Page:Primitive Culture Vol 1.djvu/128

110 it is Unk-tahe the water-monster that drowns his victims in flood or rapid; in New Zealand huge supernatural reptile-monsters, called Taniwha, live in river-bends, and those who are drowned are said to be pulled under by them; the Siamese fears the Pnük or water-spirit that seizes bathers and drags them under to his dwelling; in Slavonic lands it is Topielec (the ducker) by whom men are always drowned; when some one is drowned in Germany, people recollect the religion of their ancestors, and say, 'The river-spirit claims his yearly sacrifice,' or, more simply, 'The nix has taken him:' —

'Ich glaube, die Wellen verschlingen, Am Ende Fischer und Kahn; Und das hat mit ihrem Singen Die Lorelei gethan.'

From this point of view it is obvious that to save a sinking man is to snatch a victim from the very clutches of the water-spirit, a rash defiance of deity which would hardly pass unavenged. In the civilized world the rude old theological conception of drowning has long been superseded by physical explanation; and the prejudice against rescue from such a death may have now almost or altogether disappeared. But archaic ideas, drifted on into modern folk-lore and poetry, still bring to our view an apparent connexion between the primitive doctrine and the surviving custom.

As the social development of the world goes on, the weightiest thoughts and actions may dwindle to mere survival. Original meaning dies out gradually, each generation leaves fewer and fewer to bear it in mind, till it falls out of popular memory, and in after-days ethnography has to attempt, more or less successfully, to restore it by piecing