Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 17, 1906.djvu/32

 22 Presidential Address.

of possession in primitive man. Jealousy is the mark of the male in many kinds of animals, and is so in developed man ; Mr. Lang assumes it for primitive man. The primitive group will then be a male, with a flock of attendant females. Each sultan would get and keep as many females as he could, the number depending upon his strength and his power to feed them ; as the children grew up the young males would be forcibly ejected by the sultan until someone should be found strong enough to conquer the old sultan and take his property. The young males, ranging about at large, could only obtain mates by capturing them from some strange group. Hence marriage by capture would be the rule ; and here Mr. Lang sees the origin of the practice of exogamy, by custom growing into right. So far there are no totems ; but the origin of the totem is explained as follows : We must imagine the countryside filled with similar groups, around which, like satellites, revolved the young predatory males seeking to found a family. It will be useful, and perhaps necessary, to distinguish these groups by names. Not that any one group feels the want of a name : each sultan is a world unto himself, and only asks the others, his cousins, to leave him alone. But he may probably want names for the other groups. He therefore invents names for them. Here Mr. Lang gives instances in which one group of persons gives a name to another, a subject already dealt with in Social 07'igins. He shows that in England, France, and other parts of the world, villagers are known by nicknames, such as Cows, Lizards, Pigeons, Frogs, Dogs, Starlings, Oysters, Crabs, Seals, Cod. Names of ancient Hebrew villages, as recorded in the Book of Judges, were Lions, Jackals, Hornets, Stags, Gazelles, Scorpions, and so forth. Others, again, are called Eaters of this, or Not-Eaters of that, or they are named by the word they use for Yes or No : you will probably