Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/182

 1 66 The Origiji of Exogamy and Toteniisni.

prevalence in liuman nature, among peasants and bar- barians, of giving animal group sobriquets. " In Cornwall," writes an informant (Miss Alleyne), "it seems as if the inhabitants do not care to talk about these things for some reason or another," and "the names are believed to be very- ancient." When once attention is drawn to this curious subject, probably more examples will be discovered.

I thus demonstrated (and I know no earlier statement of the fact) the existence in the classes least modified by education of the tendency to give such animal group sobriquets. The same principle even now makes personal names derived from animals most common among indi- viduals in savage countries, the animal name usually stand- ing, not alone, but qualified, as Wolf the Unwashed, in the Saga ; Sitting Bull, and so on. As we cannot find a race just becoming totemic, we cannot, of cowxs^, prove that their group animal-names were given thus from without, but the process is elsewhere undeniably a vera causa, and does operate as we show, while it certainly operates in conferring names on clans just emerging from totemism.

As to this suggestion about the sources of the animal names borne by the groups. Dr. Dur.kheim remarks that it is •' conjectural." ^^ Emphatically it is, like the Doctor's own theories, nor can any theory on this matter be other than guess-work. But we do not escape from the difficulty by merely saying that the groups "adopted" animal names for themselves ; for that also is a mere conjecture. Perhaps they did, but why? Is it not clear that, given a number of adjacent groups, each one group has far more need of names for its neighbours than of a name for 'itself.' " We " are "we," "The Men"; all the rest of mankind are "wild blacks," " barbarians," " outsiders." But there are a score of sets of outsiders, and "we," "The Men," need names for each and every one of them. "We" are "The Men," but the nineteen other groups are also "The Men," — in their

^^ Folh-l.ore, vol. xiv., p. 423.