Chapter I: History and Folklore (3)

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The story presents us with the following essential incidents:--

1. The gift of a well-stocked farm by a father to each of his children.

2. The surrender of all property during the owner's lifetime.

3. The living of the old father with each of his children.

4. The attempted killing of the old man.

5. The mallet bearing the inscription.

6. The rhyming formula of the inscription.

Mr. Campbell notes the first and third of these incidents in his original abstract of the story,[87] but of the remaining second, fourth, fifth, and sixth no note has hitherto been taken.

Of the first incident, the gift of a well-stocked farm by a father to each of his children, Mr. Campbell says: "This subdivision of land by tenants is the dress and declaration put on by a class who now tell this tale." But it also represents an ancient system of swarming off from the parent household when society was in a tribal stage. The incident of the tale is exactly reproduced in local custom. In the island of Skye the possessor of a few acres of land cut them up only a few years ago into shreds and patches to afford a separate dwelling for each son and daughter who married.[88] In Kinross, in 1797, the same practice prevailed. "Among the feuars the parents are in many instances disposed to relinquish and give up to their children their landed possessions or the principal part of them, retaining only for themselves some paltry pendicle or patch of ground."[89] In Ireland and in Cornwall much the same evidence is forthcoming, and elsewhere I have taken some pains to show that these local customs are the isolated survivals in late times of early tribal practices.[90]

We next turn to the second essential incident of the tale--the surrender of the estate during the owner's lifetime. This is a well-marked feature of early custom, and Du Chaillu has preserved something like the survival of the ritual observances connected with it in his account of the Scandinavian practice. On a visit to Husum he witnessed the ceremonial which attended the immemorial custom of the farm coming into possession of the eldest son, the father still being alive. The following is Mr. Du Chaillu's description, and the details are important: "The dinner being ready, all the members of the family came in and seated themselves around the board, the father taking, as is customary, the head of the table. All at once, Roar, who was not seated, came to his father and said, 'Father, you are getting old; let me take your place.' 'Oh, no, my son,' was the answer, 'I am not too old to work; it is not yet time: wait awhile.' Then, with an entreating look, Roar said, 'Oh, father, all your children and myself are often sorry to see you look so tired when the day's labour is over: the work of the farm is too much for you; it is time for you to rest and do nothing. Rest in your old age. Oh, let me take your place at the head of the table.' All the faces were now extremely sober, and tears were seen in many eyes. 'Not yet, my son.' 'Oh, yes, father.' Then said the whole family, 'Now it is time for you to rest.' He rose, and Roar took his place, and was then the master. His father, henceforth, would have nothing to do, was to live in a comfortable house, and to receive yearly a stipulated amount of grain or flour, potatoes, milk, cheese, butter, meat, etc."[91] Without stopping to analyse this singular ceremony in detail, it is important to note that old age is the assigned cause of resignation by the father of his estate; that the ceremony is evidently based upon traditional forms, the meaning of which is not distinctly comprehended by the present performers; that the father is supported by his successor. As a proof that we have here a survival of very ancient practice, it may be noticed that in Spiti, a part of the Punjab, an exact parallel occurs. There the father retires from the headship of the family when his eldest son is of full age, and has taken unto himself a wife; on each estate there is a kind of dower-house with a plot of land attached, to which the father in these cases retires.[92] In Bavaria and in Wuertemberg the same custom obtains,[93] and the sagas of the North also confirm it as an ancient custom.[94]

Of the third incident in the tale, the living of the father with his children, Mr. Campbell says this points to the old Highland cluster of houses and to the farm worked by several families in common,[95] and I think we have here the explanation why the father in Scotland did not have his "dower-house," as he did in Scandinavia and in Spiti.

We next come to the fourth incident, the attempted killing of the old father. Now, from some of the earliest accounts of travels in Britain, we know that the death of the aged by violence was a signal element of the native customs. "They die only when they have lived long enough; for when the aged men have made good cheere and anoynted their bodies with sweet ointments they leape off a certain rocke into the sea." That we have in this episode of the story, remains of customs which once existed in the North, Mr. Elton affords proof, both from saga-history and from the practice of later times, when "the Swedes and Pomeranians killed their old people in the way which was indicated by the passage quoted above."[96] It is the custom of many savage tribes, and the observances made use of are sometimes suggestive of the facts of the tale we are now analysing. Thus, among the Todas of the Nilgiri Hills, they place the old people in large earthen jars with some food, and leave them to perish;[97] while among the Hottentots, Kolben says, "when persons become unable to perform the least office for themselves they are then placed in a solitary hut at a considerable distance, with a small stock of provisions within their reach, where they are left to die of hunger, or be devoured by the wild beasts."[98]

The important bearing of these incidents of barbarous and savage life upon our subject will be seen when we pass on to our fifth incident, namely, the significant use of the mallet. Some curious explanations have been given of this. Mr. Thorns once thought it might be identified with Malleus, the name of the Devil.[99] Nork has attempted with more reason to identify it with the hammer of Thor.[100] But the real identification is closer than this. Thus, it is connected with the Valhalla practices, already noted, by the fact that if an old Norseman becomes too frail to travel to the cliff, in order to throw himself over, his kinsman would save him the disgrace of dying "like a cow in the straw," and would beat him to death with the family club.[101] Mr. Elton, who quotes this passage, adds in a note that one of the family clubs is still preserved at a farm in East Gothland.[102] Aubrey has preserved an old English "countrie story" of "the holy mawle, which (they fancy) hung behind the church dore, which, when the father was seaventie, the sonne might fetch to knock his father in the head, as effoete, & of no more use."[103] That Aubrey preserved a true tradition is proved by what we learn of similar practices elsewhere. Thus, in fifteenth-century MSS. of prose romances found in English and also in Welsh, Sir Perceval, in his adventures in quest of the Holy Grail, being at one time ill at ease, congratulates himself that he is not like those men of Wales, where sons pull their fathers out of bed and kill them to save the disgrace of their dying in bed.[104] Keysler cites several instances of this savage custom in Prussia, and a Count Schulenberg rescued an old man who was being beaten to death by his sons at a place called Jammerholz, or "Woful Wood;" while a Countess of Nansfield, in the fourteenth century, is said to have saved the life of an old man on the Lueneberg Heath under similar circumstances.

Our investigation of barbarous and savage customs, which connect themselves with the essential incidents of this Highland tale, has at this point taken us outside the framework of the story. The old father in the tale was not killed by the mallet, but he is said to have used it as a warning to others to stop the practice of giving up their property during lifetime. We have already seen that this practice was an actual custom in early times, appearing in local survivals both in England and Scotland. Therefore the story must have arisen at a time when this practice was undergoing a change. We must note, too, that the whole story leads up to the finding of a mallet with the rhyming inscription written thereon, connecting it with the instrument of death to the aged, but only on certain conditions. If, then, we can find that the rhyming inscription on the mallet has an existence quite apart from the story, and if we can find that mallets bearing such an inscription do actually exist, we may fairly conclude that the story, which, in Scotland, is the vehicle of transmission of the rhyme, is of later origin than the rhyme itself.

First of all, it is to be noted under this head that Wright, in a note to the Latin story we have already quoted, gives from John of Bromyard's _Summa Predicantium_ another English version of the verse--

"Wit this betel the smieth
And alle the worle thit wite
That thevt the ungunde alle thing,
And goht him selve a beggyng,"

which shows, I think, the popularity of the verse in the vernacular. Clearly, then, the Latin version is a translation of this, and not _vice versa_. It must have been a rhyming formula in the vernacular, which had a life of its own quite outside its adoption into literature.

This inferential proof of the actual life of the English rhyming formula is confirmed by actual facts in the case of the corresponding German formula. Nork, in the volume I have already quoted, collects evidence from Grimm, Haupt, and others, which proves that sometimes in front of a house, as at Osnabrueck, and sometimes at the city gate, as in several of the cities of Silesia and Saxony, there hangs a mallet with this inscription:--

"Wer den kindern gibt das Brod
Und selber dabei leidet Noth
Den schlagt mit dieser keule todt"--

which Mr. Thoms has Englished thus:--

"Who to his children gives his bread
And thereby himself suffers need,
With this mallet strike him dead."[105]

These rhymes are the same as those in the Scottish tale and its Latin analogue, and that they are preserved on the selfsame instrument which is mentioned in the story as bearing the inscription is proof enough, I think, that the mallets and their rhyming formulae are far older than the story. They are not mythical, the story is; their history is contained in the facts we have above detailed; the life of the folk-tale commences when the use or formula of the mallet ceases to be part of the social institutions.

To the rhyming formulae, then, I would trace the rise of the mythic tale told by the Highland peasant in 1862 to Mr. J. F. Campbell. The old customs which we have detailed as the true origin of the mallet, and its hideous use in killing the aged and infirm, had died out, but the symbol of them remained. To explain the symbol a myth was created, which kept sufficiently near to the original idea as to retain evidence of its close connection with the descent of property; and thus was launched the dateless, impersonal, unlocalised story which Mr. Campbell has given as a specimen of vagrant traditions, which "must have been invented after agriculture and fixed habitations, after laws of property and inheritance; but it may be as old as the lake-dwellings of Switzerland, or Egyptian civilisation, or Adam, whose sons tilled the earth."[106] I would venture to rewrite the last clause of this dictum of the great master of folk-tales, and I would suggest that the story, whatever its age as a story, tells us of facts in the life of its earliest narrators which do not belong to Teutonic or Celtic history. The Teuton and the Celt, with their traditional reverence for parental authority, at once patriarchal and priestly, would retain, with singular clearness, the memory of traditions, or it may be observations, of an altogether different set of ideas which belonged to the race with which they first came into contact. But whether the story is a mythic interpretation by Celts of pre-Celtic practices, or a pre-Celtic tradition, varied as soon as it became the property of the Celt to suit Celtic ideas, it clearly takes us back to practices very remote, to use Mr. Elton's forcible words, from the reverence for the parents' authority which might have perhaps been expected from descendants of "the Aryan household."[107] These practices lead us back to a period of savagery, of which we have to speak in terms of race distinction if we would get at its root.[108] The importance of such a conclusion cannot be overrated, for it leads directly to the issue which must be raised whenever an investigation of tradition leaves us with materials, which are promptly rejected as fragments of Celtic history because they are too savage, but which need not therefore be rejected as history, because they may be referred further back than Celtic history.

If we proceed by more drastic methods, by the methods of statistics, we shall arrive at much the same conclusion.[109] Taking the first twelve stories in Grimm's great collection, we find that seven of them yield elements which we are entitled to call savage, because they are so far removed from the European culture amidst which the folk-tales have lived, and because these elements belong not to the accidentals of the stories but to the essentials. Thus, if we divide the folk-tale into its components, we shall find that it consists of three features:--

1. The story radicals, or essential plot;

2. The story accidentals, or illustrative points;

3. Modern gloss upon the events in the story--

and if we go on to allocate the various incidents of the stories to these three heads, we get the following common results with regard to seven out of the twelve first stories of Grimm's great collection:--

I.--FROG PRINCE

III.--OUR LADY'S CHILD

IV.--THE YOUTH WHO WANTS TO LEARN TO SHUDDER

V.--THE WOLF AND SEVEN LITTLE KIDS

VI.--FAITHFUL JOHN

IX.--THE TWELVE BROTHERS

XI.--BROTHER AND SISTER

There are thus savage elements in seven out of twelve stories, and the question becomes an important one as to how this is. They are the stories of the nursery, told by mothers to children, stories kept alive by tradition, and the only possible answer to our question is that they contain fragments of the early culture-history of the ancestors, or at all events the predecessors, of those who have preserved them for our use. An occasional savage incident might have been considered a freak of the original narrator, or a borrowing by one of the countless late narrators of these stories brought home from savage countries; but statistics disprove both of these suppositions. It is not accidental but persistent savagery we meet with in the folk-tale. It is also the savagery to be found amongst modern peoples still in the savage stage of culture.

This is proved in a very complete manner by Mr. MacCulloch, whose study provides the material for a statistical survey of story incidents founded on primitive custom and belief.[110] They are the most ancient history to which we have access. That this history is contained in the folk-tales of modern peasantry shows it to have come from that far-off period which saw the earliest condition of these people. It is still history, if it tells us of a life which preceded the written record. It is history of the most valuable description, for it is to be found nowhere else as relating to the remotest period of European civilisation. The modern savage is better off in this respect. He has an outside historian in the traveller and the anthropologist of modern days. The savage who was ancestor to our own people had no such means of becoming known to history, or had but very limited means, and it is only in the deathless tradition that we can trace him out.

These conclusions have been drawn from that great class of tradition preserved by historic peoples in historic times, and yet unmistakably pointing to prehistoric culture. We have been able to show the methods to be adopted for, and the results of, disengaging the myth which has gravitated to the historic person or place from the historic facts which have become part of the legend, and to trace out in the folk-tale facts which belong to a culture far removed from civilised life. There are thus revealed two distinct centres of influence, the traditional centre and the historic centre, and it is obvious that the question must be asked--which is the more important? It seems to me equally obvious that the answer must be given in favour of the historic. History is indebted to tradition for preserving some of the most remote facts of racial or national life, which but for tradition would have been lost, and if we are content to use this tradition as a storehouse from which we may provide ourselves with ancient historical documents, we can trace out therefrom points in the history of any given country wherever the traditions have been preserved.

The folk-tale, in point of fact, equally with the personal and local legend, comes into close contact with history. The periods of history in the folk-tales are different from those in the legends, but together these periods reach from prehistoric culture to historic event. We cannot, however, call this extent of time a continuous period, and we cannot point to definite stages within the detached periods. Much more research must be accomplished before it will be possible to claim such results as these. I have indicated some points of difficulty, some methods of treatment which appear to me to be wrong, and to which I shall have again to refer later on; but in the meantime, from the necessarily incomplete evidence which I have been able to produce, it is, I think, abundantly clear that folklore has to be studied from its historical surroundings if we would draw from it all that it is capable of telling.

III

In the meantime it is well to bear in mind that there is one important department of history which has always been frankly and unhesitatingly accepted as history and yet which has no stronger foundation than tradition, and tradition of the most formal kind. I allude to the early laws of most of the peoples who have become possessed of an historic civilisation. These laws have all been preserved by tradition, are in rhyme or rhythm in order to assist the memory, have become the sacred repository of a school or class of priests, and have finally been reduced to writing by a great lawgiver, who by the act of giving the people written laws has had attributed to him supernatural origin and powers. That history should have accepted from tradition such an important section of its material is worth consideration by itself, apart from its bearing on the present study, and I shall proceed, therefore, to set out some of the chief facts in this connection.

There can be no doubt that in the tribal society of Indo-European peoples the laws and rules which governed the various members of the tribe were deemed to be sacred and were preserved by tradition. The opening clauses of the celebrated Laws of Manu illustrate this position. "The great sages approached Manu, who was seated with a collected mind, and having worshipped him spoke as follows: Deign, divine one, to declare to us precisely and in due order the sacred laws of each of the four chief castes and of the intermediate ones. For thou, O Lord, alone knowest the purport, the rites, and the knowledge of the soul taught in this whole ordinance of the self-existent which is unknowable and unfathomable."[111] They were not only sacred in origin but they dealt with sacred things, and Sir Henry Maine has drawn the broad conclusion that "there is no system of recorded law, literally from China to Peru, which, when it first emerges into notice, is not seen to be entangled with religious ritual and observance."[112] In Greece the lawgivers were supposed to be divinely inspired, Minos from Jupiter, Lykurgos from the Delphic god, Zaleukos from Pallas.[113] The earliest notions of law are connected with Themis the Goddess of Justice.[114] In Rome it is to Romulus himself that is attributed the first positive law, and it is by a college of priests that the laws were preserved.[115] In Scandinavia the laws were in the custody and charge of the temple priests, and the accumulated evidence for the sacred origin and connection of the laws is to be found in the sagas.[116] Among the Celtic peoples it is well known that the laws were preserved and administered by the Brehons, who are compared with the Hindu Brahmins by Sir Henry Maine, "with many of their characteristics altered, and indeed, their whole sacerdotal authority abstracted by the influence of Christianity."[117] In the Isle of Man the laws were deemed sacred and known only to the Deemsters.[118]

In all cases laws were preserved by tradition and not by writing and evidence, and the superior value attached to the traditional record appears everywhere. The oldest record of Hindu law agrees with the best authority that it was not founded on writing but "upon immemorial customs which existed prior to and independent of Brahminism."[119] In Greece the very nature of the _themistes_ shows that they were judgments dependent upon traditional custom. In Rome it is the subject of definite research that the "greater part of Roman law was founded on the _mores majorum_."[120] In Scandinavia the law speaker was obliged to recite the whole law within the period to which the tenure of his office was limited.[121] The Celtic laws are based upon customs handed down from remote antiquity,[122] and late down in English law it was admitted as a principle that if oral declarations came into conflict with written instruments the former had the more binding authority.[123]

One of the means by which this sacred tradition was preserved was through the medium of rhythm and verse. Thus, as Sir Henry Maine explains,

"The law book of Manu is in verse, and verse is one of
the expedients for lessening the burden which the
memory has to bear when writing is unknown or very
little used. But there is another expedient which
serves the same object. This is Aphorism or Proverb.
Even now in our own country much of popular wisdom is
preserved either in old rhymes or in old proverbs, and
it is well ascertained that during the middle ages
much of law, and not a little of medicine, was
preserved among professions, not necessarily clerkly,
by these two agencies."[124]

In Greece the same word, [Greek: nomos], was used for custom and law as for song. The [Greek: rhetra] (declared law) of Sparta and Taras was in verse; the laws of Charondas were sung as [Greek: skolia] at Athens,[125] and Strabo refers to the Mazacenes of Cappadocia as using the laws of Charondas and appointing some person to be their law-singer ([Greek: nomodos]), who is among them the declarer of the laws.[126]

Sir Francis Palgrave, noticing the same characteristic of Teutonic law, says:--

"It cannot be ascertained that any of the Teutonic
nations reduced their customs into writing, until the
influence of increasing civilisation rendered it
expedient to depart from their primeval usages; but an
aid to the recollection was often afforded as amongst
the Britons, by poetry or by the condensation of the
maxim or principle in proverbial or antithetical
sentences like the Cymric triads. The marked
alliteration of the Anglo-Saxon laws is to be referred
to the same cause, and in the Frisic laws several
passages are evidently written in verse. From hence,
also, may originate those quaint and pithy rhymes in
which the doctrines of the law of the old time are not
unfrequently recorded."[127]

Again, the editors of the Brehon Law Tracts point out that early laws are handed down "in a rhythmical form; always in language condensed and antiquated they assume the character of abrupt and sententious proverbs. Collections of such sayings are found scattered throughout the Brehon Law Tracts."[128] The sagas contain many verses which partake of the character of legal formulae, and in Beowulf there seems to be a definite example. It occurs in the passage describing Beowulf engaged in his fatal combat with the fiery dragon, when his "companions," stricken with terror, deserted him, on which Wiglaf pronounced the following malediction:--

"Now shall the service of treasure,
and the gifts of swords,
all joy of paternal inheritance,
all support
of all your kin depart;
every one of your family
must go about
deprived of his rights
of citizenship;
when far and wide
the nobles shall learn
your flight,
your dishonourable deed.
Death is better
to every warrior
than disgraced life."

Mr. Kemble remarks on this passage, that it is not improbable that the whole denunciation is a judicial formula, such as we know early existed, and in regular rhythmical measure.[129]

These early examples may be followed up by others preserved to modern times. The most significant of these occurs in the Church ceremony of marriage, which preserves in the vernacular the ancient rhythmical formula of the marriage laws, and the antiquity of the Church ritual is proved from the fact that it is accompanied and enforced by the old rhythmical verse, which is indicative of early legal or ceremonious usage.

"With this rynge I the wed
And this gold and silver I the geve,
and with my body I the worshipe,
and with all my worldely cathel I the endowe."[130]

Sir Francis Palgrave has noticed the subject, and points out that the wife is taken

"to have and to hold[131]
from this day forward
for better, for worse,
for richer, for poorer,[132]
in sickness and in health,
to love and to cherish,
till death us do part
and thereto I plight thee my troth."

These words are inserted in our service according to the ancient canon of England, and even when the Latin mass was sung by the tonsured priest, the promises which accompany the delivery of the symbolical pledge of union were repeated by the blushing bride in a more intelligible tongue.[133] This is a curious and significant fact, and as we trace out these rhythmical lines farther back in their original vernacular, the more clearly distinct is their archaic nature. According to the usage of Salisbury the bride answered:--

"I take thee, John,
to be my wedded husband,
to have and to hold
fro' this day forward
for better, for worse,
for richer, for poorer,
in sycknesse, in hele,
to be bonere and buxom [obedient]
in bedde and at borde
till death do us part
and thereto I plight thee my trothe."[134]

The Welsh manual in the library of the Dean and Chapter of Hereford has a slight variation in the form, and an older spelling:--

"Ich N. take thee N.
to my weddid wyf,
for fayroure for foulore,
for ricchere for porer,
for betere for wers,
in sicknesse and in helthe,
forte deth us departe,
and only to the holde
and tharto ich plygtte my treuthe."[135]

To this may be added the many local examples of the preservation of laws or legal formulae by means of their form in verse. The most interesting of these, perhaps, is that by which the Kentishman redeemed his land from the lord by repeating, as it was said, in the language of his ancestors:--

"Nighon sithe yeld
And nighon sithe geld,
And vif pund for the were,
Ere he become healdere."

The first verse,

"Dog draw
Stable stand
Back berend
And bloody hand"

justified the verderer in his punishment of the offender. In King Athelstane's grant to the good men of Beverley, and inscribed beneath his effigy in the Minster,

"Als fre
Mak I the
As heart may think
Or eigh may see,"

we have perhaps the ancient form of manumission or enfranchisement,[136] just as we have the surrender by a freeman who gave up his liberty by putting himself under the protection of a master, and becoming his man, still preserved among children, when one of them takes hold of the foretop of another and says:--

"Tappie, tappie, tousie, will ye be my man?"[137]

All over the country we meet with these rhyming or rhythmical formulae which have legal significance. In the north the chief of the Macdonalds gave grants in the following form:--

"I, Donald, chief of the Macdonalds, give here, in my
castle, a right to Mackay, to Kilmahumag, from this
day till to-morrow and so on for ever."

"Mise Donull nau Donull,
Am shuidh air Dun Donuill,
Toirt coir do Mhac-aigh air Kilmahumaig,
O'n diugh gus a maireach
'S gu la bhrath mar sin."[138]

At Scarborough there is an old proverbial saying as to "Scarborough Warning," which has had various accounts given of its origin,[139] but the true explanation of which is that it is the fragment of an ancient legal formula of the kind we are investigating. Abraham De la Pryme describes it in his seventeenth-century diary as follows:--

"Scarburg Warning is a proverb in many places of the
north, signifying any sudden warning given upon any
account. Some think it arose from the sudden comeing
of an enemy against the castle there, and haveing
dischargd a broad side, then commands them to
surrender. Others think that the proverb had it's
original from other things, but all varys. However,
this is the true origin thereof.

"The town is a corporation town, and tho' it is very
poor now to what it was formerly, yet it has a ... who
is commonly some poor man, they haveing no rich ones
amongst them. About two days before Michilmass day the
sayd ... being arrayed in his gown of state he mounts
upon horseback, and has his attendants with him, and
the macebear[er] carrying the mace before him, with
two fidlers and a base viol. Thus marching in state
(as bigg as the lord mare of London) all along the
shore side, they make many halts, and the cryer crys
thus with a strange sort of a singing voyce, high and
low:--

"'Whay! Whay! Whay!
Pay your gavelage, ha!
Between this and Michaelmas Day,
Or you'll be fined I, say!'

"Then the fiddlers begins to dance, and caper and
plays, fit to make one burst with laughter that sees
and hears them. Then they go on again and crys as
before, with the greatest majesty and gravity
immaginable, none of this comical crew being seen so
much as to smile all the time, when as spectators are
almost bursten with laughing. This is the true origin
of the proverb, for this custome of gavelage is a
certain tribute that every house pays to the ... when
he is pleased to call for it, and he gives not above
one day warning, and may call for it when he
pleases."[140]

Rhyming tenures have been frequently noted but never understood. They occur in many parts of the country. The tithingman of Combe Keynes, in Dorsetshire, is obliged to do suit at Winforth Court, and after repeating the following incoherent lines, pays threepence and goes away without saying another word:--

"With my white rod
And I am a fourth post
That three pence makes three
God bless the King, and the lord of the franchise
Our weights and our measures are lawful and true
Good morrow Mr. Steward I have no more to say to you."[141]

It is hardly necessary to quote more examples. They are not unknown to the historian, but because they are in rhyme they have been hastily assumed to be spurious or even burlesque.[142] But the evidence of a rhyming formula is the opposite to this. It is evidence of their genuineness, and if some of the words appear to be nonsensical it is due to the fact that the sense of the old formula has been misunderstood, and has then become gradually altered.

All these rhyming tenures, indeed, find their place among the traditional examples of legal formulae. They are the local offshoots preserved because of their legal significance, preserved by those interested from their legal side. Because they are not preserved in the formal codes they need not be neglected, and they must not be misunderstood. They are not to be put on one side by the historian as freaks of local landowners. They are real descendants by traditional lines from the times when laws were not written, but kept alive in the memory by means of such assistance as rhyme could supply, and from the tribesmen who thus treasured the law they obeyed.[143]

That this branch of recorded law is not only early but tribal is undoubted, but perhaps it will be well to refer to tribal rhyming formulae of an independent kind in order to show by parallel evidence the tribal characteristics. In 1884 Mr. Posnett drew attention to this important subject, and noted that

"Dr. Brown, in an attempt to sketch the origin of
poetry--an attempt which attracted the attention of
Bishop Percy in his remarks introductory to the
_Reliques_--proposed more than one hundred years ago
to discover the source of the combined dance, song,
melody, and mimetic action of primitive compositions
in the common festivals of clan life. The student of
comparative literature will probably regard Dr.
Brown's theory as a curious anticipation of the
historical method in a study which, in spite of M.
Taine's efforts, has made so little progress as yet.
The clan ethic of inherited guilt and vicarious
punishment has attracted considerable attention. But
the clan poetry of the ancient Arabs and of the
bard-clans, surviving in the Hebrew sons of Asaph or
the Greek Homeridae, has not received that light from
comparative inquiry which the closely connected
problems of primitive music and metre would alone
amply deserve."[144]

Not much has been done since this was penned. Max Mueller had previously, in 1847, declared that the Rig Veda consisted of the clan songs of the Hindu people,[145] but the importance of such a conclusion has been entirely neglected. In the meantime evidence is accumulating that in Britain there are still preserved many examples of clan songs. Thus Lord Archibald Campbell has published, in the first volume of his _Waifs and Strays of Celtic Tradition_, some sixteen or seventeen sagas. Some of these are clan-traditions; and the editor notes as evidence of their antiquity the fact that none of them makes any mention of firearms. These clan-traditions all relate to feuds and vendettas; and in one case it is expressly recorded that the descendants of one of the foes of the clan, in their account of the incident narrated, "altered this tradition and reversed the main facts." This has been followed by a volume definitely devoted to "clan-traditions,"[146] while in the _Carmina Gadelica_ and many of the Highland incantations there are preserved specimens of ancient clan songs.

The most interesting of the tribal songs is that preserved at the Hawick Common riding. The burgh officers form the van of a pageant which insensibly carries us back to ancient times, and in some verses sung on the occasion there is a refrain which has been known for ages as the slogan of Hawick. It is "Teribus ye teri Odin," which is probably a corruption of the Anglo-Saxon, "Tyr habbe us, ye Tyr ye Odin"--May Tyr uphold us, both Tyr and Odin.

Fortunately Dr. Murray has investigated this formula, and I will quote what he says:--

"A relic of North Anglian heathendom seems to be
preserved in a phrase which forms the local slogan of
the town of Hawick, and which, as the name of a
peculiar local air, and the refrain, or 'owerword' of
associated ballads, has been connected with the
history of the town back to 'fable-shaded eras.'
Different words have been sung to the tune from time
to time, and none of those now extant can lay claim to
any antiquity; but associated with all, and yet
identified with none, the refrain '_Tyr-ibus ye Tyr ye
Odin_,' Tyr haeb us, ye Tyr ye Odin! Tyr keep us, both
Tyr and Odin! (by which name the tune also is known)
appears to have come down, scarcely mutilated, from
the time when it was the burthen of the song of the
gleo-mann or scald, or the invocation of a heathen
Angle warrior, before the northern Hercules and the
blood-red lord of battles had yielded to the 'pale
god' of the Christians."

And in a note Dr. Murray adds:--

"The ballad now connected with the air of 'Tyribus'
commemorates the laurels gained by the Hawick youth at
and after the disastrous battle, when, in the words of
the writer,

"'Our sires roused by "Tyr ye Odin,"
Marched and joined their king at Flodden.'

Annually since that event the 'Common-Riding' has
been held, on which occasion a flag or 'colour'
captured from a party of the English has been with
great ceremony borne by mounted riders round the
bounds of the common land, granted after Flodden to
the burgh; part of the ceremony consisting in a mock
capture of the 'colour' and hot pursuit by a large
party of horsemen accoutred for the occasion. At the
conclusion 'Tyribus' is sung, with all the honours, by
the actors in the ceremony, from the roof of the
oldest house in the burgh, the general population
filling the street below, and joining in the song with
immense enthusiasm. The influence of modern ideas is
gradually doing away with much of the parade and
renown of the Common-Riding. But 'Tyr-ibus ye Tyr ye
Odin' retains all its local power to fire the lieges,
and the accredited method of arousing the burghers to
any political or civil struggle is still to send round
the drums and fifes, 'to play Tyribus' through the
town, a summons analogous to that of the Fiery Cross
in olden times. Apart from the words of the slogan,
the air itself bears in its wild fire all the tokens
of a remote origin."[147]

We could not get better evidence than this of the survival of tribal custom, custom that is distinctly connected with tribes rather than with places or individuals, with groups of people who, now bound together by local considerations and influences, have only recently passed away from the far more ancient influences of the tribe. Alike in the forms of historical codes and in traditional local remains, we have found evidence of the use of rhyme for the preservation of unwritten rules and forms; and this use restores to tradition an important branch of its material.

We have thus ascertained that there is direct and acknowledged indebtedness of history to tradition. Its extent covers a wide area of culture progress, and of unbroken continuity from tribal to historic times. The legal codes of the barbaric tribes of Western Europe are the direct successors of the traditional originals; and because these legal codes, equally with their unwritten predecessors, cannot be dispensed with by the historian, they find their place unquestioned among genuine historical material. They are no more, and no less, historical than other traditional material. They are part of the life of the people rescued from prehistoric days, and they tell us of these days by the same sanction and the same methods as the rest of the traditional material which has been so strangely and so persistently neglected by the historian. The whole of tradition, and not selected parts of it, must be brought into use if we would follow scientific method, and I claim this for the study of folklore on the strength of the results which have now been brought together.

Here, however, we are close up to an important point of controversy. The mythologists claim tradition as theirs. It does not, they assert, give us the history but the mythology of our race. It tells us not of the men but of the gods. In explaining how this comes about, however, they have fallen into errors which it is not only necessary to correct but which are fundamental in their effects. We shall be better able later on to discuss the extremely important question of the position of the prehistoric tradition amidst historic life and surroundings, if we try to understand what the mythologists have done and not done in their attempts to claim exclusive property in the folk-tale. They have entirely denied or ignored all history contained in the folk-tale, and they have proceeded upon the assumption, the bald assumption not accompanied by any kind of proof, that the folk-tale contains nothing but the remnants of a once prevalent system of mythology. They ignore all the proofs brought forward by folklorists to the contrary, such proofs, for instance, as Mr. Knowles, Sir Richard Temple and others have produced concerning the Hindu folk-tale. What is not true of the Hindu folk-tale cannot be true of its Celtic or Teutonic or Scandinavian parallel, and yet in the most recent study of Celtic tradition, Mr. Squire takes its mythic origin for granted, and works through his ingenious statement without let or hindrance from other points of view. But even his thorough-going methods compel him to stop short at certain points, and to admit that he has come across historic fact. Thus he agrees that the Fir-Bolgs "were not really gods but the pre-Aryan race which the Gaels, when they landed in Ireland, found already in occupation,"[148] and yet when he treats of the fight of the Fir-Bolgs with the Tuatha de Danann, and is confronted with Sir William Wilde's proofs that the monuments on the plain of Moytura are in agreement with the traditions concerning them, and point to the account of the battle being historical,[149] all that Mr. Squire can admit is that "certainly the coincidences are curious." He disposes of them on the ground that the "people of the goddess Danu are too obviously mythical to make it worth while to seek any standing ground for them in the world of reality." That standing ground might be found connected with the Tuatha de Danann in many places, but Mr. Squire will have it that it is impossible, because "it was about this period that the mythology of Ireland was being rewoven into spurious history."[150] It is not, however, upon the mistakes of other inquirers[151] that the mythologists may rest a good claim for their own view. The _Historia Britonum_ of Geoffrey of Monmouth disposes of neither the myths nor the history of the Celts. It shows myth in its secondary position, in the handling of those who would make it all history, just as now there are scholars who would make it all myth. In front of the legends attaching to persons and places is the history of these persons and places. Behind these legends lies the domain of the unattached and primitive folk-tale, Mr. Campbell's _Highland Tales_, Kennedy's _Fireside Stories of Ireland_, and those English tales which have been rescued by Mr. Clodd and others. This makes it impossible to see in the hero-legends naught else than the intangible realm of Celtic gods and goddesses.

Equally impossible is it to create for them a home in a system of "state religion," and yet a state religion is a necessary part of the evidence for mythological origins.[152] There was no Celtic state. Emphatically this was so. Everything we know about the Celts of Britain, both before and after the Roman conquest, both in Britain, where the Roman power was upheld for four centuries, and in Ireland, where the Roman power never penetrated, the Celts were possessed of a tribal, not a state polity; lived in tribal strongholds, not in Celtic cities; occupied tribal territories, not countries formed into states; elected tribal chiefs in primitive fashion, and not kings with state ceremonial; and when they come under the dominion of an incipient state policy after the conquest of the English and the Northmen, their laws are promulgated and codified, and show that both Welsh and Irish codes are tribal, not state law.

Not only do I fail to discover a state religion of the Celts, but I do not find it among the Teutons. There is greater evidence of discrepancies than of agreement in all the European religions, but these have not been dwelt upon by scholars. Professor York Powell, in one of his illuminating studies on Teutonic heathendom, is the only authority I know of who argues against the idea of a systematised religion. "It is important that we should at once throw aside the idea that there was any _system_, any organized pantheon in the religion of these peoples. Their tribes were small and isolated, and each had its own peculiar gods and observances, although the mould of each faith was somewhat similar. Hence there were varieties of religious customs among the Goths, Swedes, Saxons, and Angles."[153]

Now if there was no state there could be no state religion. What existed of worship and religion was tribal. These are the historical facts, which have been neglected by students of myth and saga. I shall have to point out in greater detail presently what these tribal conditions mean to studies in folklore, but the word of warning and protest must come here, for it is unconsciously the conception of a Celtic state religion which gives even the semblance of possibility for Celtic mythology to be found in every hero-legend. It is, in short, the neglect of this among other historical facts which has led the folklorist into error of a somewhat magnificent kind. He attempts to create out of the myths of a people a mythology which provides gods to be worshipped, faiths to be organised, and beliefs to be the standards of life and conduct. Thus, as I have pointed out elsewhere,[154] Sir John Rhys has, in his acute identification of the worship of the water-god Lud on the Thames and of Nod on the Severn,[155] introduced the idea of a great Celtic worship established on these two great rivers as parts of a definite system of Celtic religion, whereas examination proves that the parallel faiths of two perfectly distinct Celtic tribes, the Silures on the Severn and the Trinovantes on the Thames, were welded into a common worship of the god of the waters by the masters of Celtic Britain, the Romans. There was no Celtic organisation which commanded both Severn and Thames until the Romans occupied the country, and occupying the country they adopted into their own religion the native gods and, fortunately for us, recorded their adoption in the pavements of their houses or their temples.[156]

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Folklore as an Historical ScienceChapter I: History and Folklore (3)

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