“I believe that no custom which we find among early races was initiated without some very good reason why, though those who practise it may long have lost it, and even have been obliged to invent a new one, utterly different from the original, to explain the rite which they ignorantly practise.”—(Personal letter from J. W. Kingsley, Esq., M. D., Brome Hall, Scole, England.)
“The serious business of ancient society may be seen to sink into the sport of later generations, and its serious belief to linger on in nursery folk-lore, while superseded habits of old-world life may be modified into new-world forms, still powerful for good and evil.”—(“Primitive Culture,” E. B. Tylor, London, 1871, vol. i. p. 15.)
And again: “Religion holds on, with the tenacity of superstition, to all that has ever been practised.”—(“Custom and Myth,” Andrew Lang, New York, 1885, p. 241.)
A brighter light will be thrown upon future investigations by regarding folk-lore and folk-usage, especially folk-medicine, as the crystalization of primordial religious thought and practice.
“It can hardly be too often repeated, since it is not yet generally recognized, that, in spite of their fragmentary character, the popular superstitions and customs of the peasantry are by far the fullest and most trustworthy evidence we possess as to the primitive religion of the Aryans. Indeed, the primitive Aryan, in all that regards his mental fibre and texture, is not extinct. He is amongst us to this day. The great intellectual and moral forces which have revolutionized the educated world, have scarcely affected the peasant. In his inmost beliefs, he is what his forefathers were in the days when forest trees still grew, and squirrels played on the ground where Rome and London now stand.
“Hence every inquiry into the primitive religion of the Aryans should either start from the superstitious beliefs and observances of the peasantry, or should at least be constantly checked and controlled by reference to them. Compared with the evidence afforded by living tradition, the testimony of ancient books on the subject of ancient religion is worth very little. For literature accelerates the advance of thought at a rate which leaves the slow progress of opinion by word of mouth at an immeasurable distance behind. Two or three generations of literature may do more to change thought than two or three thousand years of traditional life. But the mass of the people, who do not read books, remain unaffected by the mental revolution wrought by literature; and so it has come about that in Europe, at the present day, the superstitious beliefs and practices which have been handed down by word of mouth are generally of a far more archaic type than the religion depicted in the most ancient literature of the Aryan race.”—(“The Golden Bough,” James G. Frazer, M. A., London, 1890, Preface, viii, ix.)
The people of Rangoon, Siam, observe a peculiar usage at the time of their New Year. Every man, woman, boy, or girl is armed with a “squirt-gun,” with which all people on the street are drenched.[88]
Elliott, apparently quoting from Zagoskin (a Russian explorer, temp. 1843), says that the Alaskans have “entertainments” in the “kashga.” “It sometimes happens, on these occasions, that lovers of fun sprinkle the women with oil, or with that fluid which they use in place of soap, squirted from small bladders concealed about their persons, and such jokes are never resented.”—(“Our Arctic Province,” Henry W. Elliott, New York, 1887, p. 392.)
“From the very beginning effigies of the most revolting indecency are set up in the gates of the town and in the principal thoroughfares.
“Troops of men and women, wreathed with flowers and drunk with bang, crowd the streets, carrying sacks full of a bright red vegetable powder. With this they assail the passers-by, covering them with clouds of dust, which soon dyes their clothes a startling color. Groups of people standing at the windows retaliate with the same projectile, or squirt with wooden syringes red and yellow streams of water into the streets below.”