Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/20

12 This ancient ceremony in Britain, then, survived at St. Briavel's in legend, at Coventry in custom. Let us note in passing the intimate connection that is here afforded between legend and custom. At Coventry the ancient rites stamped themselves upon the memory of the people with such force that they converted, in course of time, the heathen goddess ceremony into a municipal and, consequently, secular ceremony. To account for the existence of the municipal ceremony a municipal legend was necessary, and thus the old heathen legend was converted into a municipal legend. In process of time, where the legend and the ceremony kept alive, accretion would take place in the incidents, either from some actual local occurrence or for the purpose of adding point to the original legend, whose real point had of course been lost. Add to this the fact that the ancient prohibition against the presence of men at the ceremony, which Mr. Hartland shows is part of the primitive ceremony, might certainly introduce such an idea as the Peeping Tom incident, quite natural in itself, and we should have the late introduction of Peeping Tom properly accounted for. This would leave the ride and its heathen purpose free from all intrusion of foreign or late elements—leave it, in point of fact, in its simple primitive form as the ride of a rain goddess or an earth goddess.

I should have liked to say something about two very valuable papers which have appeared in the Society's Journal during this last year—namely, Mr. Abercromby's "Magic Songs of the Finns" and Professor Haddon's "Tales of the Torres Straits People". At this time, when the Finns are being brought into such close contact with the prehistoric Aryan-speaking people, it is particularly fortunate that we have one scholar in the Society who will give us such important material as Mr. Abercromby has done. But I am anxious to pass on to some rather dry details, with which I think it necessary to trouble the Society to-night, and so do