Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/32

24 Kathcrinc Ross, Lady Fowlis, was tried for witchcraft in Scotland, and the articles of accusation set forth that on All Hallowmas in 1577 she, with others, made "twa pictouris of clay, the ane maid for the distructiounc and consumptioune of the young Laird of Fowlis and the vthir for the young Ladie Balnagovvne … quhilkis twa pictouris being sett on the north syd of the chalmer, the said Loskie Loncart tuik twa elf arrow heides and delyuerit ane to ye, Katherene, and the vther the said Cristian Rois Malcumsone held in her awin hand; and thow schott twa schottis with the said arrow heid att the said Lady Bulnagowne and Loskie Loncart schott thrie schottis at the said young Laird of Fowlis." Putting this extraordinary narrative by the side of what we know already about witchcraft—and I cannot now go further with details—is it not clear that we are taken back to the culture of the stone age for the first step in our analysis?

Well, I fear to weary you with too much dry analysis, but the conclusions to be drawn from these examples—and they are but specimens of many others—appear to me clear enough. They indicate, at the very least, pre-Christian origins in folk-lore. The unchristened arm of the Elizabethan Irishman; the old sacrificial rites of the Victorian Devonshire men; the stone-hammered clavie and the stone-arrowed Scottish witch, the one Victorian, the other Elizabethan: each and all represent the oldest untouched detail of early life in the forms which have survived in folk-lore, and it is these untouched oldest fragments, not their modern additions or developments, which must be accentuated by the student in his analysis of custom and belief—they clearly must be the starting-point of any explanation which may be given of the customs to which they belong. To the anthropological school they are the starting-point of research into origins which are thus shown to be primitive. To the literary school they must also be the starting-point of research, because their presence must be explained in some way or other.