Take the case of early England, one finds the traces of the clan of Billingas in Northampton, Lancashire, Durham, Lincoln, Yorkshire, Sussex, Salop, and other widely-separated districts (Kemble).

The members of these clans bear each the clan patronymic, perform the same superstitious rites, and are bound to mutual defence ... in England a man of the Billinga clan, or of the Arlinga clan, might be a Somersæta, or a Huicca, or a Lindisfara by local tribe. This curious scattering of the family names through the local settlements in England has puzzled Mr. Kemble, who accounts for it by the confusion of the English invasion, and by later wandering and colonisations. But if the Arlingas, Billingas, and so forth, were once scattered over North Germany, as the men of the Sun or Tortoise clans are scattered all over America and Australia, it would necessarily happen that when a Jutland tribe invaded the south of England, it would leave families settled there of the same name as a Schleswig tribe would leave in the north or west of England.

Mr. Lang then goes on to urge the probability that, as in Australia, this phenomenon had its origin in exogamy. But I question, in my paper on the subject, the ‘clan’ phenomenon itself. Mr. Lang, like others, wrote under the influence of Kemble; and it is the very object of my paper to show the danger of building theories on Kemble’s rash conclusions.

Index

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