Note 44 — Chapter X · Difficulties of the Folklorist

Thus far of the unwillingness of the fairies to tell their names: I must now come to the question, why that was so. Here the anthropologist or the student of comparative folklore comes to our aid; for it is an important part of his business to compare the superstitions of one people with those of another; and in the case of superstitions which have lost their meaning among us, for instance, he searches for a parallel among other nations, where that parallel forms part of living institutions. In this way he hopes to discover the key to his difficulties. In the present case he finds savages who habitually look at the name as part and parcel of the person44. These savages further believe that any part of the person, such as a hair off one’s head or the parings of one’s nails, if they chanced to be found by an enemy, would give that enemy magical power over their lives, and enable him to injure them. Hence the savage tendency to conceal one’s name. I have here, as the reader will perceive, crowded together several important steps in the savage logic; so I must try to illustrate them, somewhat more in detail, by reference to some of the survivals of them after the savage has long been civilized. To return to Wales, and to illustrate the belief that possession of a part of one’s person, or of anything closely identified with one’s person, gives the possessor of it power over that person, I need only recall the Welsh notion, that if one wished to sell one’s self to the devil one had merely to give him a hair of one’s head or the tiniest drop of one’s blood, then one would be for ever his for a temporary consideration. Again, if you only had your hair cut, it must be carefully gathered and hidden away: by no means must it be burnt, as that might prove prejudicial to your health. Similarly, you should never throw feathers into the fire; for that was once held, as I infer, to bring about death among one’s poultry: and an old relative of mine, Modryb Mari, ‘Aunt Mary,’ set her face against my taste for toasted cheese. She used to tell me that if I toasted my cheese, my sheep would waste away and die: strictly speaking, I fancy this originally meant only the sheep from whose milk the cheese had been made. But I was not well versed enough in the doctrines of sympathetic magic to reply, that it did not apply to our cheese, which was not made from sheep’s milk. So her warning used to frighten me and check my fondness for toasted cheese, a fondness which I had doubtless quite innocently inherited, as anybody will see who will glance at one of the Hundred Mery Talys, printed by John Rastell in the sixteenth century, as follows:—‘I fynde wrytten amonge olde gestes, howe God mayde Saynt Peter porter of heuen, and that God of hys goodnes, sone after his passyon, suffered many men to come to the kyngdome of Heuen with small deseruynge; at whyche tyme there was in heuen a great companye of Welchemen, whyche with their crakynge and babelynge troubled all the other. Wherfore God sayde to Saynte Peter that he was wery of them, and that he wolde fayne haue them out of heuen. To whome Saynte Peter sayd: Good Lorde, I warrente you, that shall be done. Wherfore Saynt Peter wente out of heuen gates and cryed wyth a loud voyce Cause bobe45, that is as moche to saye as rosted chese, whiche thynge the Welchemen herynge, ranne out of Heuen a great pace. And when Saynt Peter sawe them all out, he sodenly wente into Heuen, and locked the dore, and so sparred all the Welchemen out. By this ye may se, that it is no wysdome for a man to loue or to set his mynde to moche upon any delycate or worldely pleasure, wherby he shall lose the celestyall and eternall ioye.’