Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/397

Rh seen, usually after a fast and in consequence of a dream or of an omen, a special bird or beast or other thing as the protector and friend of the individual man or woman, after which the creature is more or less sacred to the individual and their relations are peculiarly close. If we grant that, in various places, one or other individual man was reckoned sacred after death, that he was believed to reappear in the guise of his protecting animal or plant (as in Melanesia), and that his sons and grandsons especially revered the brute or plant and came to claim descent from it, and to name themselves hereditarily from it (wolves, trout, frogs, or what not), we should get something very like a germ of totemism. But the objections to this theory have been stated.

In all theories, the real problem is, how did the early groups get their totem-names? The names once accepted and stereotyped implied a connection between each kindred and the animal, plant, or other thing in nature whose name the kindred bore. Round the mystery of this connection the savage mind would play freely, and would invent the explanatory myths of descent from, and kinship or other friendly relations with, the name-giving objects. A measure of respect for the objects would be established; they might not be killed or eaten, except under necessity; magic might be worked by human emus, kangaroos, plum-trees, and grubs for their propagation, as among the Arunta and other tribes; or against them, to bar their ravaging of the crops, as among the Sioux. As a man should not spear a real emu, if the emu was his totem, so he should not marry or have an amour with a woman who was also of the emu blood. That is part of the tabu.

All these things, given the savage stage of thought, would inevitably follow from the recognised but mysterious connection between men and the plants and animals from which they were named. All such connections, to the