sought to enhance the value of his Indian evidence by contrasting it with what he calls "the slippery testimony concerning savages which is gathered from travellers' tales,"[178] and that Mr. Herbert Spencer should have replied to this in an angry note, declaring that he was aware "that in the eyes of most, antiquity gives sacredness to testimony, and that so what were travellers' tales when they were written in Roman days have come in our days to be regarded as of higher authority than like tales written by recent or living travellers."[179] The scorn passed upon "travellers' tales," the application of the term "romance" to the early descriptions of voyages, have done the same amount of mischief to these early chapters of history as the constant disbelief in the value of tradition has done to the testimony of folklore.

Now I do not recall these controversies, or lay stress upon what appear to me to be the shortcomings of the historian and folklorist in their relationship to each other, for the purpose of reawakening old antagonisms. I have merely selected a few illustrations of the present position of the subject in order that it may be seen how essential it is to proceed on other lines. All the items which have formed the subject of dispute, together with others which have escaped attention—items which have found their way into history by accident, which are by nature fragmentary and isolated, which do not connect up with anything that is distinctively Celtic or Teutonic, and which do not apparently fit in with any standard common to themselves—must command attention if only because they alone cannot be cut out of history when items standing side by side with them are allowed to remain, and in the end it can, I think, be shown that they command attention because of their inherent value.

The method of investigation as to the importance and significance of these earliest historical records must be anthropological. They are in point of fact so much anthropological data relating to Britain. It is no use calling them history, and then defining that history as bad history simply because as history the recorded facts do not appear to be credible. As a matter of fact they belong to the prehistory period of Britain, and to test their value scientific methods are required.

In the first place, anthropology shows that there is no primâ facie necessity for calling them Celtic, thus identifying them with that portion of our ancestry which is Celtic in race; for there is evidence of a non-Celtic race existing in prehistoric times, and existing down to within historic times, if not to modern times. Mr. Willis Bund has recently summarised the evidence from archæology, philology, and tradition as it appears in a particularly valuable local study of ancient Cardiganshire, stating it "to be agreed that there was more than one race of early inhabitants, and two of the sources say that there was an original race and at least two distinct races of invaders," and further, "that whoever the original inhabitants were they were not Celts."[180] These original inhabitants, who were not Celts, have left their remains in the barrows and megalithic monuments which still exist in various parts of the country, and anthropologists show that they have not entirely disappeared from among the race distinctions observable among the people of these islands. If it is possible to proceed from this to another stage, and to show from the British evidence what Mr. Risley has so well illustrated from the Indian evidence, namely, that gradations of race types as shown by anthropometrical indices correspond with gradations of social precedence and social organisation,[181] it may yet be possible to prove that the people who were not Celts were the people with whom originated those recorded customs and beliefs which are rejected as too savage for the Celt. Unfortunately, we know nothing about them, except the isolated scraps which are to be picked up from the early historians. This compels us to turn to other sources of information, and when we do this we find that British folklore preserves in traditional custom, rite, belief, and folk-tale, parallels to each and every item of savagery mentioned by the early historians of Britain; and further, that anthropology shows clearly enough that among the customs and beliefs of primitive races there are to be found parallels to every item of custom and belief recorded of early Britain. This gets rid of one of our greatest difficulties, and disposes of Dr. Sullivan's unwarranted assertion to the contrary (ante, p. 113). The recorded customs and beliefs of early Britain are proved by this means not to be impossible or improbable factors in the elements of the British prehistoric race. It will not be possible to term them inventions of romance or of false testimony, simply on the ground that they are not found elsewhere. On the contrary it will, I think, be difficult to resist the conclusion that inventions such as these, covering a wide and ascertained area of sociological and early religious development, could hardly have been made by historians having the limited range of knowledge possessed by the native and classical writers who are responsible for the facts. It is an easy, but not a satisfactory method of criticism to declare what is not to one's liking to be invention and romance, and it has until late years been difficult to combat such an argument. The battle has raged round wordy disputes, the merits of which are governed by the abilities of the respective disputants; that this is no longer possible is due to the fact that there have entered into the fray the methods and results of folklore which prevent the terms invention and romance from being applied, except where there is good independent reason for their use.