Page:Journal of American Folklore vol. 12.djvu/19

Rh quite considerable. If we consider separately the American and the Asiatic instances, we find one important difference: whereas in the American symbolism, out of twenty-one cases, ten have the group White, Yellow, Red, Black or Blue; in the Asiatic the ten cases collected are quite evenly distributed among the various groups, and we cannot say that there is any group which is markedly preponderant.

But what has led to the choice of the especial colors used by the various peoples as symbols of the four directions? The factors seem to be four: the sun, in its rising and setting; the geographical position of the people in question; the climate of the region where they lived; and their religious ideas. Let us consider these in their order.

The colors of the East and West are the ones, as would naturally be supposed, in which the Sun plays the most conspicuous part. The colors likely to be associated with the Sun in its rising and setting are Red, Yellow, and White. Of these three colors, two are associated with East and West in some forty per cent. of all the cases under consideration; the proportion being considerably larger in Asia than in America. In many cases, however, both East and West are not represented by colors owing their origin to the Sun; and when this is the case, it is the East which, far more than the West, is associated with one of the three colors mentioned above. Considering the East and West separately, we find that among the American systems East is a Sunrise color in nearly ninety per cent, of the instances, among the Asiatic systems in about fifty per cent., and, taking the two systems together, East is still a Sunrise color in something more than three fourths of the total number of cases. West is designated by a Sunset color in something over one half of all the instances; and, considering Asia and America separately, we find the former now as overwhelmingly in excess of the American as the American was before over the Asiatic; the reason for this will become apparent later. The colors of East and West, then, are in the great majority of cases connected with the colors of sunrise and sunset, and both of them are so connected very frequently. But what is the determining factor in those instances where in America the West, and in Asia the East, is not represented by Red, Yellow, or White? This leads to the second factor,—geographic position.

All three other colors are given for West in America,—Black, Blue, and Green; and it seems possible that these can all, or nearly all, be explained by a single fact. In America, almost the only exceptions to the prevailing Sun-colors for East and West are in the colors ascribed to the West: in Asia, on the other hand, the excep-