Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/380

324 that our guilds took their name.” Dr. Lujo Brentano, in his Essay on the History and Development of Gilds, claims that the first gilds were formed on the basis of the family, and that they were sacrificial unions, from which later on the religious gilds were developed for association in prayer and good works. Mr. Toulmin Smith denies the origin in pagan sacrificial feasts; but on the antiquity of English gilds he is emphatic. He says: “English Gilds, as a system of widespread practical institutions, are older than any kings of England. They are told of in the books that contain the oldest relics of English laws. The old laws of King Alfred, of King Ina, of King Athelstan, of King Henry I, reproduce still older laws in which the universal existence of Gilds is treated as a matter of well-known fact, and in which it is taken to be a matter of course that everyone belonged to some Gild.” An origin that looks back from the time of Alfred is practically speaking Teutonic or Scandinavian; and here we have a channel from which the traditions of sacrificial rites flowed with less interruption than where the folk were more immediately under priestly influence. It is true that the religious character of the gilds changed from pagan to Christian, and as Christian became ultimately associated with the miracle-plays; but the point is the independence belonging to an aggregation of individuals, organised according to tradition, as an agency for maintaining tradition. In his interesting little book on Stratford-on-Avon, Mr. Lee has the following passage, which describes these institutions when they had become clearly English as distinct from Teutonic:—

“The early English guilds must not be confounded with the modern survival in the City of London. The guilds owed their origin to popular religious observances, and developed into institutions of local self-help. They were societies at once religious and friendly, ‘collected for the love of God and our soul’s need’. Members of both sexes—and the women were almost as numerous as the men—were admitted on payment of a small annual