II

If the accretion of myth around the lives of great historic personages, and the persistence of tradition in historic localities, may be accepted as one phase of the necessary relationship of tradition to history, we may proceed to inquire how far the unattached traditions, the folk-tales pure and simple, contain or are based upon historic details. These details will not tell us of any one historic personage, or relate to any one historic locality, but will relate to the peoples before personages and localities figured in their history, and will explain facts in culture-history rather than in political history. We shall be approaching the period before written history had begun, and for which, so far as written history is concerned, we are dependent upon foreign or outside authority. I think, perhaps, Dr. Karl Pearson has put the case for this view in the best form. "As we read fairy stories to our children," he says,

"we may study history for ourselves. No longer oppressed with the unreal and the baroque, we may see primitive human customs and the life of primitive man and woman cropping out at almost every sentence of the nursery tale. Written history tells us little of these things, they must be learnt, so to speak, from the mouths of babes. But there they are in the Märchen, as invaluable fossils for those who will stoop to pick them up and study them. Back in the far past we can build up the life of our ancestry—the little kingdom, the queen or her daughter as king maker, the simple life of the royal household, and the humble candidate for the kingship, the priestess with her control of the weather and her power over youth and maid. In the dimmest distance we can see traces of the earlier kindred group marriage, and in the near foreground the beginnings of that fight with patriarchal institutions which led the priestess to be branded by the new Christian civilization as the evil-working witch of the Middle Ages."

I should not have ventured to quote this long passage if my own studies, before Dr. Pearson's book was published in 1897, had not led me to much the same conclusions. But Dr. Pearson assists me in a special way. His methods are scientific. He is not a folklorist because he loves folklore, but because he sees in it the materials for elucidating the early life of man. He is not, so to speak, prejudiced in its favour. He brings to his aid the practical mind of the statistician and the psychologist, and his conclusions may not, therefore, be put on one side as easily as those of myself and other students of folklore.

It is due to the folklorist, however, to say that this aspect of the folk-tale had already been discovered by one of the greatest of the earlier collectors of traditional lore, the late Mr. J. F. Campbell. Thus, writing, in 1860, of his grand collection of "Highland Tales," Mr. Campbell very truly says: "The tales represent the actual everyday life of those who tell them, with great fidelity. They have done the same, in all likelihood, time out of mind, and that which is not true of the present is, in all probability, true of the past; and therefore something may be learned of forgotten ways of life." Readers of Mr. Campbell's books well know how he has traced out from these traditions from the nursery, identical customs with Highland everyday life, and relics also of a long-forgotten past state of things; how he points to the records of the stone age and the iron age in these representatives of the scientific memoirs of the past; how very significantly he answers his own supposition, that if these tales "are dim recollections of savage times and savage people, then other magic gear, the property of giants, fairies, and bogles, should resemble things which are precious now amongst savage or half-civilized tribes, or which really have been prized amongst the old inhabitants of these islands or of other parts of the world."

This is an extremely important conclusion on the relationship of history and tradition, and it will be well to illustrate it by turning to some obvious details of primitive life, which are to be seen with more or less clearness enshrined in the folk-tales which have been preserved in our own country.

In Kennedy's Fireside Stories of Ireland, it is related in one of the tales that there was no window to the mud-wall cabin, and the door was turned to the north; and then, again, we have this picture given to us in another story: on a common that had in the middle of it a rock or great pile of stones overgrown with furze bushes, there was a dwelling-house, and a cow-house, and a goat's-house, and a pigsty all scooped out of the rock; and the cows were going into the byre, and the goats into their house, but the pigs were grunting and bawling before the door. This takes us to the surroundings of the cave-dwelling people.

Then in other places we come across relics of ancient agricultural life preserved in these stories. In the Irish story of "Hairy Rouchy" the heroine is fastened by her wicked sisters in a pound, an incident not mentioned in the parallel Highland tale related by Campbell. Many Irish stories contain details of primitive life that the Scottish variants do not contain. The field that was partly cultivated with corn and partly pasture for the cow, the grassy ridge upon which the princess sat, and the furrows wherein her two brothers were lying, are instances.

A great question arises here. If the Scotch story does not mention the primitive incident mentioned in the Irish story, does it mean that the Irish story has retained for a longer time the details of its primitive original? Or does it mean that it has absorbed more of surrounding Irish life into it than the Scotch story has of surrounding Scottish life?

These details must have a place in the elucidation of Irish folk-tales, because they have a very distinct place indeed in primitive institutions; and it hence becomes a question to folklorists as to how they have entered into, or escaped from, the narrative of traditional story. It appears to me that the appearance or non-appearance of these phases of early life are typical of what has been going on with the plot and structure of folk-tales as long as they have remained the traditional treasures of the people. A story identical in all the main outlines of plot will be varied in matters of detail, according to the people who are using it in their daily routine of story-telling. But this variation is always from the primitive to the cultured, from the simple to the complex. The mud-cabin or cave-dwelling in Irish story would have developed into the palace in stories of a richer country like England; the old woman, young girl, master and servant, would become perhaps the queen, princess, king and vassal; just as in Spanish and Portuguese stories the giant of other European tales is represented by "the Moor." If this process of change is a factor in the life of the folk-tale, it follows that those folk-tales which contain the greatest number of primitive details are the most ancient, and come to us more directly from the prehistoric times which they represent.

We may gather warrant for such a conclusion if we pass from small details to a distinct institution. The institution which stands out most clearly in early history is the tribe, and I will therefore turn to an element of ancient tribal life, and an element which has to do with the practical organisation of that life, namely, the tribal assembly. We find that the folk-tale records under its fairy or non-historic guise many important recollections of the assembly of the tribe. One very natural feature of this assembly in early times was its custom of meeting in the open air—a custom which in later times still obtained, for reasons which were the outcome of the prejudices existing in favour of keeping up old customs. These reasons are recorded in the formula of Anglo-Saxon times, that meetings should not be held in any building, lest magic might have power over the members of the assembly.

Before turning to the tales of our own country, I will first see whether savage and barbaric tales have recorded anything on the subject, for their picture of the tribal assembly, when revealed in the folk-tale, belongs to the period which might have witnessed the making of the story, and which certainly witnessed the tribal organisation of the people as a living institution. Dr. Callaway, in his Nursery Tales and Traditions of the Zulus, relates a story of "the Girl-King." "Where there are many young women," says the story, "they assemble on the river where they live, and appoint a chief over the young women, that no young woman may assume to act for herself. Well, then they assemble and ask each other, 'Which among the damsels is fit to be chief and reign well?' They make many inquiries; one after another is nominated and rejected, until at length they agree together to appoint one, saying, 'Yes, so and so shall reign.'" However far this may be actually separated from the political assembly of the Zulus, there is no doubt we have here a folk-tale adaptation of events which were happening around the relators of the tale. This is all I am anxious to state, indeed. What in the folk-tale was related of the girl-king, was a reflex only of what happened when the political chieftain himself was concerned.

This, perhaps, is still better illustrated if we turn to India. In the story of "How the Three Clever Men outwitted the Demons," told by Miss Frere in her Old Deccan Days, it is related how "a demon was compelled to bring treasure to the pundit's house, and on being asked why he had been so long away, answered, 'All my fellow-demons detained me, and would hardly let me go, they were so angry at my bringing you so much treasury; and though I told them how great and powerful you are, they would not believe me, but will, as soon as I return, judge me in solemn council for serving you.' 'Where is your council held?' asked the pundit. 'Oh! very far, far away,' answered the demon, 'in the depths of the jungle, where our rajah daily holds his court.' The three men, the pundit, the wrestler, and the pearl-shooter, are taken by the demon to witness the trial.... They reached the great jungle where the durbar (council) was to be held, and there he (the demon) placed them on the top of a high tree just over the demon rajah's throne. In a few minutes they heard a rustling noise, and thousands and thousands of demons filled the place, covering the ground as far as the eye could reach, and thronging chiefly round the rajah's throne."

A classical story told by Ælian gives us another interesting example of this feature of early political life. It is said of the Lady Rhodopis, who was alike fair and frail, that of all the beautiful women in Egypt, she was by far the most beautiful; and the story goes that one time when she was bathing, Fortune, which always was a lover of whatever may be the most unlikely and unexpected, bestowed upon her rank and dignity that were alone suitable for her transcendent charms; and this was the way what I am now going to tell came to pass. Rhodopis, before taking a bath, had given her robes in charge to her attendants; but at the same time there was an eagle flying over the bath, and it darted down and flew away with one of her slippers. The eagle flew away, and away, and away, until it got to the city of Memphis, where the Prince Psammetichus was sitting in the open air, and administering justice to those subject to his sway; and as the eagle flew over him it let the slipper fall from its beak, and it fell down into the lap of Psammetichus. The prince looked at the slipper, and the more he looked at it, the more he marvelled at the beauty of the material and the dainty minuteness of its size; and then he cogitated upon the wondrous way in which such a thing was conveyed to him through the air by a bird; and then it was he sent forth a proclamation to all parts of Egypt to try to discover the woman to whom the slipper belonged, and solemnly promised that whoever she might be he would make her his bride.

A very beautiful legend, which has been preserved by the Rev. W. S. Lach-Szyrma, carries into its fairy narrative more of the realities of tribal life. Mr. Lach-Szyrma obtained it from a peasant's chap-book, but it professes to be an ancient Slovac folk-tale:—

"An orphan girl is left with a cruel stepmother, who has a daughter who is bad-tempered and disagreeable, and extremely jealous of her. She becomes the Cinderella of the house, is ill-treated and beaten, but submits patiently. At last the harsh stepmother is urged by her daughter to get rid of her. It is winter, in the month of January; the snow has fallen, and the ground is frozen. The cruel stepmother in this dreadful weather bids the poor girl to go out in the forest, and not to come back till she brings some violets with her. After many entreaties for mercy the orphan is driven out, and goes out in the snow on the hopeless errand. As she enters the forest she sees a little way on in the deep glade, under the leafless trees, a large fire burning. As she draws near she perceives around the fire are twelve stones, and on the stones sit twelve men. The chief of them, sitting on the largest stone, is an old man with a long snowy beard, and a great staff in his hand. As she comes up to the fire the old man asks her what she wants. She respectfully replies by telling them, with many tears, her sad story. The old man comforts her. 'I am January; I cannot give you any violets, but brother March can.' So he turns to a fine young man near him and says, 'Brother March, sit in my place.' Presently the air around grows softer. The snows around the fire melt. The green grass appears, the flower-buds are to be seen. At the orphan girl's feet a bed of violets appear. She stoops and plucks a beautiful bouquet, which she brings home to her astounded stepmother."

How clearly this is a representation of the tribal assembly worked into the folk-tale, where January and the months are the tribal chiefs, may be illustrated by a comparison with the actual events of Indian tribal life. Within the stockaded village of Supar-Punji, in Bengal, are two or three hundred monuments, large and small, all formed of circular, solid stone slabs, supported by upright stones, set on end, which enclose the space below. On these the villagers sit on occasions of state, each on his own stool, large or small, according to his rank in the commonwealth.

Now evidence such as this, showing how the folk-tale among primitive people gets framed according to the social conditions within which it originates, will help us to realise the peculiar value of similar features which may be found in the folk-tales of our own country. English tales are nearly destitute of such illustrations of primitive tribal life as this. Some of the giant stories of Cornwall, such as that relating to the loose, uncut stones in the district of Lanyon Quoit, on whose tors "they do say the giants sit," may refer to the tribal assembly place, but it is shorn of all its necessary details, and we do not get many examples even in this shortened form.

Curiously enough, too, we find but little mention in the Scotch tales of the open-air gatherings of the tribe. The following quotation may refer to the custom perhaps, but it is not conclusive: "On the day when O'Donull came out to hold right and justice...." (there were twelve men with him). Another story is more exact. Mr. Campbell took it down from a fisherman in Barra (ii. 137). The hero-child Conall tends the sheep of a widow with whom he lodged. "To feed these sheep he broke down the dykes which guarded the neighbours' fields. The neighbours made complaint to the king, and asked for justice. The king gave foolish judgment, whereat his neck was turned awry, and the judgment-seat kicked. Conall gave a correct decision and released the king. He did this a second time, and the people said he must have king's blood in him." This allusion to the kicking of the judgment-seat is a very instructive illustration of tribal chieftainship and comes within that branch of the subject with which we are now dealing.

But when we pass from Britain to Ireland, there is at once a great storehouse of examples to be given. In Dr. Joyce's Old Celtic Romances there are some remarkable passages, which give us a good picture of the assemblies of primitive times. These passages, it should be noted, occur quite incidentally during the course of the story—they belong to the same era as the fairy-legend, the giant, and the witch, and taken as types of what was going on everywhere in prehistoric times, they tell us much that is very valuable.

A great fair-meeting was held by the King of Ireland, Nuada of the Silver Hand, on the Hill of Usna. Not long had the people been assembled, when they beheld a stately band of warriors, all mounted on white steeds, coming towards them from the east, and at their head rode a young champion, tall and comely. "This young warrior was Luga of the Long Arms.... This troop came forward to where the King of Erin sat surrounded by the Dedannans, and both parties exchanged friendly greetings. A short time after this they saw another company approaching, quite unlike the first, for they were grim and surly-looking; namely, the tax-gatherers of the Fomorians, to the number of nine nines, who were coming to demand their yearly tribute from the men of Erin. When they reached the place where the king sat, the entire assembly—the king himself among the rest—rose up before them." Here, without following the story further, the assembling in arms, the payment of the tributes at the council-hill, the sitting of the king and his assembly, are all significant elements of the primitive assembly. In a later part of the same story we have "the Great Plain of the Assembly" mentioned (p. 48). Another graphic picture is given a little later on, when the warrior Luga, above mentioned, demands justice upon the slayers of his father, at the great council on Tara hill. Luga asked the king that the chain of silence should be shaken; and when it was shaken, when all were listening in silence, he stood up and made his plea, which ended in the eric-fine being imposed upon the three children of Turenn, the accomplishment of which forms the basis of the fairy-tale which follows (p. 54). Then, in another place in the same tale, when the brothers are on their adventurous journey, fulfilling their eric-fine, they come to the house of the King of Sigar; and it "happened that the king was holding a fair-meeting on the broad, level green before the palace."

In another story the hero Maildun asks the island queen how she passes her life, and the reply is, "The good king who formerly ruled over this island was my husband. He died after a long reign, and as he left no son, I now reign, the sole ruler of the island. And every day I go to the Great Plain, to administer justice and to decide causes among my people."

The beginning of another story is—"Once upon a time, a noble, warlike king ruled over Lochlann, whose name was Colga of the Hard Weapons. On a certain occasion, this king held a meeting of his chief people, on the broad, green plain before his palace of Berva. And when they were all gathered together, he spoke to them in a loud, clear voice, from where he sat high on his throne; and he asked them whether they found any fault with the manner in which he ruled them, and whether they knew of anything deserving of blame in him as their sovereign lord and king. They replied, as if with the voice of one man, that they found no fault of any kind."

The last example is also a valuable one. A dispute has occurred respecting the enchanted horse, the Gilla Dacker, and "a meeting was called on the green to hear the award." Speeches are made and the awards are given.

I think it will be admitted that the folk-tales of Britain refer back in such cases to the organisation of the tribe in early times, and the only possible conclusion to be drawn from this fact is that they too belong to early times and that they have brought with them to modern days these valuable fragments of history which are hardly to be discovered in any other historical document.

We have thus shown that the folk-tale contains many fragmentary details of ancient social conditions, and further that it contains more than mere details in the larger place it assigns to important features of tribal institutions. It now remains to see whether apart from incident the very structure and heart of the folk-tale is founded upon conceptions of life. I will take as an example the well-known story of Catskin. This story contains one remarkable feature running through many of the variants, and a second which is found in practically all of them. Both these features are perfectly impossible to modern creative fancy, and I venture to think we shall find their true origin in the actual facts of primitive life, not in the wondrous flight of primitive fancy.

The opening incidents of "Catskin" are thus related:—

"A certain king, having lost his wife, and mourned for her even more than other men do, suddenly determines, by way of relieving his sorrows, to marry his own daughter. The princess obtains a suspension of this odious purpose by requiring from him three beautiful dresses, which take a long time to prepare. These dresses are a robe of the colour of the sky, a robe of the colour of the moon, a third robe of the colour of the sun, the latter being embroidered with the rubies and diamonds of his crown. The three dresses being made and presented to her, the princess is checkmated, and accordingly asks for something even more valuable in its way. The king has an ass that produces gold coins in profusion every day of his life. This ass the princess asked might be sacrificed, in order that she might have his skin. This desire even was granted. The princess, thus defeated altogether, puts on the ass's skin, rubs her face over with soot, and runs away. She takes a situation with a farmer's wife to tend the sheep and turkeys of the farm."

The remainder of the story much resembles Cinderella's famous adventures, and I need not repeat it here. The pith of the story turns upon the fact that a father purposes to marry his own daughter, or, in some versions, his daughter-in-law; and the daughter, naturally, as we say, objecting to this arrangement, runs away, and hence her many adventures. This famous story, told by English nurses to English children, long before literature stepped across the sacred precincts of the nursery, is also told in Ireland and Scotland. It is also current in France, Italy, Germany, Russia, Lithuania, and many other nations; and throughout all these versions, differing, of course, in some matters of detail, the selfsame incident is observable—the father wishing to marry his own daughter, and the daughter running away. This incident, therefore, must be older than the several nations who have preserved it from their common home, where the tale was originally told with a special value that is now lost. It must then belong to primitive man, and not to civilised man, and must be judged by the standard of morals belonging to primitive man. It is not sufficient, or, indeed, in any way to the point, to say that the idea of marrying one's own daughter is horrible and detestable to modern ideas; we must place ourselves in a position to judge of such a state of affairs from an altogether different standpoint. And what do we find in primitive society? We find that women were the property, not the help-mates, of their husbands. And the question hence arises, in what relation did the children stand in respect to their parents? The answer comes from almost all parts of the primitive world that, in certain stages of society, the children were related to their mother only. It is worth while pausing one moment to give evidence upon the fact. Thus McLennan says of the Australians, "it is not in quarrels uncommon to find children of the same father arrayed against one another, or indeed, against their father himself; for by their peculiar law the father can never be a relative of his children." This is not the language, though it is the evidence, of the latest research, and another phase of it is represented by the custom, as among the Ahts of Vancouver Island, that in case of separation while the children are young, the children go always with the mother to their own tribe.

Here we see that the relationship between father and daughter was in no way considered in ancient society of the type to which Australians and Ahts belonged, and it is now one of the accepted facts of anthropology that at certain stages of savage life fatherhood was not recognised. That this non-relationship of the father very often resulted in the further stage of the father marrying his daughter, is exemplified by many examples. The story of Lot and his daughters, for instance, will at once occur to the reader, and upon this Mr. Fenton has some observations, to which I may refer the student who wishes to pursue this curious subject further, while Mr. Frazer, in his recent study of Adonis, has discussed the practice with his usual extent of knowledge. Again, it should be remembered that in our own chronicle histories Vortigern is said to have married his own daughter, though the legend and the supposed consequences of the marriage have been twisted from their original primitive surroundings by the monkish chroniclers, through whom we obtain the story. Turning next to the daughter-in-law, supposing that the difference between "daughter" and "daughter-in-law" (query stepdaughter) in the story variants is a vital difference, and not an accidental difference, there is curious and important evidence from India. The following custom prevails among certain classes of Sudras, particularly the Vella-lahs in Koimbator: "A father marries a grown-up girl eighteen or twenty years old to his son, a boy of seven or eight, after which he publicly lives with his daughter-in-law, until the youth attains his majority, when his wife is made over to him, generally with half a dozen children. These children are taught to address him as their father. In several cases this woman becomes the common wife of the father and son. She pays every respect due to her wedded husband, and takes great care of him from the time of her marriage. The son, in his turn, hastens to celebrate the marriage of his acquired son, with the usual pomps, ceremonies, and tumasha, and keeps the bride for himself as his father had done." But even further than this, ancient Hindu law allowed the father, who had no prospect of having legitimate sons, to "appoint" or nominate a daughter who should bear a son to himself, and not to her own husband. Sir Henry Maine gives the formula for this remarkable appointment, and then goes on to say that some customs akin to the Hindu usage of appointing a daughter appear to have been very widely diffused over the ancient world, and traces of them are found far down in history.

What we have before us, therefore, to guide us in the view we take of the story incident of a father marrying his own daughter, may be summarised as follows:—

1. The father is not related to his daughter, and hence examples occur of fathers marrying daughters.

2. The custom of marrying a daughter-in-law.

3. The custom of nominating a daughter to bear a son.

From any one of these facts of primitive life we arrive at the central incident in the story of Catskin: the father could marry his daughter without specially shocking the society of the primitive world, simply because, according to primitive ideas, father and daughter, as we call her, were not related.

We now arrive at the second incident—the running away of Catskin. This again is a very early form of marriage custom. Women of primitive times often objected to the forced marriages, and they expressed their objection very often by running away. In the instance of Catskin the running away was successful, as we all know; but in most instances the unwilling bride was captured and forced to surrender. Mr. Farrer, in his Primitive Manners and Customs, quite clears the ground for the refutation of an argument that might be applied if we did not know the customs of primitive society. It might be asked, why did Catskin run away if the custom was a usual one? For the same reason, we answer, that the women of savage society often do run away—objection to the marriage.

Thus we have to note that the two principal features of our ordinary Catskin story are explainable by a reference to primitive manners and customs; and it seems to me much easier and much more reasonable to thus explain the origin of the Catskin story, than first of all to create a "lovely myth," as the mythologists would undoubtedly have a right to call it, of the Sun pursuing the Dawn, and then to say that the Catskin story is simply a relation of this myth.

The opening incident of the Catskin story, as thus interpreted, is not an isolated case of the survival of primitive marriage customs in popular stories. If it were so, there would be considerable difficulty in the way of supporting this interpretation. But it is only saying of Catskin what can be said of other stories. "There are traces," says Mr. Campbell, speaking of his Highland stories, "of foreign or forgotten laws and customs. A man buys a wife as he would a cow, and acquires a right to shoot her, which is acknowledged as good law." Yes, this is good savage law and custom there is no doubt, and Lord Avebury and Mr. McLennan have illustrated it by examples. But in the Highland story of the "Battle of the Birds" the wife is sought to be purchased for a hundred pounds (Campbell, i. 36), and in the Irish story of the "Lazy Beauty and her Aunts" we find something like bride-capture and purchase as well. So, again, if we turn to India the same kind of evidence is forthcoming of another part of the primitive ceremony. "Do not think," retorted the Malee in a story collected by Miss Frere, "that I'll make a fool of myself because I'm only a Malee, and believe what you've got to say because you're a great Rajah. If you mean what you say, if you care for my daughter and wish to be married to her, come and be married; but I'll have none of your new-fangled forms and court ceremonies hard to be understood; let the girl be married by her father's hearth, and under her father's roof." And in another story of the "Chundun Rajah" we have "the scattering rice and flowers upon their heads;" the significance of both of which customs are fully known.

These illustrations of the contact, the necessary contact, of tradition and history show that contact to be equally true of the folk-tale as it is of the local or personal legend. They all point to the substratum of fact underlying tradition, to the absorption by tradition of many features of the life by which it is surrounded, or to the absorption by some great historic person or event of the living tradition of his time or place. This contact is a fact equally important to history and to folklore. It cannot be neglected by either. It stands for something in the analysis which every student must give of the material with which he is working, and that something has a value, sometimes great and sometimes small, which must influence the estimate of the material which both history and folklore supply in the unravelling of man's past.

I will now finally give a more complicated example of the folk-tale as illustrative of the connection between history and tradition. Mr. J. F. Campbell printed a tale in the second volume of the Transactions of the Ethnological Society (p. 336), which had been sent to him in Gaelic by John Davan, in December, 1862—that is, after the publication of the fourth volume of his Highland Tales. The tale is only in outline, but in quite sufficient fulness for my present purpose, as follows:—

There was a man at some time or other who was well off, and had many children. When the family grew up the man gave a well-stocked farm to each of his children. When the man was old his wife died, and he divided all that he had amongst his children, and lived with them, turn about, in their houses. The sons and daughters got tired of him and ungrateful, and tried to get rid of him when he came to stay with them. At last an old friend found him sitting tearful by the wayside, and learning the cause of his distress, took him home; there he gave him a bowl of gold and a lesson which the old man learned and acted. When all the ungrateful sons and daughters had gone to a preaching, the old man went to a green knoll where his grandchildren were at play, and pretending to hide, he turned up a flat hearthstone in an old stance, and went out of sight. He spread out his gold on a big stone in the sunlight, and he muttered, "Ye are mouldy, ye are hoary, ye will be better for the sun." The grandchildren came sneaking over the knoll, and when they had seen and heard all that they were intended to see and hear, they came running up with, "Grandfather, what have you got there?" "That which concerns you not; touch it not," said the grandfather; and he swept his gold into a bag and took it home to his old friend. The grandchildren told what they had seen, and henceforth the children strove who should be kindest to the old grandfather. Still acting on the counsel of his sagacious old chum, he got a stout little black chest made, and carried it always with him. When any one questioned him as to its contents, his answer was, "That will be known when the chest is opened." When he died he was buried with great honour and ceremony, and then the chest was opened by the expectant heirs. In it were found broken potsherds and bits of slate, and a long-handled, white wooden mallet with this legend on its head:—

"So am favioche fiorum,
Thabhavit gnoc annsa cheann,
Do n'fhear nach gleidh maoin da' fein,
Ach bheir a chuid go leir d'a chlann."

"Here is the fair mall
To give a knock on the skull
To the man who keeps no gear for himself,
But gives all to his bairns."

Wright, in his collection of Latin stories, published by the Percy Society in 1842 (pp. 28-29), gives a variant of this tale under the title of "De divite qui dedit omnia filio suo," and, so far as can be judged by the abstract, the parallel between the two narratives, separated by at least five centuries of time, is remarkably close. The latter part is apparently different, for the Latin version tells how the man pretended that the chest contained a sum of money, part of which was to be applied for the good of his soul, and the rest to dispose of as he pleased. But at the point of death his children opened the chest. "Antequam totaliter expiraret, ad cistam currentes nihil invenerunt nisi malleum, in quo Anglicè scriptum est:—

"'Wyht suylc a betel be he smyten,
That al the werld hyt mote wyten,
That gyfht his sone al his thing,
And goht hym self a beggyn.'"

Here, then, is a case whereby to test the problem of the position of folk-tales as historical material. Did the people adopt this tale from literature into tradition and keep it alive for five centuries; or did some early and unconscious folklorist adapt it into literature? The literary version has the flavour of its priestly influence, which does not appear in the traditional version; and I make the preliminary observation that if literature could have so stamped itself upon the memory of the folk as to have preserved all the essentials of such a story as this, it must have been due to some academic influence (of which, however, there is no evidence), and this influence would have preserved a nearer likeness to literary forms than the peasant's tale presents to us. But the objection to this theory is best shown by an analysis of the tale, and by some research into the possible sources of its origin.

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, 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. 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." 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.

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." 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. In Bavaria and in Würtemberg the same custom obtains, and the sagas of the North also confirm it as an ancient custom.

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, 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." 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; 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."

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. Nork has attempted with more reason to identify it with the hammer of Thor. 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. 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. 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 effœte, & of no more use." 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. 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 Lüneberg 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 versâ. 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 Osnabrück, 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."

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 formulæ 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 formulæ, 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." 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." 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. 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. 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:—