Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/239

Rh admitted in Roscher's Lexikon to be the source of some of the Dionysos myths. In the next place, although we may admit that in a manual there is not room for illustrations from the rites and beliefs of non-classical peoples, and that Dr. Stengel has only to do with Greek ritual, as he pleads (p. 97) ; still, we must protest that it is impossible to construct a sound account of even Greek ritual without a previous scaffolding of non-Greek material. For instance, though the Greeks may have borrowed the notion of "sin" and "sin-offerings" from Semitic sources, no one who is aware how widespread, indeed universal, is the belief in the possibility of transferring sickness and other ills (from warts upwards) from the sufferer to animate or inanimate objects, will admit that the notion of the "scape-goat" was at any time foreign to the Greek mind. The absence of any reference to this mode of purification in Homer can scarcely be regarded as conclusive. And this brings us to a third grumble — on a question of method. Dr. Stengel begins by laying down the statement that, in the matter of myths and gods, foreign influence is only to be detected in post-Homeric times, and for several centuries after the Homeric age it was extremely small. This, taken as a statement of results, is, perhaps, somewhat too sweeping ; but regarded as the expression of a resolve to admit borrowing to have taken place only where and when intercourse between the people borrowing and the people lending can be demonstrated to have existed on satisfactory grounds, it is a laudable position to take up. It is the method of carrying out this praiseworthy resolve that is open to protest. Thus, Dr. Stengel is apparently satisfied that purification (and also human sacrifice) must have been borrowed by the Greeks from the East. Neither rite is mentioned in Homer. Intercourse between Greece and the East was constant and active in post-Homeric times. Therefore the rites were borrowed in historic times. The whole issue, then, turns on the question whether it is justifiable to assume that a rite did not