Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/63

 Rh small extent drawn attention to their possible influence in keeping alive older phases of savage beliefs and customs amidst the growing influences of a higher faith—of Indian fetish worship by the side of Buddhism, of European superstitions of a cruel and revolting kind by the side of Christianity. But I confess I had no testimony, though testimony lay ready to my hand. For instance, in Greenland, members of the community who have fallen out with their fellows become outcasts (kivihit, sing, kivitot) and flee to the mountains or into the interior. "There is great resemblance between these kivitut and the outliers so common in Icelandic popular legends. The great part which these outliers play in the popular fantasy, and the mystic fear with which they are regarded, has caused them from a very early period to be in great measure confounded in common belief with trolls, huldre-folk, and other legendary creatures in whose supernatural faculties they partake. Like the kivitot, they seek the abodes of men in order to pick up something to eat; they steal sheep, food, and clothes from the people of the settlements. The most characteristic feature of both the Greenland and the Iceland legends is that men by being cut off from society obtain supernatural power. The coincidence becomes still more striking when we observe that both in Greenland and in Iceland these legends form an essential part of living popular tradition and belief" If this be compared with what is recorded of the condition of things in Guernsey not long since, its significance can hardly be missed. There was a small hamlet exclusively inhabited by the descendants of a family which from time immemorial has been kept entirely distinct from the surrounding peasantry, and was regarded by them as a race of hereditary witches and wizards, and supposed to have been the first settlers in the island.

This is an important point, and one of great use both to folk-lorists and anthropologists, but the latter will not be