Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/100

90 types of votive tablet offered to him is what is technically known as the Death Feast; and this type is used at the same time for sepulchral purposes. A similar history is that of Amphiaraus, and may therefore be presumed as possible with the gods. We are far from urging it where it cannot be proved; but we maintain that the deification of men must take its place as one of the sources of religious cults.

We are unable to follow Sir Alfred so confidently in his analysis of Witchcraft, which, as he cynically remarks, is probably practised with less molestation under the British Empire in India than ever before in the history of the world. To distinguish religion and witchcraft by saying that in the one it is hoped to influence nature by worship, in the other by work, is to make an arbitrary distinction. He would appear to see in the witch a first forbear far away of the modern man of science. The witch "stumbles upon a few natural effects out of the common run of things, which he finds himself able to work out by invariable rule of thumb. He thence infers that he has in some wonderful way imbibed extra-natural power He has hit upon a rudimentary materialism." We do not think the distinction can be established, where fetishism and witchcraft are so often commingled even in comparatively advanced cults. That advanced religion always ends by making war upon witchcraft is true; but it proves nothing for the beginning. Religion refined makes war on idols, yet nothing is more certain than that most religions used idols once.

But our chief quarrel with Sir Alfred Lyall is in his attitude towards the study of folklore. We do not refer to the substance of his criticisms upon The Golden Bough, many of which are just. We think with him that Mr. Frazer carried his theory too far; and we should not be surprised if Mr. Frazer should modify it not a little in the new edition of his work. But Sir Alfred regards this book, and those of Miss Kingsley and Mr. Jevons, which he also criticises, from a standpoint which shows he has not realised the methods of folklore study. It is the value of the study as a whole he calls in question, not any particular books. Thus, in quoting Miss Kingsley's words, "The study of natural phenomena knocks the bottom out of any man's conceit, if it is done honestly, and not by selecting only those facts which fit in with his preconceived or ingrafted notions," he adds: "true words that should be gravely pondered by all ingenious folklorists." So they have been, we