Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/26

18 the history of the heriot assists us at this point. As it appears in manorial institutions the heriot is, as you would know, the surrender by a villein-tenant of his best beast ta the lord. Its later history of course leads us on to the evolution of rent; and it would seem as if we had nothing here but a phase of economical institutions. But there is some probability, though I do not give it as my final opinion, that its earlier history might be traced back to the ancient custom of the cow following the corpse of the deceased to the grave, where it was sacrificed to his manes; and here we have, not an economical institution, but a religious ritual.

I do not give this as a "showy" example of the connection between belief and institutions, but because it is illustrative, in an unusual degree, of my contention that to know properly the beliefs of a people we must know about their institutions as well. Mere floating beliefs incidental to the individual could not effect a lasting place in man's history; and in studying beliefs we must be careful to discriminate between what belongs to the merely floating superstitions of the hour, liable to be displaced by other superstitions if the influences change, and what belongs, or has belonged, to permanent beliefs identified with the tribe, clan, or people—institutions, in fact.

I will illustrate this principle in the study of beliefs by an example taken from totemism. The origin of totemism has yet to be traced, and I make the suggestion that we must begin by examining the beliefs of the non-totem races. When we do so, we come upon such examples as the people of Ulawa, one of the Solomon Islands, who will not eat the banana because a man of much influence not long ago forbade them doing so after his death, saying that the banana would represent him—that he would be in the banana. Similarly, at Saa, in Malanta, a man, before his death, will say that, after he dies, he will be a shark, and the people will accordingly believe him to be thus represented, and his children will reverence the shark. In the