Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/101

 Reviews. 91

imagine, by all serious students. Mr. Frazer, in compiling his book on Toteniism, did not start with theories which he meant to verify ; he collected all the facts he could get, and classified them, and now that strange new facts have cropped up in Australia he hastens to see how they must modify previous theories. Sir Alfred would have done well to take his own warning to heart. He has a pre- conceived or ingrafted belief in rationalistic explanations; con- sequently, when he finds wives killed at their husbands' funerals, he says : " The colourable object is that they may accompany him into his next existence; but a Calabar chief explained to Miss Kingsley that the custom was also a salutary check upon husband- poisoning; and one cannot doubt that he is right." He is certainly not right if he thinks thus to explain the origin of the custom. If this stood alone. Sir Alfred's rationalism might have some excuse ; but it must be explained in conjunction with other sacrifices at the grave. Is a chiefs horse sacrificed as a salutary check upon poisoning ? Are his pots and pans broken over the grave for any such reason ? When a spectator at a Ceylon funeral, within these last few years, saw all the friends of a deceased bhikkhu bring their last tribute, was that seedy old umbrella which sailed through the air to be suspected of husband-poisoning ? Sir Alfred Lyall's remark shows that he does not understand the method of folklore study. Our results are arrived at only after a wide induction, in which allied customs are used to explain each other. Rare is it to find a custom undocked or unchanged; what we see is a bit here and a bit there, from which we try to piece together the original or complete form. Undoubtedly there is a danger in comparing things from the four ends of the earth. There is such a thing as coincidence, which must be allowed for ; but there is also such a thing as principle, and we hold that by careful examination and classification of facts certain principles do appear. Nor does Sir Alfred realise that local differences often count for little in comparison with the question of the culture- stage. Just as we may assume that all tribes of men have gone through the various stages of savagery and barbarism, so we assume that their minds have gone through certain definite stages ; and these we endeavour to trace by examining not only traditions but existing tribes. Fruit-eating savages may eat apples, or they may eat bananas ; but their thoughts in that stage will probably not differ in the main. If this be true (and the more we learn, the