Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 26, 1915.djvu/127

 Psychology and Ethnology. 1 1 7

incorporated with the culture of the community; they do not become an inheritance of the race ; they are for ever stereotyped within the covers of a book, ours to read and enjoy, but not ours to appropriate, transform, and hand down so changed to succeeding generations. The plots of a Thackeray or a Hardy are not like the plot of Little Red Riding Hood or Cinderella, which are still producing pantomimes every year. You can write a history of the Beauty and the Beast, but not of Pickwick Papers.

There are features of the modern novel which are of ethnological interest, such as the treatment of the characters, the moral tone of the plots and their general structure, the neglect or cultivation of style ; and this we recognize by describing these peculiarities as Georgian, or Early or Mid Victorian. They are ethnological because they are what some might call the spirit of the times, others the average of all the trends of thought at that period.

It may happen that a knowledge of the actual motives that led up to a political change may mislead the field worker and throw him off the true scent.

In the island of Lakemba, Fiji, the nobility is all descended from Niumataiwalu. It is divided into four clans, which I will call A, B, C, and D. At first we are inclined to connect this fourfold division with the sacred character of the number four in Fiji. But, on enquiring into the past history and the formation of those clans, we find that at one time there were only three, A and C forming one single clan. It was found, however, that the people of A were very slack in preparing for feasts and relied on their cousins of C, who took more interest in public functions, to do all the work and keep up the clan's good name. So it was decided to split off A, so as to throw them on to their own resources and compel them to bestir themselves if they would not be put to shame by making a poor show at festivals. Therefore, we conclude, the four- fold division is a pure accident. Fortunately, however, we