Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/123

Rh If the Arician tree had once been a sanctuary tree, a refuge of fugitive slaves, in historic times only one fugitive could find refuge there at any given moment. Any other fugitive who broke a branch of the tree had to fight the man in possession. The bough-breaking may originally, as in Nigeria, have ensured protection, but, in historical times, as only one man could be protected, the breaking of the bough was a claim to protection, and a challenge to the actual holder.

I find it necessary to make some comments on Mr. Andrew Lang's "Notes in reply to Mr. Howitt and Mr. Jevons" (Folk-Lore, vol. xvii. p. 288). Mr. Lang expresses his sincere regret for having misunderstood and misrepresented me. He does this by quoting a passage from my work (Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 500), and explains how he misunderstood my meaning. I regret that Mr. Lang has not explained also that the passage he gives is only a fragment of his quotation at p. 197 of his Secret of the Totem, which he there terms "a passage from Mr. Howitt."

It is to the whole of that quotation, to the inferences which he draws therefrom, and the adverse argument based thereon, that I take exception.

The quotation, the "passage" in question, consists of four selected extracts from my summary of the evidence on which I based my theory of the Tribal All-Father. It is only a portion of these extracts which Mr. Lang now quotes, and, apparently, relies upon for his excuse. The four extracts Mr. Lang arranged as follows (Secret of the Totem, pp. 197-8). The first extract is taken from the thirteenth line of my summary, omitting the commencement of the sentence; the second extract is from the nineteenth line, but only takes part of the sentence; the third