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Footnotes
{3a} Compare De Cara: Essame Critico, xx. i.
{3b} Revue de l'Hist. des Rel. ii. 136.
{4} Sprachvergleichung und Urgeschichte, p. 431.
{5} Prim. Cult. i. 394.
{11a} A study of the contemporary stone age in Scotland will be found in Mitchell's Past and Present.
{11b} About twenty years ago, the widow of an Irish farmer, in Derry, killed her deceased husband's horse. When remonstrated with by her landlord, she said, 'Would you have my man go about on foot in the next world?' She was quite in the savage intellectual stage.
{12} At the solemn festival suppers, ordained for the honour of the gods, they forget not to serve up certain dishes of young whelp's flesh. (Pliny, H. N. xxix. 4.)
{15} Nov. 1880.
{18} 'Ah, once again may I plant the great fan on her corn-heap, while she stands smiling by, Demeter of the threshing floor, with sheaves and poppies in her hands' (Theocritus, vii. 155-157).
{20} Odyssey, xi. 32.
{28} Rev. de l'Hist. des Rel., vol. ii.
{33} Pausanias, iii. 15. When the boys were being cruelly scourged, the priestess of Artemis Orthia held an ancient barbaric wooden image of the goddess in her hands. If the boys were spared, the image grew heavy; the more they were tortured, the lighter grew the image. In Samoa the image (shark's teeth) of the god Taema is consulted before battle. 'If it felt heavy, that was a bad omen; if light, the sign was good'--the god was pleased (Turner's Samoa, p. 55).
{34} Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 268.
{35} Fison, Journal Anthrop. Soc., Nov. 1883.
{36a} Taylor's New Zealand, p. 181.
{36b} This is not the view of le Pere Lafitau, a learned Jesuit missionary in North America, who wrote (1724) a work on savage manners, compared with the manners of heathen antiquity. Lafitau, who was greatly struck with the resemblances between Greek and Iroquois or Carib initiations, takes Servius's other explanation of the mystica vannus, 'an osier vessel containing rural offerings of first fruits.' This exactly answers, says Lafitau, to the Carib Matoutou, on which they offer sacred cassava cakes.
{37} The Century Magazine, May 1883.
{39} [Greek]. Lobeck, Aglaophamus (i. p. 700).
{40a} De Corona, p. 313.
{40b} Savage Africa. Captain Smith, the lover of Pocahontas, mentions the custom in his work on Virginia, pp. 245-248.
{40c} Brough Smyth, i. 60, using evidence of Howitt, Taplin, Thomas, and Wilhelmi.
{41a} Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 214.
{41b} [Greek], c. 15.
{42} Cape Monthly Magazine, July 1874.
{44} Wallace, Travels on the Amazon, p. 349.
{46a} New Zealand, Taylor, pp. 119-121. Die heilige Sage der Polynesier, Bastian, pp. 36-39.
{46b} A crowd of similar myths, in one of which a serpent severs Heaven and Earth, are printed in Turner's Samoa.
{48} The translation used is Jowett's.
{49a} Theog., 166.
{49b} Apollodorus, i. 15.
{50a} Primitive Culture, i. 325.
{50b} Pauthier, Livres sacres de l'Orient, p. 19.
{50c} Muir's Sanskrit Texts, v. 23. Aitareya Brahmana.
{52a} Hesiod, Theog., 497.
{52b} Paus. x. 24.
{54a} Bleek, Bushman Folklore, pp. 6-8.
{54b} Theal, Kaffir Folklore, pp. 161-167.
{54c} Brough Smith, i. 432-433.
{55a} i. 338.
{55b} Rel. de la Nouvelle-France (1636), p. 114.
{56} Codrington, in Journal Anthrop. Inst. Feb. 1881. There is a Breton Marchen of a land where people had to 'bring the Dawn' daily with carts and horses. A boy, whose sole property was a cock, sold it to the people of this country for a large sum, and now the cock brings the dawn, with a great saving of trouble and expense. The Marchen is a survival of the state of mind of the Solomon Islanders.
{58a} Selected Essays, i. 460.
{58b} Ibid. i. 311.
{59} Ueber Entwicklungsstufen der Mythenbildung (1874), p. 148.
{60a} ii. 127.
{60b} G. D. M., ii. 127, 129.
{61a} Gr. My., i. 144.
{61b} De Abst., ii. 202, 197.
{61c} Rel. und Myth., ii. 3.
{61d} Ursprung der Myth., pp. 133, 135, 139, 149.
{62a} Contemporary Review, Sept. 1883.
{62b} Rev. de l'Hist. rel. i. 179.
{65} That Pururavas is regarded as a mortal man, in relations with some sort of spiritual mistress, appears from the poem itself (v. 8, 9, 18). The human character of Pururavas also appears in R. V. i. 31, 4.
{66a} Selected Essays, i. 408.
{66b} The Apsaras is an ideally beautiful fairy woman, something 'between the high gods and the lower grotesque beings,' with 'lotus eyes' and other agreeable characteristics. A list of Apsaras known by name is given in Meyer's Gandharven-Kentauren, p. 28. They are often regarded as cloud-maidens by mythologists.
{68} Selected Essays, i. p. 405.
{69a} Cf. ruber, rufus, O. H. G. rot, rudhira, [Greek]; also Sanskrit, ravi, sun.
{69b} Myth. Ar. Nat., ii. 81.
{69c} R. V. iii. 29, 3.
{69d} The passage alluded to in Homer does not mean that dawn 'ends' the day, but 'when the fair-tressed Dawn brought the full light of the third day' (Od., v. 390).
{70a} Liebrecht (Zur Volkskunde, 241) is reminded by Pururavas (in Roth's sense of der Bruller) of loud-thundering Zeus, [Greek].
{70b} Herabkunft des Fetters, p. 86-89.
{71} Liebrecht (Zur Volkskunde, p. 241) notices the reference to the 'custom of women.' But he thinks the clause a mere makeshift, introduced late to account for a prohibition of which the real meaning had been forgotten. The improbability of this view is indicated by the frequency of similar prohibitions in actual custom.
{72} Astley, Collection of Voyages, ii. 24. This is given by Bluet and Moore on the evidence of one Job Ben Solomon, a native of Bunda in Futa. 'Though Job had a daughter by his last wife, yet he never saw her without her veil, as having been married to her only two years.' Excellently as this prohibition suits my theory, yet I confess I do not like Job's security.
{73a} Brough Smyth, i. 423.
{73b} Bowen, Central Africa, p. 303.
{73c} Lafitau, i. 576.
{73d} Lubbock, Origin of Civilisation (1875), p. 75.
{74a} Chansons Pop. Bulg., p. 172.
{74b} Lectures on Language, Second Series, p. 41.
{75a} J. A. Farrer, Primitive Manners, p. 202, quoting Seemann.
{75b} Sebillot, Contes Pop. de la Haute-Bretagne, p. 183.
{76a} Gervase of Tilbury.
{76b} Kuhn, Herabkunft, p. 92.
{77} Chips, ii. 251.
{80a} Kitchi Gami, p. 105.
{80b} The sun-frog occurs seven times in Sir G. W: Cox's Mythology of the Aryan Peoples, and is used as an example to prove that animals in myth are usually the sun, like Bheki, 'the sun-frog.'
{81a} Dalton's Ethnol. of Bengal, pp. 165, 166.
{81b} Taylor, New Zealand, p. 143.
{82a} Liebrecht gives a Hindoo example, Zur Volkskunde, p. 239.
{82b} Cymmrodor, iv. pt. 2.
{82c} Prim. Cult., i. 140.
{83a} Primitive Manners, p. 256.
{83b} See Meyer, Gandharven-Kentauren, Benfey, Pantsch., i. 263.
{84a} Selected Essays, i. 411.
{84b} Callaway, p. 63.
{84c} Ibid., p. 119.
{87} Primitive Culture, i. 357: 'The savage sees individual stars as animate beings, or combines star-groups into living celestial creatures, or limbs of them, or objects connected with them.'
{88} This formula occurs among Bushmen and Eskimo (Bleek and Rink).
{92} The events of the flight are recorded correctly in the Gaelic variant 'The Battle of the Birds.' (Campbell, Tales of the West Highlands, vol. i. p. 25.)
{93a} Ralston, Russian Folk Tales, 132; Kohler, Orient und Occident, ii. 107, 114.
{93b} Ko ti ki, p. 36.
{93c} Callaway, pp. 51, 53, 64, 145, 228.
{93d} See also 'Petrosinella' in the Pentamerone, and 'The Mastermaid' in Dasent's Tales from the Norse.
{93e} Folk-Lore Journal, August 1883.
{95} Poetae Minores Gr. ii.
{96} Mythol. Ar., ii. 150.
{97a} Gr. My., ii. 318.
{97b} Sonne, Mond und Sterne, pp. 213, 229.
{99a} This proves that the tale belongs to the pre-Christian cannibal age.
{99b} Turner's Samoa, p. 102. In this tale only the names of the daughters are translated; they mean 'white fish' and 'dark fish.'
{99c} Folk-Lore Journal, August 1883.
{101} Schoolcraft, Algic Researches, ii. 94-104.
{102a} Nature, March 14, 1884.
{102b} The earlier part of the Jason cycle is analysed in the author's preface to Grimm's Marchen (Bell & Sons).
{104a} Comm. Real. i. 75.
{104b} See Early History of the Family, infra.
{105a} The names Totem and Totemism have been in use at least since 1792, among writers on the North American tribes. Prof. Max Muller (Academy, Jan. 1884) says the word should be, not Totem, but Ote or Otem. Long, an interpreter among the Indians, introduced the word Totamism in 1792.
{105b} Christoval de Moluna (1570), p. 5.
{105c} Cieza de Leon, p. 183.
{105d} Idyll xv.
{107} Sayce, Herodotos, p. 344; Herodotus, ii. 42; Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians (1878, ii. 475, note 2); Plutarch, De Is. et Os., 71, 72; Athenaeus, vii. 299; Strabo, xvii. 813.
{108a} The Mouse, according to Dalton, is still a totem among the Oraons of Bengal. A man of the Mouse 'motherhood,' as the totem kindred is locally styled, may not eat mice (esteemed a delicacy), nor marry a girl who is a Mouse.
{108b} xiii. 604. Casaub. 1620.
{108c} There were Sminthiac feasts at Rhodes, Gela, Lesbos, and Crete (De Witte, Revue Numismatique, N.S. iii. 3-11).
{109a} Iliad, i. 39.
{109b} AElian, H. A. xii. 5.
{110a} The bas-relief is published in Paoli's Della Religione de' Gentili, Naples, 1771, p. 9; also by Fabretti, Ad Cal. Oper. de Colum. Trajan. p. 315. Paoli's book was written after the discovery in Neapolitan territory of a small bronze image, hieratic in character, representing a man with a mouse on his hand. Paoli's engraving of this work of art, unluckily, does not enable us to determine its date or provenance . The book is a mine of mouse-lore.
{110b} Colden, History of the Five Nations, p. 15 (1727).
{110c} Onomast., ix. 6, segm. 84, p. 1066.
{110d} De Witte says Pollux was mistaken here. In the Revue Numismatique, N.S. iii., De Witte publishes coins of Alexandria, the more ancient Hamaxitus, in the Troad. The Sminthian Apollo is represented with his bow, and the mouse on his hand. Other coins show the god with the mouse at his foot, or show us the lyre of Apollo supported by mice. A bronze coin in the British Museum gives Apollo with the mouse beside his foot.
{111a} Spanheim, ad Fl. Joseph., vi. I, p. 312.
{111b} Della Rel., p. 174.
{111c} Herodotus, ii. 141.
{112a} Liebrecht (Zur Volkskunde, p. 13, quoting Journal Asiatique, 1st series, 3, 307) finds the same myth in Chinese annals. It is not a god, however, but the king of the rats, who appears to the distressed monarch in his dream. Rats then gnaw the bowstrings of his enemies. The invaders were Turks, the rescued prince a king of Khotan. The king raised a temple, and offered sacrifice--to the rats?
{112b} Herodotos, p. 204.
{113a} Wilkinson, iii. 294, quoting the Ritual xxxiii.: 'Thou devourest the abominable rat of Ra, or the sun.'
{113b} Mr. Loftie has kindly shown me a green mouse containing the throne-name of Thothmes III. The animals thus used as substitutes for scarabs were also sacred, as the fish, rhinoceros, fly, all represented in Mr. Loftie's collection. See his Essay of Scarabs, p. 27. It may be admitted that, in a country where Cats were gods, the religion of the Mouse must have been struggling and oppressed.
{114a} Strabo, xiii. 604.
{114b} Eustathius on Iliad, i. 39.
{114c} A Strange and True Relation of the Prodigious Multitude of Mice, 1670.
{115a} Journal of Philol., xvii. p. 96.
{115b} Leviticus xi. 29.
{116} Samuel i. 5, 6.
{117a} Zool. Myth, ii. 68.
{117b} Melusine, N.S. i.
{118a} De Iside et Osiride, lxxvi.
{118b} This hypothesis does not maintain that totemism prevailed in Greece during historic times. Though Plutarch mentions an Athenian [Greek], the Ioxidae, which claimed descent from and revered asparagus, it is probable that genuine totemism had died out of Greece many hundreds of years before even Homer's time. But this view is not inconsistent with the existence of survivals in religion and ritual.
{119} Rolland, Faune populaire.
{121} The attempt is not to explain the origin of each separate name but only of the general habit of giving animal or human names stars.
{125} Mr. Herbert Spencer believes that the Australians were once more civilised than at present. But there has never been found a trace of pottery on the Australian continent, which says little for their civilisation in the past.
{128} Brugsch, History of Egypt, i. 32.
{130} Brough Smith.
{131} Amazonian Tortoise Myths, p. 39.
{132a} Sahagun, vii. 3.
{132b} Grimm, D. M., Engl. transl., p. 716.
{133} Hartt, op. cit., p. 40.
{134a} Kaegi, Der Rig Veda, p. 217.
{134b} Mainjo-i-Khard, 49, 22, ed. West.
{134c} Op. cit. p. 98.
{137} Prim. Cult., i. 357.
{140} Lectures on Language, pp. 359, 362.
{144} Grimm, D. M., Engl., Trans. p. 1202.
{145} Tom Sawyer, p. 87.
{146a} Rep. vi. 488. Dem. 10, 6.
{146b} Journal Anthrop. Inst., Feb. 1881.
{147a} Gregor, Folklore of North-east Counties, p, 40.
{147b} Wars of Jews, vii. 6, 3.
{147c} Var. Hist., 14, 27.
{148} Max Muller, Selected Essays, ii. 622.
{151} Myth of Kirke, p. 80.
{152a} Turner's Samoa.
{152b} Josephus, loc. cit. For this, and many other references, I am indebted to Schwartz's Prahistorisch-anthropologische Studien. In most magic herbs the learned author recognises thunder and lightning--a theory no less plausible than Mr. Brown's.
{152c} Lib. xxviii.
{152d} Schoolcraft.
{157a} Talvj, Charakteristik der Volkslieder, p. 3.
{157b} Fauriel, Chants de la Grece moderne.
{160} Thus Scotland scarcely produced any ballads, properly speaking, after the Reformation. The Kirk suppressed the dances to whose motion the ballad was sung in Scotland, as in Greece, Provence, and France.
{161} L. Preller's Ausgewahlte Aufsatze. Greek ideas on the origin of Man. It is curious that the myth of a gold, a silver, and a copper race occurs in South America. See Brasseur de Bourbourg's Notes on the Popol Vuh.
{164a} See essay on Early History of the Family.
{164b} This constant struggle may be, and of course by one school of comparative mythologists will be, represented as the strife between light and darkness, the sun's rays, and the clouds of night, and so on. M. Castren has well pointed out that the struggle has really an historical meaning. Even if the myth be an elementary one, its constructors must have been in the exogamous stage of society.
{169} Sampo may be derived from a Thibetan word, meaning 'fountain of good,' or it may possibly be connected with the Swedish Stamp, a hand- mill. The talisman is made of all the quaint odds and ends that the Fetichist treasures: swan's feathers, flocks of wool, and so on.
{170} Sir G. W. Cox's Popular Romances of the Middle Ages, p. 19.
{171} Fortnightly Review, 1869: 'The Worship of Plants and Animals.'
{176} Mr. McLennan in the Fortnightly Review, February 1870.
{178} M. Schmidt, Volksleben der Neugriechen, finds comparatively few traces of the worship of Zeus, and these mainly in proverbial expressions.
{183} Preller, Ausgewahlte Aufsatze, p. 154.
{184a} Tylor, Prim. Cult., ii. 156. Pinkerton, vii. 357.
{184b} Universities Mission to Central Africa, p. 217. Prim. Cult,, ii. 156, 157.
{186} Quoted in 'Jacob's Rod': London, n.d., a translation of La Verge de Jacob, Lyon, 1693.
{190} Lettres sur la Baguette, pp. 106-112.
{200} Turner's Samoa, pp, 77, 119.
{201} Cox, Mythol. of Aryan Races, passim.
{202a} See examples in 'A Far-travelled Tale,' 'Cupid and Psyche,' and 'The Myth of Cronus.'
{202b} Trubner, 1881.
{203a} Hahn, p. 23.
{203b} Ibid., p. 45.
{204} Expedition, i. 166.
{205} Herodotus, ii.
{209} See Fetichism and the Infinite.
{211} Sacred Books of the East, xii. 130, 131,
{218} Lectures on Language. Second series, p. 41.
{222} A defence of the evidence for our knowledge of savage faiths, practices, and ideas will be found in Primitive Culture, i. 9-11.
{223} A third reference to Pausanias I have been unable to verify. There are several references to Greek fetich-stones in Theophrastus's account of the Superstitious Man. A number of Greek sacred stones named by Pausanias may be worth noticing. In Boeotia (ix. 16), the people believed that Alcmene, mother of Heracles, was changed into a stone. The Thespians worshipped, under the name of Eros, an unwrought stone, [Greek], 'their most ancient sacred object' (ix. 27). The people of Orchomenos 'paid extreme regard to certain stones,' said to have fallen from heaven, 'or to certain figures made of stone that descended from the sky' (ix. 38). Near Chaeronea, Rhea was said to have deceived Cronus, by offering him, in place of Zeus, a stone wrapped in swaddling bands. This stone, which Cronus vomited forth after having swallowed it, was seen by Pausanias at Delphi (ix. 41). By the roadside, near the city of the Panopeans, lay the stones out of which Prometheus made men (x. 4). The stone swallowed in place of Zeus by his father lay at the exit from the Delphian temple, and was anointed (compare the action of Jacob, Gen. xxviii. 18) with oil every day. The Phocians worshipped thirty squared stones, each named after a god (vii. xxii.). ' Among all the Greeks rude stones were worshipped before the images of the gods .' Among the Troezenians a sacred stone lay in front of the temple, whereon the Troezenian elders sat, and purified Orestes from the murder of his mother. In Attica there was a conical stone worshipped as Apollo (i. xliv.). Near Argos was a stone called Zeus Cappotas, on which Orestes was said to have sat down, and so recovered peace of mind. Such are examples of the sacred stones, the oldest worshipful objects, of Greece.
{226} See essays on 'Apollo and the Mouse' and 'The Early History of the Family.'
{230} Here I may mention a case illustrating the motives of the fetich- worshipper. My friend, Mr. J. J. Atkinson, who has for many years studied the manners of the people of New Caledonia, asked a native why he treasured a certain fetich-stone. The man replied that, in one of the vigils which are practised beside the corpses of deceased friends, he saw a lizard. The lizard is a totem, a worshipful animal in New Caledonia. The native put out his hand to touch it, when it disappeared and left a stone in its place. This stone he therefore held sacred in the highest degree. Here then a fetich-stone was indicated as such by a spirit in form of a lizard.
{233a} Much the same theory is propounded in Mr. Muller's lectures on 'The Science of Religion.'
{233b} The idea is expressed in a well known parody of Wordsworth, about the tree which
'Will grow ten times as tall as me And live ten times as long.'
{236} See Essay on 'The Early History of the Family.'
{241} Bergaigne's La Religion Vedique may be consulted for Vedic Fetichism.
{247a} Early Law and Custom.
{247b} Studies in Ancient History, p. 127.
{248} Descent of Man, ii. 362.
{249} Early Law and Custom, p. 210.
{250a} Here I would like to point out that Mr. M'Lennan's theory was not so hard and fast as his manner (that of a very assured believer in his own ideas) may lead some inquirers to suppose. Sir Henry Maine writes, that both Mr. Morgan and Mr. M'Lennan 'seem to me to think that human society went everywhere through the same series of changes, and Mr. M'Lennan, at any rate, expresses himself as if all those stages could be clearly discriminated from one another, and the close of one and the commencement of another announced with the distinctness of the clock-bell telling the end of the hour.' On the other hand, I remember Mr. M'Lennan's saying that, in his opinion, 'all manner of arrangements probably went on simultaneously in different places.' In Studies in Ancient History, p. 127, he expressly guards against the tendency 'to assume that the progress of the various races of men from savagery has been a uniform progress: that all the stages which any of them has gone through have been passed in their order by all.' Still more to the point is his remark on polyandry among the very early Greeks and other Aryans; 'it is quite consistent with my view that in all these quarters (Persia, Sparta, Troy, Lycia, Attica, Crete, &c.) monandry, and even the patria potestas, may have prevailed at points.'
{250b} Early Law and Custom, p. 212.
{251} Studies in Ancient History, pp. 140-147.
{252} Totem is the word generally given by travellers and interpreters for the family crests of the Red Indians. Cf. p. 105.
{256} Domestic Manners of the Chinese, i. 99.
{258} Fortnightly Review, June 1, 1877.
{259} Kamilaroi and Kurnai. Natives call these objects their kin, 'of one flesh' with them.
{260} Studies, p. 11.
{265a} O'Curry, Manners of Ancient Irish, l. ccclxx., quoting Trin. Coll. Dublin MS.
{265b} See also Elton's Origins of English History, pp. 299-301.
{265c} Kemble's Saxons in England, p. 258. Politics of Aristotle, Bolland and Lang, p. 99. {265d}
{265d} Mr. Grant Allen kindly supplied me some time ago with a list of animal and vegetable names preserved in the titles of ancient English village settlements. Among them are: ash, birch, bear (as among the Iroquois), oak, buck, fir, fern, sun, wolf, thorn, goat, horse, salmon (the trout is a totem in America), swan (familiar in Australia), and others.
{267} 'Gentiles sunt qui inter se eodem nomine sunt. Qui ab ingeniis oriundi sunt. Quorum majorum nemo servitutem servivit. Qui capite non sunt deminuti.'
{268} Studies in Ancient History, p. 212.
{270} Fortnightly Review, October 1869: 'Archaeologia Americana,' ii. 113.
{273a} Suidas, 3102.
{273b} Herod., i. 173.
{273c} Cf. Bachofen, p. 309.
{273d} Compare the Irish Nennius, p. 127.
{276} The illustrations in this article are for the most part copied, by permission of Messrs. Cassell & Co., from the Magazine of Art, in which the essay appeared.
{286} Part of the pattern (Fig. 5, b) recurs on the New Zealand Bull- roarer, engraved in the essay on the Bull-roarer.
{289} See Schliemann's Troja, wherein is much learning and fancy about the Aryan Svastika.
[The end]
Andrew Lang's non-fiction book: Custom and Myth
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