Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/411

 The Origin of Totem Names and Bdiefs. 391

this theory fail us in the case of Melanesia, where contact with Europeans is recent and relatively slight. Among such tribes as the Mandans, and and other Siouan peoples, we see totemism with exogamy and female kinship waning, while kinship recognised by male descent, phis settled conditions, brings in local names for gentes, and tends to cause the substitution of local names and nicknames for the totem group name. Precisely the same phenomena meet us in Melanesia.

But this is " matter for a separate dissertation." Perhaps I ought to add that the kind of group names used in totemic circles are peculiarly adapted to being signalled in gesture language, as we know that they actually are, and are thus peculiarly serviceable in savage life.

A. Lang.

APPENDIX [see p. 386). English Rhymes on Village Sobriquets.

Edgmond, Shropshire, where I lived for the first half of my life, is a large parish containing besides the village itself (Edgmond), where the church is situated, a number of small scattered hamlets or townships, and isolated farms. Tibberton, Cherrington, Adeney, Butterey, and Wall, are some of these.

A tradesman of the neighbouring town of Newport, who was a bit of a local antiquary, one day early in 1884, when taking a country ramble in the neighbourhood of Tibber- ton, "came upon an old lady nursing a baby, and singing the following ditty :

' Tibberton tavvnies, Cherrington chats, Adeney dogs and Butterey rats, Four bulldogs fast in a pen Dare not come out for Edgmond men.'

" On inquiry," the hearer adds, " I found out this to be a very old nursery rhyme, handed down from generation to generation." He sent it to Salopian Shreds and Patches,