Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/462

 ON THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF THE HIS- TORICAL TRADITIONS OF THE BAGANDA AND BUSHONGO.

BY E. SIDNEY HARTLAXD.

Half a century ago or less the worthlessness of oral tradition as historical evidence was accepted as an axiom that needed no demonstration. A long line of sceptical critics, including among them the illustrious name of Sir Isaac Newton, had dissolved the credulity of educated men. Niebuhr in Germany and Sir George Cornewall Lewis in England had applied their principles to the works of the Roman historians ; and both in Germany and England the dissection of the narrative books of the Hebrews as a traditional record had made considerable progress, notwithstanding the resonant thunders of old- fashioned orthodoxy. Of late years, however, in this as in many other matters there has been a reaction. With hardly any formal challenge of critical principles the atti- tude at least of ethnological enquirers has been somewhat changed. In many directions there has been a tendency to accept traditions not merely as giving a general indica- tion of the direction in which the solution of problems may be sought, but as accurate in detail. And an appeal to tradition has been held to settle complicated questions of the origin of a people, the pedigree of its chiefs and rulers, its migrations, the beginnings of its institutions and the vicissitudes of its history. When one student accepts genealogies carried by oral transmission through many