Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/117

Rh the hypothesis of Dr. Frazer and Professor Baldwin Spencer that totemism is mainly an economic custom intended to preserve or increase, by means of magical rites, particular food-stuffs or objects of general utility to the community. But besides this, by the protection afforded to their fellows by the members of a totem-clan, it exercises an ameliorating influence in social intercourse and tends to minimise tribal antagonism. On the strength of his vaccination-marks Professor Haddon was himself recognised to be a member of the fraternity. A point perhaps hitherto unrecorded in the case of a living people is that "it seems as if it may be possible to trace some stages at least between pure totemism on the one hand and hero-worship on the other, and a hero-worship that is suspiciously like the origin of a god."

Another valuable part of the book is the elaborate account of puberty rites and the reconstruction from native evidence, with careful drawings, of the sacred enclosures in which these rites were performed. We hear much, of course, of the bull-roarer, and Professor Haddon seems to be very close to Dr. Frazer's identification of its primary purpose, to promote fertility.

Sorcery here, as elsewhere, is almost a speciality of the degraded races which preceded their present native rulers. We have accounts of rain-charming and disease-exorcism; of the curious divination from stones arranged on a sacred site known as a Zogo; of the method of asking advice from the skulls of deceased relatives, and the mode of divination from the appearance of a pig's liver, the last being commonly resorted to when a marriage is being arranged. Full details are given of marriage rites, the principle underlying many of them indicating a transition from the matriarchal to the patriarchal system. Children's games were carefully investigated, and in particular the string-tricks, like our "Cats' Cradle," at which they are experts. To some of these little songs are sung, which seem to be relics of some magical formulæ, a fact which will corroborate some of Mrs. Gomme's speculations on English games.

These few examples from the preliminary record of the expedition will serve but to whet the appetite of anthropologists for the full record of an enterprise happily conceived and carried to a successful issue.