Part 18 (1/2)
It will be necessary, therefore, to deal with the two princ.i.p.al signs of alleged Arunta progress, male descent and the exogamous cla.s.ses. I see no evidence whatever of male descent; male ascendancy, a very different thing, appears, but there cannot strictly be male descent where fatherhood is unrecognised. And here I would interpose the remark that the use of the term descent, male descent and female descent, in these studies is far too indiscriminate.[381] Descent means succession by blood kins.h.i.+p by acknowledged sons or daughters, and this is exactly what does not always occur. Sons.h.i.+p and daughters.h.i.+p in our sense of the term are not always known to savagery. They were not known to the Arunta males, for fatherhood was not recognised by them and motherhood was not definitely used in the social sense. All that the Arunta can be said to have developed is a mother-right society with male ascendancy in the group.[382] Group sons succeeded to group fathers, but individual descent from father to son there is not.
There remain the exogamous cla.s.ses. In the first place, it is necessary to get rid of a difficulty raised by Mr. Lang. ”In no tribe with female descent can a district have its local totem as among the Arunta.... This can only occur under male reckoning of descent.”[383]
But surely so acute an observer as Mr. Lang would see that with female descent right through, as it exists among the Khasia and Kocch people of a.s.sam, local totem centres are just as possible as with male descent. Mr. Lang is conscious of some discrepancy here, for a little later on he repeats the statement that local totem centres ”can only occur and exist under male reckoning of descent,” but adds the significant qualification ”in cases where the husbands do not go to the wives' region of abode.”[384] This is the whole point. Where husbands do go to the wives' region of abode, as they do among the Khasis and the Kocch, female descent would allow of the formation of local totem centres. This is not far from the position of the Arunta.
They are mother-right societies. The mother secures the totem name.
The father, _de facto_, is not father according to the ideas of the Arunta people, is at best only one of a group of possible fathers according to the practices of the Arunta people. Therefore, the local totem centre is formed out of a system which may be called a mother-right system for the purpose of scientific description, but which is not even a mother-right system to the natives, because motherhood is not the foundation of the local group.
Secondly, we have the important fact, which Mr. Lang has duly noted, though he does not apparently see its significance in the argument as to origins, that the cla.s.s system ”arose in a given centre and was propagated by emigrants and was borrowed by distant tribes.”[385]
Messrs. Spencer and Gillen distinctly affirm that the ”division into eight has been adopted (or rather the names for the four new divisions have been) in recent times by the Arunta tribe from the Ilpirra tribe which adjoins the former on the north, and the use of them is at the present time spreading southwards.”[386] This view is supported by the widespread organisation of eaglehawk and crow, and by the general h.o.m.ogeneity of Australian social forms. It is clear, therefore, that room is made for the external organisation of the cla.s.s system and the consequent production of the dual characteristics of the Arunta--the joint product of the fossilisation of mother-right society at the end of the migration movement, and the superimposing upon this fossilisation, with its tendency towards the cla.s.s system, of the fully organised cla.s.s system. The two systems are not now fully welded in the Arunta group. Whatever view is taken of these, whether they be considered advanced or primal, the undoubted dualism has to be accounted for, and the best way of accounting for this dualism is, I submit, that of differential evolution. Further study of Messrs.
Spencer and Gillen's work, together with the criticisms of various scholars, Mr. Lang, Mr. Hartland, Mr. Frazer, Mr. Thomas, and others, convinces me that the extreme artificiality of the cla.s.s system is due partly to a want of understanding of the entire facts, and partly to the _ad hoc_ adoption by the natives themselves of new plans to meet difficulties which must arise out of a too close adhesion to their rules. Mr. Lang has allowed me to see a ma.n.u.script note of his, in which he points out that the inevitable result of the one totem to the one totem rule of marital relations.h.i.+p,--that is, totem A always intermarrying with totem B, males and females from both totems, and with no others,--is the consanguineous relations.h.i.+p of all the members of the two totems. The rule for non-consanguineous marriage has therefore broken down, and when it breaks down the Australian introduces a new rule which satisfies immediate necessities. When this in turn breaks down a further new rule is made, and this is the way I think the differing rules resulted. They represent, therefore, not varying degrees of culture progress, but only varying degrees of artificial social changes, and they spring from the oldest conditions of all where there is no cla.s.s system at all.[387] Arunta society is not a ”sport” under this view, but a product--a product to be accounted for and explained by anthropological rules, derived not only from Australian society but from the general facts of human society which have remained for observation by the science of to-day. The parallel between Semang and Arunta, therefore, helps us in two ways.
It enables us to go back to Semang totemism as an example of primitive kinless society, and forward to Arunta totemism as an example of early development therefrom. We have, in point of fact, discovered the datum line of totemism. Upon this may be constructed the various examples according to their degrees of development, and we may thus see in detail the commencing elements of totemism as well as the means by which we may proceed from the commencing elements to the more advanced elements, and finally to the last stages of totemic society where blood kins.h.i.+p is fully recognised and used, where, in fact, totemic tribes as distinct from totemic peoples take their place in the world's history.
IV
I do not propose in this chapter to proceed further with this inquiry.
It will not advance my object, nor is it absolutely necessary.
Totemism in the full has been described adequately by Mr. Frazer in his valuable abstract of the evidence supplied from all parts of the world, and there is not much in dispute among the authorities when once the stage of origin is pa.s.sed. There is danger, however, at the other extreme, namely, the attempt to discover totemism in impossible places in civilisation. Mr. Morgan has shown us totemic society in its highest form of development, untouched by other influences of sufficient consequence to divert its natural evolution. This, I think, is the merit of Mr. Morgan's great work, and not his attempt, his futile attempt as I think, to apply the principles of totemic society to the elucidation of societies that have long pa.s.sed the stage of totemism. In particular, the great European civilisations are not totemic, nor are they to be seen pa.s.sing from totemism. It is true that Mr. Lang, Mr. Grant Allen, and others have attempted to trace in certain features of Greek ritual and belief, and in certain tribal formations discoverable in Anglo-Saxon Britain, the relics of a living totemism in the civilised races of Europe;[388] but I do not believe either of these scholars would have endorsed his early conclusions in later studies. Mr. Grant Allen did not, so far as I know, repeat this theory after its first publication, and Mr. Lang has given many signs of being willing to withdraw it. The fact is, there is no necessity to think of Greek or English totem society because in Greece and England there are traces of totem beliefs. We may disengage them from their national position and put them back to the position they occupied before the coming of Greek or Englishman into the countries they have made their own.
In that position there may well have been totemic peoples in Britain of the type we have been considering from Australia. I have already indicated that totemic survivals in folklore have been the subject of a special study of my own which still in the main stands good, and for which I have collected very many additional ill.u.s.trations and proofs.
I discovered that folklore contained some remarkably perfect examples of totemic belief and custom, and also a considerable array of scattered belief and custom connected with animals and plants which, uncla.s.sified, seemed to lead to no definite stage of culture history, yet when cla.s.sified, undoubtedly led to totemism. The result was somewhat remarkable. At many points there are direct parallels to savage totemism, and the whole a.s.sociated group of customs received adequate explanation only on the theory that it represented the detritus of a once existing totemic system of belief.
The present study enables me to take the parallel to primitive totemism much closer. One of the perfect examples was of a local character. This was found in Ossory. Giraldus Cambrensis tells an extraordinary legend to the following effect: ”A priest benighted in a wood on the borders of Meath was confronted by a wolf, who after some preliminary explanations gave this account of himself: There are two of us, a man and a woman, natives of Ossory, who through the curse of one Natalis, saint and abbot, are compelled every seven years to put off the human form and depart from the dwellings of men. Quitting entirely the human form, we a.s.sume that of wolves. At the end of the seven years, if they chance to survive, two others being subst.i.tuted in their places, they return to their country and their former shape.”[389] Here is a saintly legend introduced to explain the current tradition of the men of Ossory, that they periodically turned into wolves. Fynes Moryson, in 1603, ridiculed the beliefs of ”some Irish who will be believed as men of credit,” that men in Ossory were ”yearly turned into wolves.”[390] But an ancient Irish MS. puts the matter much more clearly in the statement that the ”descendants of the wolf are in Ossory,”[391] while the evidence of Spenser and Camden explains the popular beliefs upon even more exact lines. Spenser says ”that some of the Irish doe use to make the wolf their gossip;”[392]
and Camden adds that they term them ”Chari Christi, praying for them and wis.h.i.+ng them well, and having contracted this intimacy, professed to have no fear from their four-footed allies.” Fynes Moryson expressly mentions the popular dislike to killing wolves, and they were not extirpated until the eighteenth century.[393] Aubrey adds that ”in Ireland they value the fang-tooth of an wolfe, which they set in silver and gold as we doe ye Coralls;”[394] and Camden notes the similar use of a bit of wolf's skin.[395]
In the local superst.i.tions of Ossory, therefore, we have several of the cardinal features of savage totemism, the descent from the totem-animal, the ascription to the totem of a sacred character, the belief in its protection, and a taboo against killing it. I will venture to suggest, however, that to these important features there is to be added a parallel in survival to the Semang and Arunta features where the local circ.u.mstances of birth are the determining forces which supply the totem name, for the relations.h.i.+p of ”gossip,”
”G.o.d-sib,” is clearly of the same character as that of the soul-tree of the Semang and the alcheringa of the Australian.[396] The condition of survival has altered the detail of the parallel, but the parallel is on the same plane.
The wolf as gossip to the men of Ossory leads us on to inquire whether any other animal had such close connections with human beings. In Erris, a part of Connaught, ”the people consider that foxes perfectly understand human language, that they can be propitiated by kindness, and even moved by flattery. They not only make mittens for Reynard's feet to keep him warm in winter, and deposit these articles carefully near their holes, but they make them sponsors for their children, supposing that under the close and long-established relations.h.i.+p of Gossipred they will be induced to befriend them.”[397] Thus it appears that the selfsame conception which the men of Ossory had in the thirteenth century for the wolf, the men of Erris had for the fox in the nineteenth century. No explanation from the dry details of the natural history of these animals is sufficient to account for this curious parallel, and we must turn to ancient beliefs for the explanation.
The general att.i.tude of the men of Erris towards the fox is confirmed as an attribute of totemism when we come to examine a special local form of it. This we can do by turning to Galway. The Claddagh fishermen in Galway would not go out to fish if they saw a fox: their rivals of a neighbouring village, not believing in the fox, do all they can to introduce a fox into the Claddagh village.[398] These people are peculiar in many respects, and are distinctively clannish. They retain their old clan-dress--blue cloaks and red petticoats--which distinguishes them from the rest of the county of Galway, and it may be conjectured that the present-day custom of naming from the names of fish--thus, Jack the hake, Bill the cod, Joe the eel, Pat the trout, Mat the turbot, etc.[399]--may be a remnant of the mental att.i.tude of the folk towards that belief in kins.h.i.+p between men and animals which is at the basis of totemism. But, returning to the fox, we have in the belief that meeting this animal would prevent them from going out to fish, a parallel to the prohibition against looking at the totem which is to be found among savage people, and we have in the neighbours'
disbelief in the fox and a corresponding belief in the hare,[400] that local distribution of different totems which is also found in savagery.
But all these particulars about the relations.h.i.+p of the fox to the Claddagh fishermen receive unexpected light when we inquire into the biography of their local saint, named MacDara. This saint is the patron saint of the fishermen who, when pa.s.sing MacDara's island, always dip their sails thrice to avoid being s.h.i.+pwrecked. But then, in the folk-belief, we have this remarkable fact, that MacDara's real name was Sinach, a fox[401]--an instance, it would seem, of a totem cult being transferred to a Christian saint. Thus, then, in the superst.i.tions of these Claddagh fisherfolk we can trace the elements of totemism, the root of which is contained, first, in the nominal wors.h.i.+p of a Christian saint, and second, in the actual wors.h.i.+p of an animal, the fox.
These examples of local totemism may be followed by a remarkable example of tribal or kins.h.i.+p totemism. It was noted by Mr. G. H.
Kinahan in his researches for Irish folklore, and is mentioned quite incidentally among other items, the collector himself not fully perceiving the importance of his ”find.” This really enhances the value of the evidence, because it destroys any possibility of an objection to its validity--a really important matter, considering the remarkable character of this survival of totem-stocks in Western Europe. The exact words of Mr. Kinahan are as follows:--
”In very ancient times some of the clan Coneely, one of the early septs of the county, were changed by 'art magick' into seals; since then no Coneely can kill a seal without afterwards having bad luck.
Seals are called Coneelys, and on this account many of the name changed it to Connolly.”[402] The same local tradition is mentioned by Hardiman in one of his notes to O'Flaherty's _Description of West or H-iar Connaught_,[403] but the note is equally significant of genuineness from the fact that the tradition is styled ”a ridiculous story.” It strengthens Mr. Kinahan's note in the following pa.s.sage: ”In some places the story has its believers, who would no more kill a seal, or eat of a slaughtered one, than they would of a human Coneely.”
The clan Coneely is mentioned both by Mr. Kinahan and by Mr. Hardiman as one of the oldest Irish septs; and that it is widely spread, and not congregated into one locality, is to be inferred from the description of the tradition as prevalent in Connaught, especially from Mr. Hardiman's words, describing that ”in some places” the story has its believers now; and hence we may conclude that wherever the clan Coneely are situated there would exist this totem belief.
The full significance of these facts may best be tested by reference to the conditions laid down by Dr. Robertson Smith for the discovery of the survivals of totemism among the Semitic races. These conditions are as follows:--
”'(1) The existence of stocks named after plants and animals'--such stocks, it is necessary to add, being scattered through many local tribes; (2) the prevalence of the conception that the members of the stock are of the blood of the eponym animal, or are sprung from a plant of the species chosen as totem; (3) the ascription to the totem of a sacred character which may result in its being regarded as the G.o.d of the stock, but at any rate makes it be regarded with veneration, so that, for example, a totem animal is not used as ordinary food. If we can find all these things together in the same tribe, the proof of totemism is complete; but even when this cannot be done, the proof may be morally complete if all the three marks of totemism are found well developed within the same race. In many cases, however, we can hardly expect to find all the marks of totemism in its primitive form; the totem, for example, may have become first an animal G.o.d, and then an anthropomorphic G.o.d, with animal attributes or a.s.sociations merely.”[404]