Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/250

 238 Animal Superstitions and Toteniism.

of the animal most appropriate to the temper of the owner.^

{e) Animal Substitutes in Witchcraft.

We may further note those cases in which some part of an animal, usually the heart, is used to bewitch a person. Among the animals so used are the hare, frog, pigeon, and sheep.^ These practices must be clearly distinguished from those in which the bewitched animal is used to compel the presence of the witch. The analogy is with the use of a mannikin of paste or wax to represent the person who is to be bewitched.

(/) Werwolves.

I can do no more than mention in passing the belief in werwolves, which is allied to more than one of the supersti- tions detailed above.

The beliefs just detailed show close analogies with those of totem-tribes, and in certain cases can hardly be derived from anything but totemism of the individual form found in America.

I do not, of course, assert that these superstitions must be derived from totemism. I claim, however, that totemism explains them at least as well as any other theory. Looked at in the light of the facts to which I shall now call your attention, the totemic explanation is, I venture to say, by no means improbable.

Students of mythology and folklore have never been found wanting in ingenuity ; and it will no doubt be pos- sible in the present case also to suggest other explanations of the facts. But one theory always holds the field, pro- vided it is not self-contradictory, until a better one is forth- coming. Wide-reaching explanations have, perhaps, their defects. But a preference in the opposite direction savours of the spirit which explained the fossil shells in the Alps as

' Meyer, p. lOO.

- Harlland, Leg. Pcrs., n., 105 ; MS. notes.