The above-quoted source unfortunately does not preserve all the names of months. A similar but somewhat different complete list has been drawn up by Lönnrot in Karelia:—1, heart-month; 2, heart-month; 3, foam-month; 4, tree-felling month; 5, melting or sowing month; 6, summer month; 7, hay month; 8, pus month (cf. the Swedish ‘rotten month’, above, p. 300); 9, harvest month; 10, autumn month; 11, dung or dirt month; 12, month of clods; 13, Christmas month[1035]. Here too the heart-month appears doubled.
The Lapps also have taken their reckoning from the Scandinavians: of the reckoning in weeks we have spoken above. In Old Scandinavian times they borrowed the word mānō, Lapp manno (moon). The Lapp word means both ‘moon’ and ‘month’; only among the southern Lapps is there found a native word aske, ‘moon’, which one dictionary also uses as a term for ‘month’. Therefore at the time when the Lapps adopted the word manno for ‘moon’ and ‘month’, the month of the Scandinavians must have been a lunar month, and so also among the Lapps. In some authors the form mannod occurs, i. e. modern Swedish månad, ‘month’. The Lapp names of months were not collected until last century. They appear sometimes with, sometimes without, the addition ‘month’. They are:—1, new month, new year (month), new day (month), New Year’s Day month; 2, Göjem. (knowa, a loan-word therefore), rarely *‘swan month’; 3, *‘swan month’, because the swan comes in March, rarely marasm. (mars, loan-word), rarely *‘crow month’; 4, *‘crow month’, on account of the coming of these birds, rarely *‘snow-crust month’; 5, ‘(hard) *snow-crust month’, since the surface of the snow, which melts in the day-time in the bright sunshine, freezes at night into a hard crust, *‘month of calves’, ‘calf month’, when the reindeer bring forth their calves; 6, *‘month of calves’, *‘fir month’, since the sap rises in the firs, ‘flesh month’, ‘(mid)summer month’; 7, rarely *‘fir month’, *‘month when the reindeer has shed its hair’; 8, called *the same, also *‘month when the hair has grown thick again’; 9, has *the same name as 8, or *‘rutting month’ (the rutting-time covers the end of September and the beginning of October), or *‘month when the male reindeer are powerless’ (after the rutting); 10, has *the same name as 9, or else *‘rutting month’, or ‘autumn month’; 11, is also generally called *‘month when the male reindeer are powerless’, rarely *‘Advent month’; 12, *‘Advent month (passatis(m.), p. means the first Advent Sunday and the first week in Advent), ‘Yule month’[1036]. Qvigstad[1037] calls the twelfth week-month of the Lapps bâse-tæbme manno, ‘the month without a feast’, the thirteenth basse m. or juowla m.
The Lapps were also acquainted with the ‘rotten month’ (mieska manno, Swedish rötmånad)[1038]. A Lapp woman mentioned by Wiklund gave this month the position of the ninth in the series, and explained it as the month in which the grass begins to fade and rot. On the strength of this Wiklund assumes a thirteen-month year, but the statement is inconclusive, the ‘rotten month’ having certainly been placed erroneously as a separate month in the series. That this is so is supported not only by Qvigstad but also by Högström in his description of Lapland of the year 1746, in which he speaks of thirteen week-months of the Lapps. According to this authority the Lapps drew their rune-calendar on seven discs of reindeer-horn, but only one side of the seventh was written on, so that there were 13 sides of four weeks each, which they called a month, and so their reckoning was 13 months, he says. Wiklund has accepted this four-week month. It is quite possible that the Lapps called a period of four weeks a month: we also often do the same when an approximation will serve; but that the names of months mean periods of four weeks seems very questionable. It would be a quite isolated case: everywhere else the months are either the Julian or lunar months, with which last the Lapps were acquainted, at least in ancient times. The statement that on the basis of the reckoning by weeks a four-week month could have arisen is certainly not absolutely to be denied,—if this is so, it must be a secondary and late development—but the fluctuation of the names of months is no evidence for this. It is only the fluctuation found everywhere when names of seasons are transformed into names of months. Only the names of the first two months are quite fixed, and these are either essentially or literally loan-words: the Latin name even appears in one instance for March. There is consequently borrowing in the case of the three names which alone, as also among the Scandinavians, have become really popular. If the Lapps really had thirteen months, it might then be supposed that these, as in Denmark and Finland, were lunar months which began at the first new moon of the new year. But we find no trace of lunar months in Lapland in historical times. We must therefore content ourselves with the fact that the Lapp names of months shew the same fluctuation as is shewn by all names taken from natural objects or phenomena and applied to the months.
This brief survey of the popular months of the European peoples is instructive from the point of view of a comparison with the names of months among primitive peoples. Although the Julian months have a fixed position in the solar year, and do not fluctuate to and fro like the lunar months, yet the names of the months are unstable and fluctuating. This is due to the fact that in the desire for concrete observations the names of the seasons and of their occupations have been kept, and the seasons have neither fixed position nor duration: these names of months derived from natural phenomena and occupations have not therefore in themselves the precision which the chronological system demands. Such precision will only be introduced by an external factor, in the one case by the lunar months, in the other by the Julian months to which the names of the seasons are transferred.
CHAPTER XII.
SOLSTICES AND EQUINOXES. AIDS TO THE DETERMINATION OF TIME.
We have seen in the foregoing pages how the phases of Nature, with their somewhat variable dates, are everywhere employed in the determination of time; how in the moon there lies ready to hand a clear, stable (at least within very narrow limits), and constant unit of time which could be turned to account in calculating; and how out of the fusion of natural phases and moons there arose a roughly empirical lunisolar year. For the more accurate fixing both of the seasons and of the months the phases of the stars are employed; these, being dependent on the sun, keep pace with the natural year, but, unlike the phases of Nature, are not subject to climatic variations but are astronomically fixed.
It is however possible astronomically to fix the solar year by a second method, viz. the observation of the annual course of the sun, especially of the solstices: the observation of the equinoxes is a much more difficult matter. The observation of the solstices can be performed in a way similar to that mentioned [above, p. 21], in which noon is determined by the position of the sun, but is much more difficult to carry out and requires far more accurate and delicate methods. Two fixed points at least are necessary—a standing-ground and in the simplest case a mark on the horizon; other methods are still more complicated. An observation of the annual course of the sun, therefore, unlike that of the stars,—which everywhere, no matter where, can be performed immediately—demands a fixed place and special aids to determination. It follows that the observation of the solstices and equinoxes belongs to a much higher stage of civilisation than does that of the stars. It can only arise among a people with a fixed dwelling-place, since a race which leads a nomadic life and changes dwellings and camps is without the necessary fixed points of observation. After all it is only natural—and this actually is the case—that the observation of the course of the sun should be in use only among certain specially gifted peoples.
It is used by the Eskimos, who have a very highly developed sense of place, and know how to make good maps. Moreover where the sun in winter stands very low on the horizon, and for a time altogether disappears beneath it, the conditions are very favourable for the observation of its return. Older authors say that by the rays of the sun on the rocks the Eskimos can tell with tolerable accuracy when it is the shortest day[1039]; more recently we have been told of the Ammasalik that they can calculate beforehand the time of the shortest day—and that accurately to the day—not only from the solstitial point, but also from the position of Altair in the morning twilight[1040]. They begin their spring when the sun rises at the same spot as Altair[1041]. This is a quite isolated, but an accurate, determination of the course of the sun from the fixed stars. The Hudson Bay Eskimos of Labrador recognise the arrival of the solstices by the bearing of the sun with reference to certain fixed landmarks[1042]. The Central Eskimos must do the same, since they are acquainted with the winter solstice and when this and new moon coincide they omit their intercalary month[1043].