Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/69

 Rh the Virgin drank some milk; and the other agricultural myths collected in the Suffolk volume. To make this comparison good special inquiry must be made in Gloucestershire, and I need scarcely point out how significant such a differentiation in county folk-lore will prove for the prosecution of our inquiries.

Another branch of folk-lore research treats of the relationship of primitive custom and belief to the higher religions of Asia and Europe. That Buddhism, Mahommedanism, and Christianity, have each incorporated into their ritual—ay, and into their beliefs—something from the older aboriginal or native ritual and beliefs of the people whom they have converted, is, of course, generally admitted. The difficulty is to trace out how much is incorporated. In India the quest is not difficult, the scarcely veiled lower cults being readily detected by the practised inquirer. In the Western world the quest is not so easy—indeed, is not easy at all—unless, indeed, we except the remarkable evidence vouched for by Mr. Leland from Italy. We may, by going into the later conquests of Christianity find out how it has fared when combating the beliefs of modern savages, and work back by analogy to the facts presented in European countries. There we should find some startling facts. For instance, every year in September, at Loja in South America, there is a great fair. As a prologue to it there is a religious procession in honour of a female saint, specially created for the occasion. On the 22nd August, "Our Lady" enters the town, when there is great excitement. The streets are strewed with flowers, and a body of Indians, headed by the Alcalde, precede the party. Many of them wear alligator-heads as masks, and all perform hideous grimaces to their own music. This is a part of the old superstitions which the politic Spaniards, in order to reconcile the natives, have allowed to be mixed up with the rites of the Roman Catholic religion.