Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/62

 54 seclusion and proud isolation, and have thereby generated a code of social law quite different from their surrounding neighbours. It is difficult, says Mr. Boyle, in describing these singular castes, to form any other theory of the foundation of such a colony than that the proud patriarch of an illustrious family, which from high position and influence had fallen on evil days and had been exiled from its ancestral home, must have established himself and his kinsmen in a new settlement and shut them in by these restrictions and these ramparts from contact with the outer world.

The distinction which the tribal organisation seems to give to different race-elements in a population living together in one country, is indicated by these facts very clearly.

I have, however, made these quotations and references for another purpose than that of suggesting the analogy between the facts of the Aryan tribal settlement in India and the Aryan tribal settlements in Britain. Institutions, as I have before pointed out, are so intimately connected with beliefs and ritual that the true interpretation of the latter very often depends upon the true understanding of the former. Indeed, it may be put somewhat stronger than this, if we accept the testimony of Lumholtz, a very careful inquirer, who lived among the Australian aborigines. He says the superstitious fear of witchcraft causes and maintains hatred between the tribes, and is the chief reason why the Australian blacks continue to live in small communities, and are unable to rise to a higher plane of social development.

If we note the results of tribal society in India, pointed out by Sir Alfred Lyall, we are struck by the fact that little, if any, attention has been drawn to the broken clans or outcasts in reference to the evolution of human society and religious beliefs. I myself have to some