Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 4 1886.djvu/223



APTAIN Temple makes the following remark in his Legends of the Panjab:—"The average villager one meets in the Panjab and Northern India is, at heart, neither a Muhammedan, nor a Hindu, nor a Sikh, nor of any other Religion as such is understood by its orthodox—or, to speak more correctly, authorised—exponents; but his Religion is a confused, unthinking worship of things held to be holy, whether men or places; in fact, Hagiolatry." A similar conclusion was the chief result of my study of Greek Folk-songs. These Folk-songs show that, notwithstanding the reign of Christianity, for nearly two thousand years. Christian ideas and sentiments have not only not substituted themselves for, but have had hardly any effect even in modifying Pagan ideas and sentiments among the Greek folk. Similar conclusions have been forced on Folk-lore students even in Scotland, the people of which, of all others perhaps, may be imagined to have been most profoundly affected by Christianity. Referring to a conversation we had last autumn on Paganism, Mr. MacBain, the Rector of Raining's School, Inverness, and a first-rate Gaelic scholar, thus writes:—"Proofs are accumulating on my hands to the effect that up till about 1780 the Highlands were Pagan, with a Pagan Christianity, or rather superstition"; and I might give many curious illustrations of the Paganism that still exists, or till very recently existed, in Scotland. My object, however, at present, is to point out the very important inference that must be drawn from these general conclusions as to the facts of Folk-life. It is this. Our histories of Religion hitherto,