Page:Primitive Culture Vol 1.djvu/62

44 Non hic pampineis amicitur vitibus ulmus: Nulla premunt ramos pondere poma suo. Tristia deformes pariunt absinthia campi, Terraque de fructu quam sit amara docet.'

Cases of exceptionally low civilization in Europe may perhaps be sometimes accounted for by degeneration of this kind. But they seem more often the relics of ancient unchanged barbarism. The evidence from wild parts of Ireland two or three centuries ago is interesting from this point of view. Acts of Parliament were passed against the inveterate habits of fastening ploughs to the horses' tails, and of burning oats from the straw to save the trouble of threshing. In the 18th century Ireland could still be thus described in satire: —

'The Western isle renowned for bogs, For tories and for great wolf-dogs, For drawing hobbies by the tails, And threshing corn with fiery flails.'

Fynes Moryson's description of the wild or 'meere' Irish about 1600, is amazing. The very lords of them, he says, dwelt in poor clay houses, or cabins of boughs covered with turf. In many parts men as well as women had in very winter time but a linen rag about the loins and a woollen mantle on their bodies, so that it would turn a man's stomach to see an old woman in the morning before breakfast. He notices their habit of burning oats from the straw, and making cakes thereof. They had no tables, but set their meat on a bundle of grass. They feasted on fallen horses, and seethed pieces of beef and pork with the unwashed entrails of beasts in a hollow tree, lapped in a raw cow's hide, and so set over the fire, and they drank milk warmed with a stone first cast into the fire. Another

1 Ovid. Ex Ponto, iii. 8; see Grote, 'History of Greece,' vol. xii. p. 641.

2 W. C. Taylor, 'Nat. Hist, of Society,' vol. i. p. 202.