Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/16

 10 seems, in some very distant past, invented the essentials of civilisation, myths, art, and everything, and handed them on to races who were neither Archaian nor White. How we know the colour of this important people, and wherefore they are called Archaian, where they came from, whither they went, and what, in the words of the son of Father William, “made them so awfully clever”, I confess that I do not understand. This, of itself, proves nothing; we are as ignorant of whence the Egyptians came, and of the beginning, which must have preceded the art of the ancient empire. The spade may yet let air and light into this dark place, or geographers in pathless downs of unexplored Central Africa may find the Archaian whites all at home, or may hit on the ruins of their primeval civilisation. But, so far, the Archaian race seem to me to dwell in Laputa, or Zu Vendis, or El Dorado, rather than in any more substantial city. On this point, too, we may receive information.

Another important example of recent folk-lore study is Mr. Gomme’s essay on “Totemism in Britain”. I need not explain to the Society what totemism is—the belief that certain kindreds descend from animals, plants, and other natural objects and phenomena, the naming of the kindred after these objects, and a certain sacredness which, in each kin, is ascribed to the animal, plant, or what not. Many years ago, I mentioned the existence in old England of stocks called by the names of plants and animals. That of itself at least raises a presumption, and suggests research. A man may be called Fox or Hare, a stock may be called Wallings, Derings, and so forth, yet their ancestors may never have traced descent to whale or deer, hare or fox. I have since, I think in Myth, Ritual, and Religion, given a few traditions, mainly Celtic, of descent from seals, wolves, and so forth, as, in the case of Conaire, from a bird, coupled, in Conaire’s case, with the totemistic prohibition to eat birds. Now, when you get confessed belief in animal descent, a name declaring that