"As, however, subordinate heirs, the father after some consultation and ceremony chooses out of his other sons, secondly 'the son of his right hand,' and thirdly, 'the son of his grandfather.' If the father be a Chief, these two are after his death accounted as Chiefs in the tribe, subordinate to the 'great son,' and even if through their superior energy, the size of the tribe requiring emigration to pastures new, or other causes, one or both of them break off, and with their respective inheritance or following form a separate tribe or tribes, yet they are federally bound to their great brother, and their successors to his successors, and recognise him as their supreme or national Chief. Thus Krili, the Chief of the Amagcaleka tribe across the Kei, was also paramount Chief of all the Amaxosas, including his own tribe, and those this side the Kei, who are divided into the two great divisions—each of which includes several tribes—of the Amangquika and Amandhlambi, which latter has among it the Amagqunukwebi, a tribe of Caffre intermingled with Hottentot blood, and therefore rather looked down upon."[225]
Dr. Nicholson, from whom I quote this evidence, goes on to say that the
"custom then of the heirship of the youngest, appears to me to have not unlikely grown up among a polygamous race, and to have arisen both from considerations of self security and from those of race and rank."
Quite independently of Dr. Nicholson I had come to the same conclusion;[226] and Dr. Nicholson, after handsomely acknowledging my priority in the "discovery," very properly alludes to the not unimportant fact of two workers in the same field coming to like conclusions. It is remarkable that the same distinction between the succession of the youngest son and of the son of the youngest wife appears in folk-tales.[227] Now clearly it would be quite wrong to suggest a parallel between the heirship of the youngest among the Kafir peoples of Africa and heirship of the youngest among the tribal people of early Europe. They are not comparable at all points, and it is just where the point of comparison fails that it becomes so important to science.[228]
I will take one other example, and this is the important practice of human sacrifice which looms so largely in anthropological research, and which is considered by so good an authority as Schrader to have taken a prominent place among the Aryans,[229] though he takes his examples, not from language, but from the unexamined customs of the Greeks, Romans, northerns, Indians, and Persians. We know more about the development of sacrifice now that Professor Robertson Smith has dealt with the Semitic part of the evidence. Without resting on the fact that the occurrence of human sacrifice in a country occupied by Aryan-speaking people does not, of itself alone, imply that the rite was Aryan, it is far more important to point out that among the higher races "the feeling that the slaying involves a grave responsibility and must be justified by divine permission" appears, and "care was taken to slay the victim without bloodshed, or to make believe that it had killed itself."[230] This feeling marks distinctly the Greek sacrifice as at Thargelia and in the Leukadian ceremony, the Roman sacrifice at the Tarpeian Rock, the sacrifice at the Valhalla rock of the northerns, while among the Hindus there is much to show that the idea of human sacrifice in some of the early writings is a literary borrowing from the Hebrews; and that if it ever prevailed among the Aryas of India it was very early superseded by the sacrifice of animals.[231] Colonel Dalton has given good reasons for his views "that the Hindus derived from the aboriginal races the practice of human sacrifices."[232] Although, then, Greek ritual and Greek myth are full of legends which tell of sacrifices once human, but afterwards commuted into sacrifices where some other victim is slain or the dummy of a man is destroyed;[233] although the significant Hindu ceremonial of so throwing the limbs of an animal slaughtered to be burnt with the dead that every limb lies upon a corresponding part of the corpse;[234] although Teuton, Celt, and Norse[235] are credited with the practice by authorities not to be questioned, it appears by the evidence that the European form of human sacrifice has little in common with the savage form except in the nature of the victim. It occurred, as Grimm states, when some great disaster, some heinous crime, had to be retrieved or purged, a kind of sacrifice, says Mr. Lang, not necessarily savage except in its cruelty; and the victims were not tribesmen, but captive enemies, purchased slaves, or great criminals.
These two examples will serve as warning against the too general acceptance of the custom and belief of savage and barbaric races, as identical with the custom and belief of early or primitive man. Such identification is in the main correct; but it is correct not because it has been proved by the best methods to be so, but because, of all possible explanations, this is the only one that meets the general position in a satisfactory manner. In many cases, however, it is monstrously incorrect, and it is the incorrect conclusion which weighs far more against the acceptance of the results of folklore than do the correct conclusions in its favour.
The work which has to be accomplished by the comparative method of research is of such magnitude that it needs to be considered. The labour and research might in point of volume be out of proportion to the results, and it may be questioned, as it has already been questioned by inference, whether it is worth the while. The first answer to this objection is that all historical investigation is justified, however much the labour, however extensive the research. Secondly, considering the very few results which the study of folklore has hitherto produced upon the investigations into prehistoric Europe, it must be worth while for the student of custom and belief to conduct his experiments upon a recognised plan in order to get at the secret of man's place in the struggle for existence, which is determined more by psychological than by physical phenomena. Thirdly, if the psychical anthropology of prehistoric times is to be sought for in the customs and beliefs of modern savages, it is of vital importance to anthropological science that this should be established by methods exactly defined. Whatever of traditional custom and belief is capable of bearing the test and of being definitely labelled as belonging to prehistoric man, becomes thereafter the data for the psychical anthropology of civilised man. Edmund Spenser understood this when his official duties took him among the "wild" Irish. "All the customs of the Irish," he says, "which I have often noted and compared with that I have read, would minister occasion of a most ample discourse of the original of them, and the antiquity of that people, which in truth I think to be more ancient than most that I know in this end of the world; so as if it were in the handling of some man of sound judgment and plentiful reading, it would be most pleasant and profitable."[236]
Comparative folklore, then, to be of value must be based upon scientific principles. The unmeaning custom or belief of the peasantry of the Western world of civilisation must not be taken into the domains of savagery or barbarism for an explanation without any thought as to what this action really signifies to the history of the custom or belief in question. No doubt the explanation thus afforded is correct in most cases, and perhaps it was necessary to begin with the comparative method in order to understand the importance and scope of the study of apparently worthless material. A new stage in comparative folklore must now be entered upon. It must be understood what the effective comparison of a traditional peasant custom or belief with a savage custom or belief really amounts to. The process includes the comparison of an isolated custom or belief belonging, perhaps secretly, to a particular place, a particular class of persons, or perhaps a particular family or person, with a custom or belief which is part of a whole system belonging to a savage race or tribe; of a custom or belief whose only sanction is tradition, the conservative instinct to do what has been done by one's ancestors, with a custom or belief whose sanction is the professed and established polity or religion of a people; of a custom or belief which is embedded in a civilisation, of which it is not a part and to which it is antagonistic, with a custom or belief which helps to make up the civilisation of which it is part. In carrying out such a comparison, therefore, a very long journey back into the past of the civilised race has been performed. For unless it be admitted that civilised people consciously borrow from savages and barbaric peoples or constantly revert to a savage original type of mental and social condition, the effect of such a comparison is to take back the custom or belief of the modern peasant to a date when a people of savage or barbaric culture occupied the country now occupied by their descendants, the peasants in question, and to equate the custom or belief of this ancient savage or barbaric culture with the custom or belief of modern savage or barbaric culture. The line of comparison is not therefore simply drawn level from civilisation to savagery; but it consists, first, of two vertical lines from civilisation and savagery respectively, drawn to a height scaled to represent the antiquity of savage culture in modern Europe, and then the level horizontal line drawn to join the two vertical lines. Thus the line of comparison is
| Ancient savagery | Ancient savagery | ||
| Savagery | Civilisation | ||
We thus arrive at some conception of the work to be accomplished by and involved in comparative folklore. The results are worth the work. They relate to stages of culture in the countries of civilisation which are recoverable by no other means. The stages of culture are practically lost to history. In ancient Greek and Roman history, and in ancient Scandinavian history, there are priceless fragments of information which tell us much. But these fragments are not the complete story, and they belong to relatively small areas of European history. Every nation has the right to go back as far in its history as it is possible to reach. It can only do this by the help of comparative folklore. In our own country we have seen how history breaks down, and yet historical records in Britain are perhaps the richest in Europe. The traditional materials known to us as folklore are the only means left to us, and we can only properly avail ourselves of these when we have mastered the methods of science which it is necessary to use in their investigation.