Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/245

 Animal Superstitions and Totemism. 233

Other examples are personal — Conaire, Cuchulainn, &c.^

I here pause a moment to emphasize the importance of these facts.

In the case of the seal the distribution of the beliefs is especially noticeable ; they are not confined to one locality, nor yet are they universal in the localities in which they are found. Geographically their extension is considerable, but they are held only by certain persons in each district. We have, in fact, the totem-clan itself, save that the social organisation has disappeared.

In the other cases we must recognise rather the local clans into which totem clans tend under certain conditions to pass. Their totemistic origin cannot, however, be questioned, except by those who also dispute this interpretation of the facts about the seal-people and their beliefs.

I need hardly point out that, having once established the former existence of totemism in Britain, we can at once claim for the "categoric superstitions" a very different value. The presence of totemism in the past once admitted, we have only to turn to the table of totem-objects and select those cases in which the evidence is cumulative, to form a provisional list of totems. Given superstitions totemic in form side by side with undoubted survivals of totemism, the onus probandi lies on those who deny the totemic origin of the former.

More or less closely connected with the section just dealt with are a number of superstitions.

lA. QUASI-TOTEMIC SUPERSTITIONS AND TALES. (a) Stories of Animal Ancestors, etc. i. Various Marchen found in Hesse and Swabia relate how, an unusual number of children being born at a birth, the mother ordered them to be drowned, with the excep- tion of one ; the person to whom this was entrusted was ordered to say that they were dogs. Similar stories are

For the refs. v. Arch. Rev., loc. cit.