Folklore as an Historical Science

by George Laurence Gomme

It is not necessary to quote a large number of examples, because I am not concerned with their variety nor with their essentials. I am only anxious to point out their existence as evidence of the scientific character of primitive myth.[186] It is not to the point to say that the science was all wrong. What is to the point is to say that the attempt was made to get at the origin of man and his destiny. Mr. Lang thinks that "the origin of the world and of man is naturally a problem which has excited the curiosity of the least developed minds," but in the use of the term "naturally," I think the stupendous nature of the effort made by the least developed minds is entirely neglected, and we miss the opportunity of measuring what this effort might mean.

When savages ask themselves, as they certainly do ask themselves, whence the sky, whence the winds, the sun, moon, stars, sea, rivers, mountains and other natural objects, they reply in terms of good logic applied to deficient knowledge. All the knowledge they possess is that based upon their own material senses. And therefore, when they apply that knowledge to subjects outside their own personality, they deal with them in terms of their own personality. How did the sky get up there, above their heads—the sky evidently so lovingly fond of the earth, so intimately connected with the earth?

The New Zealand answer to these questions is a great one, by whatever standard it is measured. Heaven and earth, they say, were husband and wife, so locked in close embrace that darkness everywhere prevailed. Their children were ever thinking amongst themselves what might be the difference between darkness and light. At last, worn out by the continued darkness, they consulted amongst themselves whether they should slay their parents, Rangi and Papa, i.e. heaven and earth, or whether they should rend them apart. The fiercest of their children exclaimed, "Let us slay them!" but the forest, another of the sons, said, "Nay, not so. It is better to rend them apart, and to let heaven stand far above us and the earth to lie under our feet. Let the sky become as a stranger to us, but the earth remain close to us as our nursing-mother." The brothers consented to this proposal with the exception of Tawhiri-ma-tea, the father of winds and storms; thus five of the brothers consented and one would not agree. Then each of the brothers tries to rend his parents, heaven and earth, asunder. First the father of cultivated food tries and fails; then the father of fish and reptiles; then the father of uncultivated food; then the father of fierce human beings. Then at last slowly uprises Tane-mahuta, the father of forests, birds, and insects, and he struggles with his parents; in vain he strives to rend them apart with his hands and arms. Lo, he pauses; his head is now firmly planted on his mother, the earth; his feet he raises up and rests against his father, the skies; he strains his back and limbs with mighty effort, and at last are rent apart Rangi and Papa, who shriek aloud with cries and groans. But Tane-mahuta pauses not, he regards not their shrieks and cries; far, far beneath him he presses down the earth; far, far above him he thrusts up the sky. Then were discovered a multitude of human beings whom heaven and earth had begotten, and who had hitherto lain concealed. But Tawhiri-ma-tea, the wind and storm, the brother who had not consented, is angry at this rending apart of his parents, and he rises and follows his father, the sky, and fights fiercely with the earth and his brothers.[187]

The explanation of this myth is simple. Unaided by the facts of science, the New Zealand savages could only think of the facts of their own experience. Only two personalities could produce the various products of the world; therefore the earth was the mother and the sky the father. But they are now separated and apart. Only a personality could have separated, and the forest, root-sown in the earth, branch-up in the sky, is evidently the means of this separation. And so, satisfactorily to their own minds, these rude savages settled the question of the origin of heaven and earth.

The close similarity of this to the story of Kronos has frequently been pointed out; but a Greek story is always worth repeating. Near the beginning of things Earth gave birth to Heaven. Later, Heaven became the husband of Earth, and they had many children. Some of these became the gods of the various elements, among whom were Okeanos, and Hyperion, the sun. The youngest child was Kronos of crooked counsel, who ever hated his mighty sire. Now the children of Heaven and Earth were concealed in the hollows of Earth, and both the Earth and her children resented this. At last they conspired against their father, Heaven, and, taking their mother into the counsels, she produced Iron and bade her children avenge her wrongs. Fear fell upon all of them except Kronos, and he determined to separate his parents, and with his iron weapon he effected his object. All the brothers rejoiced except one, Okeanos, and he remained faithful to his father.[188]

It would be well for the sake of the story itself to give a creation myth from India, but I shall have other use for it than its particular charm.

"'In the beginning, when Twashtri came to the creation of woman, he found that he had exhausted his materials in the making of man, and that no solid elements were left. In this dilemma, after profound meditation, he did as follows. He took the rotundity of the moon, and the curves of creepers, and the clinging of tendrils, and the trembling of grass, and the slenderness of the reed, and the bloom of flowers, and the lightness of leaves, and the tapering of the elephant's trunk, and the glances of deer, and the clustering of rows of bees, and the joyous gaiety of sunbeams, and the weeping of clouds, and the fickleness of the winds, and the timidity of the hare, and the vanity of the peacock, and the softness of the parrot's bosom, and the hardness of adamant, and the sweetness of honey, and the cruelty of the tiger, and the warm glow of fire, and the coldness of snow, and the chattering of jays, and the cooing of the kókila, and the hypocrisy of the crane, and the fidelity of the chakrawáka, and compounding all these together, he made woman and gave her to man. But after one week, man came to him and said: Lord, this creature that you have given me makes my life miserable. She chatters incessantly and teases me beyond endurance, never leaving me alone; and she requires incessant attention, and takes all my time up, and cries about nothing, and is always idle; and so I have come to give her back again, as I cannot live with her. So Twashtri said: Very well; and he took her back. Then after another week, man came again to him and said: "Lord, I find that my life is very lonely, since I gave you back that creature. I remember how she used to dance and sing to me, and look at me out of the corner of her eye, and play with me, and cling to me; and her laughter was music, and she was beautiful to look at, and soft to touch; so give her back to me again. So Twashtri said: Very well; and gave her back again. Then after only three days, man came back to him again and said: Lord, I know not how it is; but after all I have come to the conclusion that she is more of a trouble than a pleasure to me; so please take her back again. But Twashtri said: Out on you! Be off! I will have no more of this. You must manage how you can. Then man said: But I cannot live with her. And Twashtri replied: Neither could you live without her. And he turned his back on man, and went on with his work. Then man said: What is to be done? for I cannot live either with her or without her.'"[189]

Now this myth has, so far as its central fact is concerned, its counterpart in Celtic folklore. In the Welsh Mabinogi of Math, son of Mathonwy, it is related how Arianrod laid a destiny upon her son, whom she would not recognise, that he should never have a wife of the race that now inhabits the earth, and how Gwydion declared that he should have a wife notwithstanding. "They went thereupon unto Math, the son of Mathonwy, and complained unto him most bitterly of Arianrod. Well, said Math, we will seek, I and thou, by charms and magic, to form a wife for him out of flowers. So they took the blossoms of the oak, and the blossoms of the broom, and the blossoms of the meadow-sweet, and produced from them a maiden, the fairest and most graceful that man ever saw." No one can doubt that this interesting fragment of Welsh tradition takes us back to a creation legend of the same order as the Indian legend, and that the two widely separated parallels belong to the period when men were carving out for themselves theories as to the origin of women in relation to men.

It is impossible to deny a place among these myths of creation to the Hebrew tradition of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The first chapter of Genesis is the answer which the early Hebrews gave to the scientific question as to the origin of man. How much it cost them to arrive at this conclusion one cannot guess, one only knows that it has become a glory to the ages of Hebrew history, as well as to the civilisation of Christianity. Unfortunately it has become much more. The science of the primitive Hebrew has been adopted as the God-given revelation to all mankind. It is the function of folklore to correct this error, to restore the Hebrew tradition to its proper place among the myths of the world which have answered the cry of early man for the knowledge of his origin. There is no degradation here. Science is no longer in doubt as to the origin of man within the evolutionary process of the natural world, and it rightly rejects the first chapter of Genesis as of value to modern research. But science should accept it as a chapter in the history of anthropology, a chapter which has only proved not to be true, because of the limited range of early man in the facts about man, but a chapter, nevertheless, which has the inherent value of a faithful record of man's search after truth. This is a great position. This is the revelation which is made to us from the first chapter of Genesis, and when the theologian is bold and able enough to step outside the formularies of his ancient faith, and reach the magnificent world of thought which lies in front of him by the revelations of scientific discovery, he will consider the anthropological interpretation of the Hebrew Bible as one of the necessary elements of his equipment. There is on present lines a whole world of thought between science and religion, although they both have the same object. They both seek the great unknown. Science, however, gives up all efforts in the past which have proved futile and erroneous, cheerfully surrenders all errors of research and interpretation, starts investigation afresh, begins new discoveries, and rewrites the story they have to tell. Religion, on the other hand, comes to a full stop when once she has made or accepted a discovery, when once she has pronounced that the great unknown has become known to her votaries and supporters. She is skilful to use the results of science up to the point where they serve her purpose, and to use the terms of science in order to build up her shattering position. But she does not advance. She does not accept the first chapter of Genesis as a wonderful revelation of the early stages of human investigation into the realms of the unknown, but still keeps to her old formula of a revelation of the deity as to the origin of man, and she does not see that by this attitude she is lessening every day her capacity for teaching truth.

I think the attitude of science to the Hebrew tradition is only a little less unfortunate than that of religion. Professor Huxley employed all the resources of his great knowledge to disprove the scientific accuracy of the tradition, and when one rereads his chapters on this subject[190] one wonders at the absence of the sense of proportion. Perhaps it was necessary, considering the place which the Hebrew tradition occupies in civilised thought, to show its utter inconsistency with the facts of nature, but it was equally necessary to show that it has its place in the history of human thought. The folklorist replaces it among the myths of creation, and then proceeds to analyse and value it. The Hebrew is shown by the myth he adopted to have frankly acknowledged that the origin of man and of the world was undiscoverable by him. Whatever older myths he once possessed, he discarded them in favour of a mythic God-creator, and this is only another way of stating that the mystery of man's origin could not, to the Hebrew mind, be met by such a myth as the New Zealander believed in, or as the Kumis believed in, but could only be met by the larger conception of a special creation. The Hebrew could not find his answer in nature, so he appealed to super-nature. His God was the unknown God, and the realm of the unknown God was the unknowable. Though in terms this may not be the interpretation of the Hebrew creation myth, its ultimate resolve is this; and because modern science has penetrated beyond this confession of the unknown origin of man to the evolution of man, it should not therefore treat contemptuously the effort of early Hebrew science. Because it is not possible to admit this effort as part of modern science, it must not be rejected from the entire region of science. It must be respected as one of the many efforts which have made possible the last effort of all which proclaims that man has kinship with all the animal world.