ANDREW LANG (continued 5)

'In Upolu, one of the Samoan islands, a certain god, Vave, had his abode in an old tree, which served as an asylum for murderers and other offenders who had incurred the penalty of death.'

I gather from Mr. Turner's 'Nineteen Years in Polynesia' (p. 285) that the death penalty was that of the blood feud. In his 'Samoa,' Mr. Turner writes concerning trees which were sanctuaries:

'If that tree was reached by the criminal, he was safe, and the avenger of blood could pursue no farther, but wait investigation and trial. It is said that the king of a division of Upolu, called Atua, once lived at that spot. After he died the house fell into decay, but the tree was fixed on as representing the departed king, and out of respect for his memory it was made the substitute of a living and royal protector. It was called o le asi pulu tangata, 'the asi tree, the refuge of men.' This reminds me of what I once heard from a native of another island. He said that at one time they had been ten years without a king, and so anxious were they to have some protecting substitute that they fixed upon a large O'a tree (Bischoffia Javanica), and made it the representative of a king, and an asylum for the thief or the homicide when pursued by the injured in hot haste for vengeance.[40]

There seem to have been three sanctuary trees: one inhabited by a god, Vave; one respected in memory of a king; and one doing duty as a kind of figure-head, or representative of a king.

If my guess that the tree in the Arician grove was once a sanctuary, or asylum for fugitives, including fugitive slaves, is plausible, I cannot, of course, conjecture as to the reason of its protective sanctity. It may have been one of the three Samoan reasons (which none of us could have guessed correctly), or any other motive may have taken effect. A fugitive slave, of course, was not awaiting trial and chance of acquittal. By custom he would be restored to his master's tender mercies, or live on under the tree.

But an unlimited asylum of fugitive slaves was an inconvenient neighbour to Aricia. Hence (it is physically conceivable, but I lay no stress on it) the asylum was at last limited to one fugitive slave at a time. It was not like the forest in the Indian fable, populated by 'millions of hermits,' who cannot have been very solitary anchorites. Any fugitive slave who took sanctuary had to kill and dispossess the prior occupant. There was only sanctuary for one at a time. More would have been most inconvenient. In any case the one solitary duty of the ghastly priest (as far as we know) was to act as garde champêtre to one certain tree. Why this one tree, we do not and cannot know. I am averse to Sir Alfred Lyall's plan of suggesting singular solutions arising out of some possible historical accident in the veiled past, when the problem to be solved is a practice of wide diffusion. The causes, in such cases of wide diffusion, cannot be regarded as mere freaks or recurring accidents. But this affair of the tree and its inviolate branches is isolated, unless we regard the tree as a taboo or sanctuary tree, which it might be for many reasons, as in Samoa, perhaps because it was the residence of a tree-spirit. At all events, the priest's only known duty was to guard the tree.

Then, why had his would-be successor to break a bough before fighting? Obviously as a challenge, and also as a warning. The priest in office was to 'have a fair show;' some 'law' was to be given him. When he found a branch broken, any branch, he was in the position of the pirate captain on whom 'the black spot' was passed.[41] He was in the situation of the king of the Eyeos, to whom a present of parrots' eggs meant that it was 'time for him to go.'[42] If the bough was mistletoe, and if the fugitive slave, like the Druids in Pliny,[43] had to climb for it, then the ghastly priest 'had him at an avail.' It was any odds on the priest, who could 'tree' his man or cut him down as he descended. However, our authorities tell us about no bough in particular, still less about mistletoe. Let me add that, if the bough was mistletoe, the sacred tree would need to be changed every time (of which we hear nothing), for it is not a case of

Uno avulso non deficit alter

with mistletoe.

The bough was broken, then, as a taunt, a challenge, and a warning. 'You can't keep your old tree, make room for a better man!' That is the spirit of the business. The fugitive, utilised as a priest of the grove, was slain when the better man appeared, not that a new soul might keep the vegetation lively, but merely because the best man attainable was needed to guard the taboo tree.

The sacred and priestly character of a runaway fighting slave does not, to me, seem pronounced.[44] We know not that he ever sacrificed. Ladies who wished to be mothers visited the shrine, indeed,[45] as this Diana was a goddess like Lucina, presiding over birth. I do not deny that the priest might have worked miracles for them (like the Indian forest sages who do the miracle for childless rajahs). But his one known duty, guarding the tree, was inconsistent with much attention to this branch of his sacred calling. 'He prowled about with sword drawn, always on the look out.'[46] That is all!

We have not, in this theory, to invent a single fact, or introduce a single belief where we do not know that it existed. Sanctuaries or asyla did exist, we have given examples of sanctuary trees, and the tree was a sanctuary for just one runaway slave at a time: he could not run to burg, as in our old and more merciful law. If he wanted the billet of ghastly priest he had to fight for it:

Lads, you'll need to fight Before you drive ta peasties.

Before fighting he had to get through the priest's guard and break a branch of the tree which the priest protected, the act being a warning as well as a challenge. This hypothesis introduces no unknown and unproved facts, and colligates all the facts which are known. The title of 'King of the Grove' may mean no more than the title of 'Cock of the North;' or it may be a priestly title, not, even so, necessarily implying that the runaway slave embodied the ruling spirit of the vegetable department.

I have been favoured with objections to my guess. First, if I am right, where is the sanction for the custom at which I conjecture? Well, where is the sanction of the Samoan customs? They reposed (1) on the residence of a god in a tree, (2) on respect for a king who had lived near a tree, (3) on a legal fiction. The sanctuaries of the Arunta Ertnatulunga derive their sanction from hoards of churinga, sacred objects of which, till recently, we knew nothing.[47] Obviously I cannot say which of many conceivable and inconceivable primeval reasons gave a sanction to the tree-asylum of Aricia. Once instituted, custom did the rest. The tree was a sanctuary for one fugitive slave, and, next, for another who could kill him.

Secondly, my guess is thought to disregard Mr. Frazer's many other analogies from folklore. Which analogies? Where else do we find a priestly fugitive slave, who held his sacred office by the coir na glaive, the Eight of Sword? I am acquainted with no other example. As I have shown already, the kings who are killed (admitting the Arician fugitive to be a rex) are killed for a considerable variety of reasons, and are never shown to be killed that a sturdier vehicle may be provided for a vegetable deity; while the kings said to incarnate a deity are never said to be killed for religious reasons. If the reverse were the case, then the Arician fugitive, the ghastly priest, might take the benefit of the analogies. I hope that my bald prosaic theory, abjectly Philistine as it is, has the characteristics of a scientific hypothesis. But, like my guess as to the real reason for the death of the Sacæan victim, this attempt to explain the office of the ghastly priest is but a conjecture. The affair is so singular that it may have an isolated cause in some forgotten occurrence. I remember no other classical instance of a priest whose duty was to be always watching a single sacred tree, a thing requiring a vigilance of attention not compatible with much other priestly work: a post so unenviable that only a fugitive slave would be likely to care for the duties and perquisites. Naturally he would not know that he was 'an incarnation of the supreme Aryan god, whose life was in the mistletoe or golden bough.' And, as he did not know, he would not be 'proud of the title.'

XII

SOUTH AFRICAN RELIGION

The provisional hypothesis by which I try to explain the early stages of religion may be stated in the words of a critic, Mr. Hartland. 'Apparently it is claimed that the belief in a supreme being came, in some way only to be guessed at, first in order of evolution, and was subsequently obscured and overlaid by belief in ghosts and in a pantheon of lesser divinities.'[1] I was led to these conclusions, first, by observing the reports of belief in a relatively supreme being and maker among tribes who do not worship ancestral spirits (Australians and Andamanese), and, secondly, by remarking the otiose unworshipped supreme being, often credited with the charge of future rewards and punishments, among polytheistic and ancestor-worshipping people too numerous for detailed mention. The supreme being among these races, in some instances a mere shadow of a children's tale, I conjectured to be a vague survival of such a thing as the Andamanese Puluga, or the Australian Baiame.

Granting the validity of the evidence, the hypothesis appears to colligate the facts. There is a creative being (not a spirit, merely a being) before ghosts are worshipped. Where ghosts are worshipped, and the spiritual deities of polytheism have been developed, and are adored, there is still the unworshipped maker, in various degrees of repose and neglect. That the belief in him 'came in some way, only to be guessed at,' is true enough. But if I am to have an hypothesis like my neighbours, I have suggested that early man, looking for an origin of things, easily adopted the idea of a maker, usually an unborn man, who was before death, and still exists. Bound this being crystallised affection, fear, and sense of duty; he sanctions morality and early man's remarkable resistance to the cosmic tendency: his notion of unselfishness. That man should so early conceive a maker and father seems to me very probable; to my critics it is a difficulty. But one of Dr. Callaway's native informants remarks: 'When we asked "By what was the sun made?" they said "By Umvelinqangi." For we used to ask when we were little, thinking that the old men knew all things.'[2] What a savage child naturally asks about, his yet more savage ancestors may have pondered. No speculation seems more inevitable.

As soon as man was a reasoning being he must have wondered about origins; he has usually two answers: creation, complete or partial, and evolution. Like Topsy 'he 'specs things growed,' when he does not guess that things were made by somebody. As far as totemism is religious, it accepts the answer of evolution, men were evolved out of lower types, beasts and plants, their totems. But these are not always treated with religious reverence, as sometimes are such creative beings and fathers as Baiame. In many cases, as I have kept on saying, the savage creative being has a deputy, often a demiurge, who exercises authority. Where this is the case, and where ancestor-worship is the working religion, the deputy easily comes to be envisaged as the first man, unborn of human parents, maker of things, or of many things, and culture hero. Mr. Tylor says: 'In the mythology of Kamchatka the relation between the Creator and the first man is one not of identity, but of parentage.' It is clear that, in proportion to the exclusive prevalence of ancestor-worship as a working religion, the idea of the Creator might be worn away, and the first man might be identified with him. It would not follow that the idea of creation was totally lost. The first man might be credited with the feat of creation. Mr. Tylor observes that 'by these consistent manes-worshippers, the Zulus, the first man, Unkulunkulu, is identified with the Creator.'[3]

Mr. Tylor's statement, of course, involves the opinion that the idea of creation is present to the Zulu mind. Unkulunkulu made things, as Baiame, and Puluga, and other beings did. Like them he is no spirit, but a magnified non-natural man. Unlike them, he is subject to the competition of ancestral ghosts, the more recent the better, in receipt of prayer and sacrifice. Having no special house which claims him as ancestor, and being very remote, he is now believed by many Zulus to be dead. His name is a fable, like that of Atahocan, a thing to amuse or put off children with; they are told to call on Unkulunkulu when their parents want to send them out of the way.

All this is exactly what my theory would lead me to anticipate, if the Zulus had once possessed the idea of an unworshipped creative being, and had lost it under the competition of worshipped, near akin, and serviceable ghosts. Their ancestral character would be reflected on him. It is just as if the Australian Kurnai were to take to ancestor-worship, glorify Tundun, the son and deputy of Mungan-ngaur; neglect Mungan-ngaur, look on Tundun as the creator, and finally neglect him in favour of ancestral spirits less remote, and more closely akin to themselves. This process is very readily conceivable, and, from our point of view, it would look like degeneration in religion, under stress of a new religious motive, the do ut des of sacrifice to ancestral ghosts. That Unkulunkulu should come to be thought dead is the less surprising, as a Zulu in bad luck will be so blasphemous as to declare that the ancestral spirits of his worship are themselves dead. 'When we sacrifice to them, and pray that a certain disease may cease, and it does not cease, then we begin to quarrel with them, and to deny their existence. And the man who has sacrificed exclaims: "There are no Amadhlozi; although others say there are, but for my part I say that the Amadhlozi of our house died for ever."'[4]....

Thus I can easily suppose that the Zulus once had an idea of a creative being; that they reduced him, on the lines described, to a first man; that they neglected him in favour of serviceable ghosts; and that they now think him extinct; like the ghosts themselves when they cease to be serviceable.

Mr. Hartland's theory is the reverse of mine. He says: 'In fact, so far as can be gathered, the very idea of creation was foreign to their minds.' ... 'The earth was in existence first, before Unkulunkulu as yet existed.'[5] But heaven, and the sun, and all things were not in existence before Unkulunkulu: he made them, according to other native witnesses, and Dr. Callaway, in his first page, says that the Zulus regard Unkulunkulu as the Creator.

The evidence, as Mr. Hartland urges with truth, is 'contradictory.' But its contradictions contradict his statement that 'the very idea of creation was foreign to their minds.' Many witnesses attest the existence in the Zulu mind of the idea of creation.

'It was said at first, before the arrival of missionaries, if we asked, "By what were the stones made?" "They were made by Umvelinqangi."' 'The ancients used to say, before the arrival of the missionaries, that all things were made by Umvelinqangi; but they were not acquainted with his name.' 'The natives,' says Dr. Callaway, 'cannot tell you his name, except it be Umvelinqangi.'[6] 'The sun and moon we referred to Unkulunkulu, together with all the things in this world, and yonder heaven we referred to Unkulunkulu.... We said all was made by Unkulunkulu.'[7] 'At first we saw that they were made by Unkulunkulu, but ... we worshipped those whom we had seen with our eyes' (the ghosts of their fathers), 'so then we began to ask all things of the Amadhlozi.' This convenient Zulu, Umpengula Mbanda, states my very hypothesis.[8] But he seems to have been a Christian convert, and probably constructed his theory after he heard of the Christian God. 'We seek out the Amadhlozi that we may not be always thinking about Unkulunkulu.' So spiritualists are more interested in ghosts than in the Christian God. 'In process of time we have come to worship the Amadhlozi only, because we knew not what to say about Unkulunkulu,' just as the spiritualist 'knows what to say' about his aunt, who speaks to him through the celebrated Mrs. Piper.[9]

Dr. Callaway consulted a very old Zulu, Ukoto, whose aunt was the mother of King Chaka (Utshaka). Mr. Rider Haggard dates Chaka about 1813-1828. With him began seventy years of Zulu conquest and revolution, in which old ideas might be obliterated. Ukoto answered Dr. Callaway's inquiries thus: 'When we were children it was said the Lord is in heaven.... We heard it said that the Creator of the world (Umdabuko) is the Lord which is above. When I was growing up, it used to be said the Creator of the world is above.'[10]

So far we must either reject most respectable evidence, going back to the earliest years of last century, before the Zulu period of revolution, or dismiss Mr. Hartland's opinion that the very idea of creation is foreign to the Zulu mind. A very old woman, whose childhood was prior to Chaka's initiation of the revolutionary period of conquest (1813), being interrogated by the Zulu, Umpengula, said that 'when we asked of the origin of corn, the old people said "it came from the Creator who created all things. But we do not know him." The old people said 'the Creator of all things is in heaven.'[11] The old woman then abounded in contradictions. She said that Unkulunkulu was the Creator in heaven, but only the day before she had denied this. Dr. Callaway thought not that her mind was wandering, but that 'there appears in this account to be rather the intermixture of several faiths, which might have met and contended or amalgamated at the time to which she alludes'—the early days of Chaka—' 1. Primitive faith in a heavenly Lord or Creator. 2. The ancestor-worshipping faith, which confounds the Creator with the first man. 3. The Christian faith, again directing the attention of the natives to a God who is not anthropomorphic' She might also, in a part of her tale, allude to the fabled ascension of the father of King Chaka prior to 1813.

From my point of view, Dr. Callaway's theory seems possible. The memories and ideas of people who were 'ancient,' when Chaka and this old woman were young, before the Zulus entered on a 'wolf age, a war age,' went far back into the Zulu past, when their belief may have been nearer to that kind of savage deism which Waitz regards as unborrowed and indigenous to Africa.[12] Another very old man, Ubebe, who had fought against Chaka, said: 'As to the source of being' (Umdabuko), 'I know only that which is in heaven. The ancient men said Umdakuko is above ... for the Lord gives them life.' Umdabuko, source of life, may be 'local or personal, the place in which man was created, or the person who created him.' ... Here the Umdabuko is called 'the lord which gives them life.'[13] Here, too, the evidence is of Zulu antiquity, the words of the ancients of Chaka's time. The use of the same name for a person and a place is familiar to us in 'Zeus' and 'Hades,' and we use 'Heaven' ourselves for God, as in 'the will of Heaven.' The old man uses Umdabuko as a personal name; elsewhere it is equivalent to Uthlanga, the impersonal metaphysical source of being, not identical with UmHlanga, 'a bed of reeds,' from which mankind arose in Zulu myth. 'Umhlanga is the place where they broke off, or out came, from Uhlanga.'[14]

Old Ubebe said to Umpengula: 'Do you not understand that we said Unkulunkulu made all things that we see or touch.' And Unkulunkulu, he added, was a man, and now a dead man; then he considered, and added: 'It is evident that all things were not made by a man who is dead; they were made by one who now is.' He began with the creator vouched for by the other old people; he relapsed into the confusion of him with the first man, and either reverted to the original idea, or to a natural reflection of his own. Dr. Callaway found Ubebe declaring that tradition averred the maker to have been a man, but that the missionaries averred the Creator to be 'the heavenly Lord.' 'The old men said that Unkulunkulu was an ancestor and nothing more, an ancient man who begat men, and gave origin to all things.'[15] In fact the primal being of lower savages, Andamanese and Australians, is a man, without human limitations, and creative. My hypothesis, like Dr. Callaway's, is that Ubebe and the rest wandered between three faiths: a faith analogous to that of the Andamanese and Australians; that faith modified by ancestor-worship carried to a great pitch—the creator being identified with the first man, and the doctrine of the missionaries. It is no wonder that these ancients are confused, but perhaps my hypothesis, which is Dr. Callaway's, so far, helps to explain their contradictions. 'They talk of Providence, but I reckon there is One above he,' said the British agriculturist, quite as confused as Ubebe.

Dr. Callaway interrogated another very old man, Ulangeni. He denied that Utikxo, his name for God, was a Hottentot word, introduced by missionaries, misled by what Dr. Callaway thinks their erroneous idea that the Hottentot Utikxo represented a lofty and refined theistic belief. Ulangeni utterly rejected with extreme contempt the idea that his tribe borrowed Utikxo from a people broken and contaminated by the Dutch.[16] 'We have learnt nothing of them.' In Ulangeni's opinion, Utikxo created Unkulunkulu, but, being invisible, was disregarded in favour of his visible deputy, as Mungan-ngaur might come to be disregarded in favour of Tundun. 'And so they said Unkulunkulu was God.' I am grateful to Ulangeni for again anticipating my humble theory. He gave a humorous account of the arrival of the first missionary, Unyegana (Gardiner?), of his 'jabbering,' of his promise to give news of Utikxo, and of the controversies of Zulu theologians. A native convert won the day and composed a hymn: all this is recorded by Umpengula. With all respect for Ulangeni, he appears to have been in the wrong about Utikxo. Kolb (1729) gives Gounja Ticquoa (Utikxo) as the Hottentot word for a supreme deity; but, if Dr. Callaway is right, Kolb was in error.

'Nothing is more easy than to inquire of heathen savages the nature of their creed, and during the conversation to impart to them great truths and ideas which they never heard before, and presently to have these come back to one as articles of their own original faith....'[17]

But Kolb's Hottentots, as Dr. Callaway notes, say that Ticquoa 'is a good man' They did not get that from Kolb, or any missionary: as I have said it is the regular preanimistic savage theory, as in Australia and the Andaman Isles. Later investigations down to Hahn tell us of Tsui Goab, 'wounded knee,' a Hottentot being who is only an idealised medicine-man. Shaw says that 'the older Kaffirs used to speak of Umdali, the Creator;' but Moffat found no trace of anything higher than Morimo, another mythical first ancestor, who came out of the earth. Livingstone asserts just the reverse. 'There is no necessity for beginning to tell even the most degraded of these people of the existence of God, or of a future state, the facts being universally admitted.'[18] As to the Bechuana Morimo, Mr. Hartland gives the etymology of his name: it is said to be derived from gorimo, above, with the singular prefix mo. It would thus mean 'Him who is above.' But why, then, did Morimo come out of a hole in the earth? Was he once 'He who is above,' and was he confused with the first man? The plural, Barimo, seems to mean the spirits of the dead. Molsino, teste Cassilis, is used for an ancestral ghost. Mr. Hartland is 'inclined to regard Morimo not as a once supreme deity fading away, but as a god in process of becoming.'[19] I feel that I have no grounds whereon to base even a conjecture.

A curious piece of evidence by Dr. Callaway is given in a note not in his book. One Zulu account is that Unkulunkulu was created by Utikxo. Now Unkulunkulu was visible, Utikxo was invisible, and so was more prominent and popular.'[20] Thus regarded, Unkulunkulu is the demiurge and deputy of Utikxo, as sometimes are Daramulun, Tundun, Hobamok, Okee, Bobowissi, the deputies of Baiame, Mungan-ngaur, Kiehtan, Ahone, Nyankupon, and so on. The idea is usual in savage theologies. Now Dr. Callaway cites the evidence of another Zulu: I We had this word before the missionaries came; we had God (Utikxo) long ago; for a man when dying would utter his last words, saying, "I am going home; I am going up on high." For there is a word in a song which says:

Guide me, O Hawk! That I may go heavenward, To seek the one-hearted man, Away from double-hearted men, Who deal in blessing and cursing.

We see, then, that those people used to speak of a matter of the present time, which we clearly understand by the word which the missionaries teach us.... So we say there is no God' (no new God) 'who has just come to us.' Dr. Callaway explains: 'That God of whom the missionaries speak is not a new God, but the same God of whom we spoke by the terms Ukqamata and Utikxo.'[21]

Dr. Callaway could not produce this testimony, or translate it, owing to the archaisms and allusions demanding familiarity with ancient Zulu songs, till he got the aid of a Kxosa Kaffir.

I am apt to regard the archaic character of the piece as fairly good proof of genuine antiquity. If the testimony is accepted, it settles the question in my sense. The Zulu religion, in its higher elements, was a waning religion Utikxo was, 'with his one foot in the grave,' like John Knox; he was not, as by Mr. Hartland's theory, a god in the making. Old hymns are our best authorities, and the hymn proves a belief in a future far nobler than the transfiguration of Zulu souls into serpents. A deity is also attested by the witness. But from the use of the word Utikxo by this witness, he may be speaking of ideas borrowed by Hottentots from the Dutch, and by Kaffirs from Hottentots.

Another odd example occurs elsewhere. Mr. Frazer quotes the King of Sofala, or of Quiteva, or 'The Quiteva.'[22] This king ranks with the deity; in fact, 'the Caffres acknowledge no other gods than their monarch,' says Dos Santos. But Mr. Frazer omits the circumstance that the same author adds: 'They acknowledge a God who both in this world and the world to come they fancy measures retribution for the good and evil done in this.... Though convinced of the existence of a deity they neither adore nor pray to him.'[23] Here we have a belief in a future life and a god (Molunga) analogous to that revealed in the archaic Zulu hymn. But Dos Santos only recognised as god a god who receives prayer and adoration; hence he says that the Kaffirs have no gods, and also that they 'acknowledge a god'—unworshipped. The name of that god, Molunga, is the same, I presume, as Mulungu, who now, 'in the world beyond the grave, is represented as assigning to spirits their proper places.'[24]

To myself, then, Zulu religion, now almost exclusively ancestor-worship, does seem to contain a broken and almost obliterated element of belief in a high unworshipped god, presiding over a future life. Obviously archaic hymns are better evidence, with their native interpretation, than the contradictory statements of individual Zulus, who speak dubiously of what the fathers used to say. The analogy between the Utikxo and Mulungu belief also counts as corroboration, while the unworshipped supreme being, with a deputy or deputies (Utikxo—Unkulunkulu), is a pervading feature of savage religion. If philology could throw any certain light on the meanings of names like Mulungu, and so forth, more sure ground might be reached. Again, when the name of a relatively supreme being may be regarded as a plural, like Elohim, the inference may be that many ancestral spirits are being blended, or have been blended, into one being. The case of the Mura Mura of the Australian Dieri has met us already, in the essay on 'Magic and Religion.' Is it a case of 'They' or 'He?' 'Mulungu= God,' a native told Mr. Clement Scott; 'you can't put the plural, as God is One.' 'Spirits are spirits of people who have died' (Mzima), 'not gods.' On the other hand, Mr. Macdonald learned that 'people who have died become Mulungu.' Yet he is also regarded as a separate and supreme being, who assigns their places to the spirits of the dead. His very name is variously interpreted as 'sky' or 'ancestor.'

We may argue that Mulungu is primal, and that the spirits of the dead, Mzima, are only 'the people of Mulungu,' who was, in the myth, prior to death. Or we may argue that many Mzima have been combined in a later conception of Mulungu as a single being. Such beings do occur, it is certain, where spirits of the dead are held of no account in religion. I fear that, in the condition of the evidence, students will take sides in accordance with their bias: at least both parties will think that their opponents do so. I have observed that many writers appear only to be aware of the existence of the religious bias, which denotes lack of humour.

As to Utikxo, Mr. Beiderbecke, like Dr. Callaway, thinks that Kaffirs, living near Hottentots, borrowed their name for god, Tixo (Utikxo), and dropped Unkulunkulu. Among the Ovaherero, in a region 'which had not yet been under the influence of civilisation and Christianity' (1873), Mr. Beiderbecke found that a god called Karunga was believed in. 'Look at our oxen and sheep: is it not Karunga who has made us so rich,' as Jehovah made the Israelites? Mukuru was used by believers in Kuringa as the name for the missionaries' God. Mukuru 'is in Otyihereró the name for god.' The derivation is unknown, but Omurunga, the sacred fan-palm tree, must be derived from Omuru, not Omuru from Omurunga. The Otyihereró word for spirit differs from both: it is Otyimbosi. As a god, Karunga seems to have no sacrifices: these are made to ancestral spirits. Karunga does not appear to be offended by sin, but this seems merely to be inferred from his receiving no atonement, as the spirits do. When people are dying they say 'Karunga has bid them come.' Traces of him as a creator are very dubious, but rain, thunder, and so on come from him, as proverbial sayings prove, and he is prayed to in time of danger—the prayers may be post-Christian. The Omuambo creation tale, or one of the tales, makes Kalunga, like Morimo, come out of the earth, and create men and women. He is no ghost. 'They also had ghosts,' the witness said, I but Kalunga was quite a distinct and unique being.'[25]

My bias in favour of my own theory is unconcealed, but I conceive that South African belief in a god, 'a unique being,' indicates itself in Mr. Beiderbecke's evidence.

There are different words for this being and for ghosts and spirits; though in other cases philology finds cognate African words for both.

Dr. Callaway concludes: 'It appears that in the native mind there is scarcely any idea of deity, if any at all, wrapped up in their sayings about a heavenly chief. When it is applied to God it is simply the result of teaching. Among themselves he is not regarded as the Creator, nor as the preserver of men; but as a power, it may be nothing more than an earthly chief, still celebrated by name—a relic of the king worship of the Egyptians; another form of ancestor-worship'—only he is not worshipped![26] Dr. Callaway, a most impartial inquirer, has given several cases of very old Zulus, who in childhood heard from their elders about a creator, a creative lord. But this excellent collector had just a trifle of most justifiable bias. He was arguing to prove that Unkulunkulu, Uthlanga, Utikxo, and the rest were not safe equivalents to be used by missionaries for God. And they were not safe equivalents. Umpengula argued that point to perfection. Unkulunkulu, he said, was a name to deceive children with; you must not come to us with a new great god, and call him by the name of a being whom every adult Zulu despises.[27] But that the name was despised, say in 1860, by 'convinced manes-worshippers,' by no means proves the non-existence of a higher belief in the past. Mr. Ridley deemed Baiame a fit name for the Christian God: probably it was imprudent to employ it in teaching natives.

Urged by his justifiable objection to the use of native names to indicate the Christian God, Dr. Callaway, in the conclusion just quoted, forgot, or had abandoned, his opinion that the evidence of old Zulus represented a blending of beliefs, beginning with 'a primitive faith in a heavenly Lord or Creator.'[28] I entirely go with his conclusion that the natives at large, of his generation, did not regard 'the heavenly chief as the Creator or preserver of men,' and that 'they had scarcely any notion of deity at all.' But, on the evidence collected from very old people by Dr. Callaway, I feel disposed to think it probable enough that, under stress of military life, conquest, and ancestor-worship, the Zulus may have forgotten and almost obliterated the higher belief which the old men had heard of in their infancy. If so, the Zulus fall into the general line of my argument. Their faint traditions (as in the case of Atahocan) have dwindled to children's tales. They are not the 'theoplasm' of a god who was in course of becoming. But, of course, it may be argued that these faint rudiments came in, with Utikxo, through the Hottentots, who picked them up in conversation with the Dutch. This process, however, does not apply to the belief in superior beings, carefully concealed from the native women, the children, and the Europeans, by the Australians. Nor does it apply to the American Kiehtan, Ahone, Andouagni, Atahocan, and many others. Such are the hesitating conclusions which I venture to draw from what we are told about religion among the peoples of South Africa. In favour of my theory is the fact that the oldest evidence, that of persons born before the genius of Chaka revolutionised Zulu life, agrees with what I expect to find, a creative tradition.

The success of either of the competing theories—that which sees elements of a high religion among low savages, and that which denies the existence of these elements—does not appear to me to affect our ideas about 'the truth of religion.' Each theory regards religion as a thing evolved by mankind in accordance with their essential nature. The only question is as to the sequence of stages of evolution. Suppose that the beginning of religion was (as in my hypothesis) regard for a maker and father, who was credited with sanctioning morality, and, in some cases, with rewarding or punishing the good or bad in a future life. These ideas occur in modern religion. But the circumstance that they also occurred in primitive religion would not prove modern religion to be 'true.' It would only prove that the men who evolved primitive religion were really human: very like their descendants. Why not? They did not produce the higher ideas pure: or at least, as we find them, they are always contaminated, soften overlaid, by myths of every degree of absurdity and viciousness. But it is to be observed that the faith of primitive man, as far as it is represented by the evidence which I offer as to very backward man, had not some of the worst elements of the creeds of more advanced races. Sacrifices there were none. But when agriculture arose, it brought with it hecatombs of human sacrifices, especially if we agree with Mr. Frazer's theory stated in 'The Golden Bough.' So far it cannot be doubted that, as man advanced in social progress, he became more deeply stained with religious cruelty. In similar fashion the religion of peace and goodwill came to be accompanied, thanks to the nature of mankind, by religious cruelties as barbarous as those of the Aztecs. Tantæ molis erat: so hard has it been to elevate the race in any one direction without introducing new depressions in other directions.

XIII

'CUP AND RING:' AN OLD PROBLEM SOLVED

History and antiquity supply our curious minds with many pleasant profitless exercises. Even in these days of education there are still many persons who have heard of the Man in the Iron Mask, and would like to know who he was. Nobody, of course, reads the 'Letters of Junius,' but many would be glad to be certain as to who wrote them.

My riddle is infinitely more remote, but it has this merit: that I think I can unriddle it. If ever you roamed on that moor of the Cheviot Hills which is near Chatton Park (I think on Lord Tankerville's ground), you may have noticed, engraved on the boulders, central cup-like depressions, surrounded by incised concentric circles. Who hollowed out these devices, why, and in what age?

I remember putting these questions when I first saw the 'scalps' of whinstone, just swelling out of the turf among the heather, on a beautiful day of September. It was a lonely spot, where victual never grew; about us were the blue heights of the Cheviots, below us the fabulosus amnis of Till, that drowns three men to one drowned by Tweed. My friend told me that some said the stones were places of Druid human sacrifice, and others, men of common sense, held that the herd-boys carved the circles out of sheer idleness.

But these answers will not pass. There were no herd-boys nor Druids in Central Australia, nor on the Rio Negro in Brazil, among the Waimara Indians, nor in Fiji, nor in Georgia of old, nor in Zululand, where these decorative markings occur with others of primeval character. In our own country they are found, not only on scalps of rock, but on the stones of 'Druid circles,' from Inverness-shire to Lancashire, Cumberland, and the Isle of Man. They also occur on great stones arranged in avenues; on cromlechs (one huge horizontal stone supported on others which are erect); on the stones of chambered tumuli (artificial mounds) in Yorkshire; on stone 'kist' or coffins, in Scotland, Ireland, and in Dorset; on prehistoric obelisks, or solitary 'standing stones,' in Argyll; on walls in underground Picts' houses in the Orkneys and Forfarshire; in prehistoric Scottish forts; near old camps; as well as on isolated rocks, scalps, and stones. Analogous double spirals occur at New Grange, in Ireland, at the entrance of the great gallery leading to the domed chamber; in Scandinavia; in Asia Minor; in China and Zululand; in Australia, India, America, North and South, and in Fiji.[1]

Now, who made these marks, when, and why? Sir James Simpson says: 'They are archæological enigmas, which we have no present power of solving.' He cites some guesses. The markings are 'archaic maps or plans of old circular camps and cities.' They are sundials—but they occur in dark chambers of sepulchres, or underground houses! They stand for sun, or moon, or for Lingam worship. They are Roman, or they are Phœnician—a theory on which much learning has been wasted.

To all these guesses Sir James Simpson opposed the solution that the markings are merely decorative. 'From the very earliest historic periods in the architecture of Egypt, Assyria, Greece, &c., down to our own day, circles, single or double, and spirals have formed, under various modifications, perhaps the most common types of lapidary decoration.' It appears in Polynesian tattooing, this love of spirals and volutes. But, added Sir James, 'that they were emblems or symbols, connected in some way with the religious thoughts and doctrines of those that carved them, appears to me to be rendered probable, at least, by the position and circumstances in which we occasionally find them placed,' as on the lids of stone coffins and mortuary urns. Their date must be 'very remote.' They preceded writing and tradition. They are found in company with polished neolithic stone weapons, as in Brittany, without any remains of the metals, save in one case, of gold. The markings are certainly, in Australia, earlier than the use of metals. Sir James found by experiment that the markings could be made even on Aberdeen granite with a flint celt and a wooden mallet. He reckoned them earlier than the arrival of the Celtic race, and asked for evidence of their existence in Africa, America, or Polynesia. He did not know the Fijian example in Williams's work on the Fijians, nor the American and Australian examples.

Sir James did not live to hear much about these mysterious marks in remote and savage lands. But, in 1875, Professor Daniel Wilson discovered, or rather reported his discovery of, cups and rings on a granite boulder in Georgia. The designs are quite of the familiar orthodox sort, and rocks covered with deep cup-marks occur in Ohio.[2] Now there are romantic antiquaries, all for Druids and Phœnicians; and there are sardonic antiquaries, who like to rub the gilt off the gingerbread. Dr. Wilson was of the latter class, and explained the cups as holes made by early men in grinding stone pestles. The concentric rings may have been drawn round the cups 'for amusement.' This is clamping, but early man did not use stone kists and the inner walls of sepulchres as grindstones; yet on these the marks occur. Nor would he climb an almost inaccessible rock to find his grindstone; yet the summit of such a rock has the decorations, in the parish of Tannadyce (Forfarshire). We may, therefore, discard Dr. Wilson's theory as a general solution of the problem. Sir James Simpson left it with the answer that the marks are decorative, plus religious symbolism.[3] His guess, as I think I can prove, or, at least, cause to seem probable, was correct. The cups and circles, with other marks, were originally decorative, with a symbolical and religious meaning in certain cases. How I have reached this conclusion I go on to show.

When you want to understand an old meaningless custom or belief, found in the middle of civilisation, you try to discover the belief or custom in some region where it possesses intelligible life. Then you may reckon that, where you now find it without meaning, it once meant what it now does where it is full of vitality, or meant something analogous.

The place where the concentric circles and other markings have a living and potent signification I discovered by pure accident. I had been reading the proofs of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen's valuable book on the 'Native Tribes of Central Australia' (Macmillan). There I had noted plenty of facts about the native churinga, or 'sacred things,' flat oval pieces of wood or stone, covered with concentric circles, cups, and other decorations, which are read, or deciphered, as records of the myths and legendary history of the native race. These churinga are of various sizes, down to a foot or less in length. I did not think of them in connection with our cups, circles, and so forth on our boulders and standing stones. But a friend chanced to come into my study, who began to tell me about the singular old site, Dumbuck, discovered by Mr. W. A. Donnelly (July 1898), under high-tide mark in the Clyde estuary, near Dumbarton. 'The odd thing,' said my friend, 'is that they have found small portable stones, amulets marked in the same way as the cup and ring marked rocks,' and he began to sketch a diagram. 'Why, that's a churinga,' said I, 'a Central Australian churinga,' enlightened by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen. My friend, after being informed as to churinga, told me that other examples had been dug up, also by Mr. Donnelly, in an ancient fort near the other site, at a place called Dunbuie. Here, then, I had things very like churinga, and of the same markings as our boulders, kists, and so on, in two Scottish sites, where I understand neither pottery nor metal has yet been detected. Next, I found that the marks which the Australians engrave on their small churinga, they also paint on boulders, rock-walls, and other fixtures in the landscape, on sacred ground, tabooed to women.

The startling analogy between Australian and old Scottish markings saute aux yeux.

On the cover of Sir James Simpson's book, stamped in gold, is a central set of six concentric circles, surrounding a cup. From the inmost circle a groove goes to the circumference of the outer circle (the circles often occur without this radial groove), and there the line gives a wriggle, suggesting that the circle was evolved out of a spiral. Above and below this figure are a similar one with three and another with four concentric circles; at each side are two-circled and one-circled specimens with the wriggled line, and two cups and circles with no wriggle. Now compare fig. 131, p. 631, of Messrs Spencer and Gillen. Here we have the churinga ilkinia, or sacred rock-drawing, in red and white, of the honey ant totem in the Warramunga tribe. Here are, first, seven concentric circles, through the centre of which goes a straight line of the same breadth (only found among the Warramunga), while to each extremity are added two concentric circles of small dimensions, ending in a cross. Around, as on Sir James's cover, are smaller sets of less numerous concentric circles, exactly like Sir James's, except for the radial groove which ends in a wriggle. Again (fig. 124, p. 615), we have two sets of concentric circles with white dots answering to cups, and, where the third set of circles should be, is a volute, as at New Grange, in Ireland, and in many other examples in our islands.

Now, in Central Australia the decorative motives, or analogous motives, of the permanent rock-paintings are repeated on the small portable churinga, which are deciphered by the blacks in a religious, or rather in a mythical, sense. It is, therefore, arguable that the small portable Scottish cup and circle marked stones, only recently discovered, bore the same relation to the engravings on permanent stones, scalps, and boulders as do the Australian churinga to the Australian sacred rock-paintings. They may have been portable sacred things.

I have been unable to visit Dumbuck, now in course of excavation, and have only seen some casts and pen-and-ink sketches sent to me by Mr. Donnelly. But I have examined the similar objects from Dunbuie, in the museum at Edinburgh. The antiquaries looked dubiously on them, because they had seen no such matters before (they might have done so in Ireland), because a shell, with a very modern scratched face, was among the finds, and because a few of the markings on one or two stones look recent and fresh. But I argue that a Dumbarton humourist wishing to hoax us Monkbarnses would hardly 'salt' an old site with objects unknown to Scottish antiquaries, yet afterwards discovered in Central Australia. How could the idea occur to him? A forger would forge things known, such as flint weapons; he would not forge novelties, which, later, are found to tally with savage sacred things in actual use.

Many of the Dunbuie finds are engraved in Mr. Millar's paper on Dunbuie.[4] But he has not engraved the most unmistakable churinga, a small oval slab of stone, with an ornament of little cups following its outline (much as in an Irish instance), and provided, like stone churinga in Australia, with a hole for suspension.

He does engrave certain hitherto unheard-of articles-spearheads of slate, two supplied with suspension holes. One (p. 294) has a pattern of the simplest, like a child's drawing of a larch, which recurs in Australia.[5] That these slate spear-heads, pierced for suspension, were used in war I doubt, though some Australians do use spear-heads 'of a flinty slate;' and where flint is so scarce, as in Scotland, hard slate may be used—for example, in North America.[6] I rather regard the slate weapons as amulets, or churinga, analogous to the very old and rare boomerang-shaped churinga of the Arunta (lizard totem) of Central Australia. Mr. Millar observes: 'They have all been saturated with oil or fat, as water does not adhere to them, but runs off as from a greasy surface.' Now the Australian churinga are very frequently rubbed with red ochre, and made greasy with 'hand grease'—a singular coincidence. Footmarks are among the sacred Australian rock-paintings with a legendary sense. They also occur, engraved on rock in Brittany, Ireland, on 'The Fairy Stone' (ilkinia) in Glenesk, and on 'The Witches' Stone' at Monzie, associated with cups and concentric circles.[7] These close analogies point all in one direction.

Meaningless in Europe, what meaning have these designs in Australia? Though certainty is impossible, I take it that they were first purely decorative, before the mythical and symbolical meaning was read into them by the savages. They occur on the mystic 'bull-roarers' of Central Queensland, but I do not learn that in Queensland the circles and so on are interpreted or deciphered as among the Arunta.[8] Still, they occur here in a religious connection—the bull-roarer being swung at the mysteries—and they are carved on trees at mysteries held far south in New South Wales.[9] But even in Central Australia the markings sometimes occur as purely decorative, on one rock or other object, while on others they are sacred, and are interpreted as records of legends,[10] according to Spencer and Gillen. There are 'ordinary rock-paintings,' and certain other drawings, in many cases not distinguishable from some of the first series, so far as their form is concerned, but belonging to a class all of which are spoken of as churinga ilkinia, and are regarded as sacred because they are associated with totems. Each local totemic group has certain of these specially belonging to the group, and in very many cases preserved on rock-surfaces in spots which are strictly tabu to the women, children, and uninitiated men.' One of the commonest I represents a snake coming out of a hole in a rock,' which the wriggle out of the cup in our circle-marked stones would stand for fairly well. Some designs are only 'play-work;' others exactly similar, on another spot, have a definite meaning. The meaning is read, where the spot is sacred ground. The concentric circles are 'believed, on good ground, to have been derived from an original spiral.' 'It is much more easy to imagine a series of concentric circles originating out of a spiral than to imagine a spiral originating out of a series of concentric circles.' In this country the spiral seems to be later than the circle.

These devices not only occur on fixed rocks and portable churinga, they are also painted on the bodies of boys when initiated in the mysteries: 'concentric circles with radiating lines preponderate.'

In Mr. Haddon's 'Decorative Art of British New Guinea' he describes designs of concentric circles and spirals which are clearly derivatives of drawings of the human face.[11] Thus our concentric circles and spirals may, in the last resort, have been derived from drawings of the human face, though diablement changés en route.

What, then, however we interpret the origin, decorative or symbolic, of the sacred designs, is their significance as understood by the Arunta of Central Australia at the present time?

The Arunta are totemistic—that is, they believe in close relations which bind up the groups of their society with certain plants and animals. But they differ vastly from other totemistic races all over the world, and even in Australia. So much do they differ that it may be doubted whether their totems can properly be called totems at all. Elsewhere a man of a given totem—say the emu—cannot marry a woman of that stock; it is incest. The children inherit their totem, either from the mother, or, less frequently, the father. Any local group in a given region contains persons of various totems. People may not kill, eat, or make any use of the plants and animals which, in each case, are their totems.

Among the Arunta all is otherwise. A child's totem may be that of his father, of his mother, or different from that of either parent. A man may marry a woman of his own totem, which elsewhere is incest, and capitally punished. Thus, father is a grub; mother is a grub; one child may be a grub, another an emu. Moreover, here totems are local; almost every one in a given place will be, for example, a lizard or a plum tree. Usually people do eat their own totems, though sparingly, at magical rites, intended to multiply the animal or plant with which it is associated, in the interests of the general food supply. The Grubs work a rite to cause plenty of grubs, and they give the other groups a lead by eating sparingly of the first fruits of the grubs. This bears, in my opinion, no strong analogy to the so-called 'totem-sacrament.' To work the magic, the men of the grub or other totem must eat a little of it. This probably confirms their relation to the grub, but involves no religious element. They do not adore the grub. If any one likes to call this a 'totem-sacrament,' he is rather easily satisfied. Nor does it agree with the notion that a man's totem is the receptacle of his 'life' or 'soul;' if so, why should he encourage his neighbour to kill and eat it? Nay, he even helps them to destroy it.

Whether Arunta totemism is the most archaic kind, from which all other totemism has varied, or whether it is a private 'sport' from the main stock, does not concern us here, and is matter of conjecture. The Arunta, and other Central Australian tribes, look back to a mythic past, when ancestors, closely connected with this or that plant or animal, perhaps transformations of such animal or plant, roamed the country in groups, each of the same totem name, each feeding freely on its own totem.

This was 'the Alcheringa time,' and existing rites are explained by 'ætiological myths,'stating how such or such a mummery, still practised, was originally practised in the Alcheringa. Nothing of the sort, of course, need have been the case, and such myths cannot tell us what the manners and customs of that dim age really were. Demeter was a woman of the Greek Alcheringa, and the Eleusinian rites were explained by the Greeks as originating in her Alcheringa adventures. But these obviously were invented purely to account for the rites themselves, not vice versâ.

Now, among the Arunta the blacks of to-day are regarded as reincarnations of the Alcheringa fabulous ancestors. Each of these carried about (both men and women) churinga, the portable decorated stones. When an Alcheringite died, a rock or tree rose to mark the place, but his or her spirit 'remained in the churinga.' Plenty of churinga were dropped at different sites, and round these now hover the spirits associated with them. In one place is a crowd of wild cat ghosts; at another, a mob of frog or lizard or emu ghosts. These want to be reincarnated. Consequently, a woman who desires to have a baby goes to one of them (in Argyll she would slide down a cup-marked rock!), a woman who does not want to have a baby keeps away. A child's totem is derived, not from father or mother, but from the totem of the ghosts at the place where the woman thinks she conceived it. When the baby is born her relations hunt the spot, and find for it the churinga left by the spirit which is reincarnated in it.

Thus, first there is the fabulous Alcheringite, himself a transformation of an emu, lizard, water, fire, or what not. Then there is his spirit haunting, after his death, a spot where churinga of his totem were deposited. That spirit enters into and is born again from a passing woman, and the spirit's churinga is found and is henceforth the child's churinga—an oval plate of stone, with cup and ring or other decorations.[12] All these churinga are kept at sacred central stores, caves, or crevices. Each member of the tribe is represented by her or his 'churinga nanja' in these repositories. Women may not go near these sacred stores, nor may they see a churinga.[13] If they do, their eyes are burned out with a fire stick. A man's churinga is not, to him, like the egg in which was the life of the giant in the fairy tale. If it comes to grief, he does not die, but expects bad luck, as we do if we break a mirror. Not till he has been through the mysteries and the most cruel mutilations, and just before he has been painted with the pattern on the sacred rock of his totem, can a man see the store-houses of the churinga. Now, in the witchetty grub totem this sacred painting tallies with the lines incised, under concentric circles, on the covering of a stone kist at Tillicoutry.[14] There are circles above the lines in the Australian example, or rather circular dabs of paint, called 'the decorated eyes,' painted on the rocks; the corresponding patterns are incised on the portable churinga. In Scotland the patterns are incised both on fixed rocks and portable stones; the latter at Dumbuck and Dunbuie.

I observe many patterns common to both regions. There are the concentric circles, the spiral, the marks like horseshoes, the tree pattern, the witchetty grub pattern, the volute, the long sinuous snake-like pattern, and a number of these recur in Brazil, on the banks of the Rio Negro.[15] Now, though we have those patterns on rocks in Ohio, Brazil, Australia, in this country, in France, in Asia Minor, I only know the patterns on portable small stones in Australia, at Dunbuie, on the Dumbuck site, and, I think, in a cairn near Lough Crew, in County Meath. The curious, for this last case, may consult 'Proceedings of Scottish Society of Antiquaries,' 1893, p. 299, where in figs. 6 and 7 he will see what in Australia would be called two stone churinga, with any number of Scoto-Australian patterns on large stones. On one the pattern is like that of a stone from Dunbuie.

In Australia members of each totem decipher the marks, purely conventional, as representative of the totem, and of adventures in the Alcheringa time. For example, a mark like two croquet hoops, or horseshoes, is 'an old woman gathering frogs.' The concentric circles are frogs; the dots round them are tracks of women; dull, often dirty, stories are told about the adventures of the Alcheringites commemorated by the patterns. At the sacred pattern-painted rocks, magic ceremonies, extremely puerile, are performed to ensure a supply of the edible totem which the pattern represents. Some event occurred there in the Alcheringa; the rite repeats what, in myth, was then done, and the stomachs of the men are rubbed with the churinga 'for luck.' Such are the uses of the churinga. Did they once exist wherever the similarly decorated fixed rocks exist? Did the makers of the decorations in Scotland decipher the churinga as the Central Australians do now? Were the dwellers by Clyde (much more advanced in culture than the Australians) totemists, looking on their small decorated stones as associated with the spirits of Alcheringa ancestors? Do women in Argyll slide down a cup-marked rock, in hope of offspring, because totemistic ghosts once hovered round it, eager to be reincarnated? The fact of the sliding is attested by a chief of Clan Diarmid.

Nobody can answer! I have shown these decorated rocks and small stones to have a living significance, a vital legendary symbolism, in Central Australia. I cannot prove that they had the same significance in County Meath or Dumbartonshire. The Australians may have begun with mere decoration, and later added a symbolism suited to their amazing theory of life. In our country the decorations may have quite a different symbolical sense, but probably they had some sense. Otherwise, why engrave them, not only on rocks, but on small stones pierced for suspension? Perhaps men believed in an Alcheringa time on the Clyde; perhaps they multiplied salmon and deer by magical mummeries at the engraved rocks; perhaps these were sacred places, tabooed to women. Or quite a different set of fables and customs may have crystallised in Scotland round marked rocks and inscribed small stones. I cannot prove that, as in Australia, Clydesdale boys of old, when initiated in the mysteries, were painted with the pattern on their sacred totem rock and stone or wood churinga. But, if not these rites, other rites were, I conceive, connected with the decorative patterns found in so many still savage countries.

One piece of evidence rather points in this direction. The Australian stone churinga are shaped like the wooden churinga, and these are shaped like the tundun, or 'bull-roarer.' Now the bull-roarer (which occurs in Australia where stone churinga do not) is a sacred oval piece of wood, not to be seen by women, which is whirled at the mysteries, and makes a windy, roaring noise. The same object is used, for the same purpose, at the mysteries in America, Africa, and, of old, in Greece.[16] The roaring noise is taken to be the voice of Tundun, son of Mungan-ngaur, 'Our Father' in the heavens, among the Kurnai, and of gods or culture heroes of other names in other tribes. Now, in Celtic Scotland (as also in England) this instrument, the tundun, occurs as a mere toy, in Gaelic named strannam. Does it descend from a sacred object of savage mysteries, and are the Australian stone churinga—in shape like the tundun, and like the tundun tabooed to women—mere lapidary modifications of the wooden tundun? However this may be, the strannam looks like a link in the long chain which binds us to the prehistoric past.

While correcting the proof-sheets of this article I read, in the Glasgow Herald (January 7, 1899), an article on Dumbuck and Dunbuie, by Dr. Munro, the eminent authority on crannogs, or pile-dwellings, and, generally on prehistoric Scotland. Dr. Munro, as I understand him, does not regard Dumbuck as an older than mediæval site, nor as a true crannog. The incised stones he looks on either as of most singular character (if genuine) or as forgeries of to-day, the opinion which he seems to prefer. He was then unacquainted with similar objects in any part of the world. I have here provided references to similar objects from Central Australia, and I suggest examination of the apparently similar Irish objects, figured in 'Proceedings of Scottish Society of Antiquaries,' 1893, p. 299, figs. 6 and 7. Not having seen these stones I can only offer the hint suggested by the illustrations in 'Proceedings.' Why a forger should forge such unknown objects, and place them at Dunbuie, in 1895, before the Central Australian stones had been described, I cannot guess. Nor can I enough deplore the stupidity of the same hypothetical forger in not 'salting' Dunbuie and Dumbuck with neolithic implements, whether antique or made by some Flint Jack of to-day. Both his sins of omission and of commission donnent furieusement à penser. Dr. Munro, however, as I gather from his article on Dumbuck in 'The Reliquary' (April 1901), still declines to recognise the Dumbuck decorated portable stones as of genuine antiquity.

XIV

FIRST-FRUITS AND TABOOS

Taboo is one of the few savage words which have struck root in England. Introduced from New Zealand (tapu) and other Polynesian islands, it is used in English to denote a prohibition. This, that, or the other thing, or person, or book is 'tabooed.' Many of the Ten Commandments are, in this sense, taboos. But, in anthropological language, 'taboo' generally denotes something more than a prohibition. It commonly means a prohibition for which, to the civilised mind, there is no very obvious meaning. In this way the prohibitive Commandments are not precisely taboos; it is pretty obvious why we ought not to steal or kill, though the raison d'être of the Seventh Commandment is obscure to some advanced intelligences. But the reasons why a Sinclair must not cross the Ord on a certain 'lawful day,' or why on another 'lawful day' the fishermen of St. Andrews might not go a-fishing, resemble many savage taboos in the lack of a manifest reason why. Secondly, the infraction of the savage taboo generally, unlike that of the decalogue, carries its own punishment. Forbidden food is poison, tabooed land is dangerous to tread upon, to handle tabooed property may mean death; nobody knows what awful cosmic catastrophe might occur if a tabooed woman saw the sun; many words and names are taboo, and no luck will come of using them—for instance, you must not name 'salmon,' 'pigs,' or the minister when out fishing in some parts of Scotland.

In many cases the reason of this or that taboo is easily discovered. A day is unlucky because all the fishers, as at St. Andrews, were lost on that day in a past century through a storm; or the Sinclairs on another day were cut off in an expedition. Most of us have our lucky or unlucky days, clothes, and other vanities. Again, things are taboo for some reason in that kind of faith which holds that things connected in the association of ideas are mystically connected in fact. You must not mention salmon, lest they hear you and escape; or tin in Malay tin mining, lest the tin should literally 'make itself scarce.' You may not name the fairies, a jealous folk. Therefore you say 'the people of peace,' and so on. But many other taboos have good practical reasons. If women, among ourselves, were tabooed from salmon-fishing, eating oysters, or entering smoking-rooms (all of which things are greatly to be desired), the reason would be the convenience of the men, who wish a sanctuary or asylum in the smoking-room, and want to keep oysters and fishing to themselves. It is pretty plain why the sight of the royal treasury is tabooed to a West African king: to speak colloquially, if admitted to see the hoards he 'would blue the lot.' A taboo often protects by a supernatural sanction the property and persons of the privileged classes. If the umbrella of a bishop or a baronet were taboo, it would not be taken away from the club by accident.

This simple explanation covers the case of many taboos.

Brother and sister may scarcely ever see each other, still less speak to or name each other, where the law against brother and sister marriage or amour is the one most definite law of the community. 'It is not, therefore, surprising,' says Mr. Jevons, 'that the earlier students of the custom' (of taboo) 'regarded it as an artificial invention, a piece of statecraft, cunningly devised in the interests of the nobility and the priests. This view is, however, now generally abandoned,' because taboo 'is most at home in communities which have no state organisation, and flourishes where there are no priests or no priesthood. Above all the belief is not artificial and imposed, but spontaneous and natural.'[1]

I hesitate about this theory. Taboo can hardly flourish more than it does in Polynesia and West Africa, where there are kings and priests. Moreover, though there are human societies without kings or priests (as in Australia), there are no societies in which artificial rules are not propagated, instituted, and enforced by the adult males meeting in councils. The Arunta of Central Australia are, of course, far from 'primitive.' They have institutions, ceremonies, weapons, rules, and a complete system of philosophy, which must have needed unknown ages to develop. They have local head-men, or Alatunjas, whose office passes always in the male line: from father to son, if the son be of age to succeed, or, if he is not, to the brother, on whose death it reverts to the son. An Alatunja dying without a son nominates a brother or nephew to succeed him. Messrs. Spencer and Gillen know no equivalent to this law among other Australian tribes, and it indicates, among the so-called 'primitive' Arunta, a marked advance beyond other tribes in social evolution. The Alatunja is hereditary Convener of Council, and if an able man has considerable power. He is guardian of the Sacra of the group, determines the date of the cessation of close-time for certain sorts of game, the date of the magical ceremonies for fostering the game or edible plants, and directs the ceremonies. In the councils called by the Alatunja it appears that changes in stereo-typed custom may be introduced. Men learned in the customs and skilled in magic 'settle everything.' Definite proof of fundamental innovations thus introduced Messrs. Spencer and Gillen do not possess; but tradition indicates alterations of custom, and it is quite possible that a strong Alatunja, well backed, might bring in even a radical reform.[2] There are also recognised grades of skill among the medicine-men and the dealers with spirits, who must have their own share of social influence.

In brief, though without priests or kings these backward tribes have councils, and conveners, and directors whose office is hereditary in the male line. These persons, through unknown ages, have moulded customs and taboos, which are just as much sanctioned by tradition and authority just as little 'spontaneous and universal,' as if kings and priests had invented them for purposes of statecraft. Mr. Jevons next argues that taboo 'cannot have been derived from experience. It is prior to and even contradictory of experience. In fine, it is an inherent tendency of the human mind.' In the same way Gibbon's ancestor, Blue Gown herald, when among North American Indians, declared that heraldry is an inherent tendency of the human mind, an innate idea.

An opinion is not necessarily erroneous because it is obsolete, nor a view wrong because 'it is generally abandoned.' I am here supporting the 'generally abandoned' hypothesis that many taboos, at least, are artificial and imposed, against Mr. Jevons's idea that the taboo, like armorial bearings, results from 'an inherent tendency of the human mind' 'prior to and even contradictory of experience.'[3] That 'a new-born baby is dangerous,' or that 'the water in which a holy person has washed is dangerous,' my private experience does not tell me; in fact, I never made either experiment: never tubbed in the water previously used by a bishop. But I am prepared to admit that neither babies nor bishops are proved by our experience to be dangerous. That is not the question. The savage argued, not from unbiassed and impartial scientific experiment, but from fancied experience. Thus Mr. Jevons mentions a Maori who died after rinding out that he had eaten, unawares, the remains of the luncheon of a holy person, a chief. There was experience produced by suggestion. The suggestion was suggested in the interests of holy chiefs; they were 'tabooed an inch thick,' as Mr. Manning writes. As to the baby, the Dyaks, as in our own fairy belief, hold that 'new-born children are the especial prey of evil spirits,' just as corpses were in—Scotland, where, if the door was left ajar, the corpse sat up, and mopped and mowed. If the watchers left it, and dined in the 'but,' an awful vacarme arose in the 'ben.' The minister entered, stilled the tumult, asked for the tongs, and came back holding in the tongs a bloody glove! This he dropped into the fire.

This kind of thing is contradictory to the experience of Mr. Jevons, but not to the fancied experience of Dyaks, Scots, and other races. Opinion therefore makes taboos in accordance with experience, or what is believed to be experience, and the belief is fortified by suggestion, which produces death or disease when the taboo is broken. On the analogy of infectious diseases, the mischief of the tabooed thing is held to be contagious.

Thus I cannot hold with Mr. Jevons that the human mind is provided with an a priori categorical imperative that there are some things which must not be done,' 'a feeling' 'independent of sense experience.'[4] If the choice of what things are 'not to be done' seems to us 'irrational,' that is merely because our reason is more enlightened than that of the savage. He prohibited just such things as his philosophy, and what he believed to be his experience, showed him to be dangerous for obscure reasons. Any fool could see that it was dangerous to eat poison berries or frolic with a bear. But it took reflection to discover that a baby or a corpse was dangerous by reason of evil spirits, Iruntarinia, whom the Alkna Buma, or clairvoyant, could see, and describe, though Mr. Jevons and I could not discern them.[5] These Iruntarinia notoriously carry off women, and probably, like the fairies, have their best chance in the hour of child-birth: at all events, the fairies have.[6] The belief is socially useful: it prevents young Arunta women from wandering off alone, and philandering out of bounds.

Thus these taboos are sanctioned by the tribal counsellors as the results of experience, not their own perhaps, but that of the Alkna Buma, or clairvoyant, or 'sensitive,' or 'medium,' or habitually hallucinated person. Other taboos, as to women, are imposed for very good reasons, though not for the reasons alleged, and broken taboos are not (in actual ordinary experience) attended by the penalties which, however, suggestion may produce.

Taboo, then, is not imposed irrationally, nor in deference to 'an inherent tendency of the human mind' (that Mrs. Harris of philosophy), but for a very good reason, as savage reasoning goes, and in accordance with what is believed to be experience, and, by dint of suggestion, really does become experience.

It was 'irrational' in Dr. Johnson to touch certain posts, and avoid certain stones, and enter a door twice, if he first entered it with the wrong foot. All my life I have had similar private taboos, though nobody knows better that they are nonsense. But some solitary experience in childhood probably suggested a relation of cause and effect, where there was only a fortuitous sequence of antecedent and consequent, and so Dr. Johnson and I (though not so conspicuously as the Doctor) imposed taboos on ourselves in deference to (fancied) experience. Early man has acted in the same way on a large scale, obeying no categorical a priori imperative, but merely acting on his philosophy and experience which is real to him, though not to civilised men. They usually do not understand it, but educated persons with a survival of savagery in their mental constitutions find the affair intelligible.

But the reason in actual practical experience for some taboos must be plain to the most civilised minds, except those of Badical voters for the Border Boroughs. Man, in the hunter stage, must have game laws and a close-time for edible animals and plants. The Border Badical will not permit a close-time for trout, preferring to destroy them, and with them their offspring, when gravid and unfit for human food, or before they recover condition.

The 'primitive' Arunta are not so irrational, and have a close-time, protected by taboo, or, at least, by ceremonies of a nature more or less magical. In these ceremonies of a people not pastoral or agricultural, we seem to see the germs of the offerings of first-fruits to gods or spirits, though the Australian produce is offered neither to spirits nor to gods. These tribes recognise a great spirit, indeed, Twanyirika, but that he plays any other part in religion or society than presiding over the tribal mysteries we have at present no evidence to prove. Similar figures, associated with the mysteries, are, in other parts of Australia, provided with an ample mythology, and are subject to a being more august and remote. But either the Arunta are advanced thinkers who have passed beyond such ideas, or they have not yet attained to them, or our witnesses are uninformed on the subject.[7] In any case, the first-fruits of the game, grubs, and plants of the Arunta are not offered to Twanyirika, or to the minor sprites, Iruntarinia.

The ceremonies, partly intended to make the creatures used for food prolific, and partly, I think, to indicate that the close-time is over and that the creatures may be taken and eaten, are called Intichiuma. On the mummeries expected to make animals and plants plentiful we need not dwell. In each case the men who belong to the totem of the beast, grub, or plant perform the ceremonies. There is believed to be a close and essential connection between a man of the kangaroo totem and all kangaroos, between a man of the grub totem and all grubs, so each totem group does the magic to propagate its ally among beasts or plants. How these ideas arose we do not know. But if a local group was originally called kangaroos or grubs (and some name it must have), the association of names would inevitably lead, by association of ideas, to the notion that a mysterious connection existed between the men of a totem name and the plant, animal, or what not which gave the name. These men, therefore, would work the magic for propagating their kindred in the animal and vegetable world. But the existence of this connection would also suggest that, in common decency, a man should not kill and eat his animal or vegetable relations. In most parts of the world he abstains from this uncousinly behaviour: among the Arunta he may eat sparingly of his totem, and must do so at the end of the close-time or beginning of the season.

He thus, as a near relation of the actual kangaroos or grubs, declares the season open, and gives his neighbours of other totems a lead. Now they may begin to eat grubs or kangaroos; the taboo is off. Thus, in 1745, Gask tabooed the corn of his tenants; they must not reap it, because they refused 'to rise and follow Charlie.' Prince Charles, hearing of this, cut a few ears with his claymore, thus removing the taboo. In the same way the grub or kangaroo men publicly eat a little of their own totem, after which the tribesmen and other totems may fall to and devour. When the grub or whatever it is becomes plentiful, after the magic doings for its propagation, it is collected and placed before some members of the grub totem. The Alatunja, or convener, grinds up some of the grub, he and his fellow totemists eat a little, and hand the mass back to the members of other totems. They eat a little of their own totem, partly, Messrs. Spencer and Gillen say, to strengthen their mystic connection with the creature. This, in a way, is a 'sacramental' idea, though no religious regard is paid to the plants and animals. But the men also partake, to remove the taboo, and to let the rest of the community gorge themselves legally.[8]

The rite has thus a practical purpose. The grubs or other creatures are not prematurely destroyed, like trout on the Border. In fact, trout themselves are sensible enough not to begin feeding on May fly prematurely. 'Throughout the previous week,' says Sir Herbert Maxwell, 'a few May flies had been seen ... but not a trout would point his nose at one.... This hesitation on the part of the trout to begin their annual banquet is one of the best known and, at the same time, least explicable features of the May fly fortnight.'[9] The Arunta also let the grub come on to its full rise before feeding. When a certain bulb is ripe, the men of its totem rub off and blow away the husks, then the general public may begin feeding. There is nothing sacramental in this ceremony, which merely opens the season for tuber eating. The taboo is off. And so in other cases: the kangaroo men are smeared with the fat of the kangaroo, and eat a little of the animal.[10] The non-kangaroo tribesmen may then eat kangaroo. The traditions of the Arunta represent their mythical ancestors as in some cases feeding solely on their totems. But this cannot possibly be true. A grub man would die, when grubs were out, of starvation, and so with the rest. 'When fruits is in, cats is out,' and a man of the gooseberry totem, who only ate gooseberries, would perish miserably.

The Arunta eating of the totem has nothing to do with consecrating the first-fruits of grubs or kangaroos to a god or with absorbing the qualities of a spirit. When Swedish peasants bake a cake shaped like a girl, from the last sheaf of the new corn, they perhaps originally ate the cake 'as the body of the corn spirit.'[11] But when the Lithuanian farmer takes the first swig of the new beer—'the second brew was for the servants'—perhaps he is only declaring his ownership, and opening the beer season.[12] In an unnamed part of Yorkshire the parson cuts the first corn; he is the Alatunja, and opens the harvest. In the Celebes the priest opens the rice harvest; all eat of it; 'after this every one is free to get in his rice.' At St. Andrews on the Medal Day (which is in harvest time) the Alatunja (that is the new captain) drives a ball from the first tee; after this every one is free to drive off in his turn—but not before. In some places, as in Indo-China, the first-fruits are offered to a god; in Zululand the king pops a little into the mouth of every man present, who 'may immediately get in his crops.' If he began harvest before he would die, or, if detected, would be speared, or forfeited. Sometimes the first-fruits are offered to 'the holy spirit of fire.' There are all sorts of ways and ceremonies of opening the season and taking off the taboo. I really don't think it follows that the first fruits are dangerous to eat, before the ceremony, because 'they are regarded as instinct with a divine virtue, and consequently the eating of them is a sacrament or communion.[13] I It is dangerous to eat them, as it would be dangerous to steal a tabooed umbrella. They are tabooed because it is close-time.

The other ideas may come to be entertained, an automatic punishment may be thought to follow the breach of the taboo, though we do not learn that this is the case among the Arunta. But the origin of the taboo on the immature food, I think, is the perfectly practical idea of a close-time; plants are not to be gathered, nor animals killed, prematurely. The more or less supreme being of the Fuegians is angry—if you shoot flappers. 'Very bad to shoot little duck, come rain, come wind, blow, very much blow.'[14] The 'great black man, who cannot be escaped, and who influences the weather according to men's conduct,' is right about the flappers. He sanctions a necessary game law. The How (king), in Tonga, used to wait till the yams were ripe, then he fixed a day for gathering them, and had a religious function. The sort of function depends on the stage at which local religion has arrived; but a close-time—no premature killing or gathering—is the practical idea at the base of all these affairs of first-fruits. Any other superstition, sacrificial or sacramental, may crystallise round the practical primitive prohibition, especially when it was sanctioned by the good old device of automatic punishment, following on infringement of taboo.

If Sir Herbert Maxwell could persuade Mr. Thomas Shaw, M.P., that the proverbially execrable weather on the Border is the direct result of fishing, especially with salmon-roe, out of season; if there was to be no fishing till Mr. Shaw, after tasting of the first trout, declared the season open; if the clergy of all denominations lent their presence to the imposing ceremony, then I believe that Tweed, Ettrick, Teviot, Yarrow, Ail, and Kale would be worth fishing in again.

Taboo, as Mr. Frazer and Mr. Jevons agree, has had its uses in the evolution of morality; but remark that strictly moral offences are nowhere under taboo. You may steal (as long as the object stolen is not tabooed and does not belong to a chief or priest), you may kill, you may interfere with the domestic bliss of your neighbour, you may lie, but the automatic punishment of taboo-breaking nowhere follows. Baiame or Pundjel may punish you; but there is no instant mechanical penalty, as under taboo.

After writing this paper, I found that Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson's experience of tapu, in the Pacific, led him to form the same opinions as are here expressed. 'The devil-fish, it seems, were growing scarce upon the reef; it was judged fit to interpose what we should call a close season ... a tapu had to be declared.' The tapus described 'are for thoroughly sensible ends.' There are tapus which, to us, appear absurd, 'but the tapu is more often the instrument of wise and needful restrictions.'[15]

These taboos are imposed from above, by Government. In other cases, where the taboo expresses an inference from savage superstition (say that a baby or a corpse is dangerous), the taboo is not imposed except by public opinion. That opinion is sanctioned (as in the case of first-fruits) by the action of the Alatunja, or headman: in more advanced societies, by the king. In many cases, taboos are imposed on the king himself by the priestly colleges. But the greatest authority is tradition, resting on fancied experience.

XV

WALKING THROUGH FIRE

Perhaps the topic of this paper may be ranged under the head of 'Magic,' though in many cases the rite of passing through fire is sanctioned by religion, and the immunity of the performers is explained by the protection of gods. The immunity is really the curious feature. Mr. Frazer describes the Chinese vernal festival of fire in spring, connected as it is with the widespread custom of 'renewing the fire' at a certain season. The chief performers are labourers, who must fast for three days and observe chastity for a week; while they are taught in the temple how to discharge the difficult and dangerous duty which is to be laid upon them. 'The fire is made in an enormous brazier of charcoal, sometimes twenty feet wide.' The fire is gratified with salt and rice, thrown on it by a Taoist priest. Further, 'two exorcists, barefooted, and followed by two peasants, traverse the fire again and again till it is somewhat beaten down.' The procession of performers then walks through amidst much excitement. Their immunity is ascribed to the horny consistency of the soles of their feet, and they suffer if the fire touches their ankles.[1] Various Indian examples are given by Mr. Frazer. Captain Mackenzie found the performance remote from the 'sensational,' and thought that only girls with tender soles were likely to suffer. A case is also quoted from Strabo, women being the performers, and the instance of the Hirpi of Soracte is well known.[2] Mr. Frazer is interested mainly in the religious, magical, or ritual significance of the rite, which varies in different places. To me, on the other hand, the immunity of the performers appears a subject worthy of physiological inquiry.

The subject occurs everywhere in history, legend, folklore, law, and early religion, and yet nobody has thought it worth while to collect the ancient reports and to compare them with well-authenticated modern examples. In Mr. Tylor's celebrated work, 'Primitive Culture,' only one or two casual allusions are made to the theme. 'They built the high places of Baal, in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and daughters to pass through to Moloch,' that is to pass through the fire, 'whether in ritual or symbolical sacrifice.'[3] As a supposed rite of purification the ceremony is again touched upon lightly.[4] Again: 'The ancient ceremony of passing through a fire, or leaping over burning brands, has been kept up vigorously in the British Isles,'[5] namely, at the midsummer ceremonies, when it is, or was, the custom to jump over, or run through, light fires. Nobody would guess that a rite of passing deliberately, and unscathed, through ovens or furnaces yet exists in Japan, Bulgaria, the Society Islands, Fiji, Southern India, Trinidad, the Straits Settlements, the Isle of Mauritius, and, no doubt, in other regions.

We must distinguish between such sportive playing with fire as prevailed recently in our isles and the more serious Fire Ceremony of Central Australia, which tests endurance on the one hand, and the apparent contravention of a natural law on the other. Again, we must discount the popular reply that the hand can be rapidly plunged into molten metal and withdrawn without injury, for we do not happen to be concerned with such a brief exposure to heat. Once more, the theory of the application of some unknown chemical substance must be rejected, because, as we shall prove, there are certainly cases in which nothing of the kind is done. Moreover, science is acquainted with no substance—alum or diluted sulphuric acid, or the like—which will produce the result of preventing cauterisation.[6] Sir William Crookes, at least, is not familiar with any such resources of science. His evidence as to fire-handling by D. D. Home is familiar, and I understand that Mr. Podmore can only explain it away by an hypothesis of a trick played in a bad light, by means of an asbestos glove or some such transparent trick.[7] Perhaps he adds a little 'hallucination' on the part of the spectators. But asbestos and hallucination are out of the question in the cases which I am about to quote.

Home was, or feigned to be, in a state of trance when he performed with fire. The seeress of Lourdes, Bernadette, was also in religious contemplation when she permitted the flame of a candle to play through her clasped fingers (which were unscathed) for a timed quarter of an hour.[8] Some Indian devotees, again, aver that they 'meditate' on some divine being while passing over the glowing embers, and the Nistinares of Bulgaria, who dance in the fire, are described as being in a more or less abnormal mental condition. But even this condition is absent in the well-attested Raiatean and Fijian examples, in which also no kind of chemical preparation is employed. Finally, where savages are concerned, the hardness of the skins of their feet is dwelt upon, as in the Chinese case already quoted. But, first, the sole of the boot would be scorched in the circumstances, while their feet are not affected; next, the savages' feet were not leathery (so Dr. Hocken avers); thirdly, one of the Europeans who walked through the fire at Rarotonga declares that the soles of his own feet are peculiarly tender. Thus every known physical or conjectured psychical condition of immunity fails to meet the case, and we are left wholly without an ascertained, or a good conjectural, 'reason why' for the phenomena.

I shall begin with the most recent and the best authenticated cases, and work back in time, and in civilisation. Mr. Tregear, the well-known lexicographer of the Maori and the allied Mangarova languages, lately sent me the twenty-ninth number of 'The Journal of the Polynesian Society,' March 1899, Wellington, N.Z. Professors Max Müller and Sayce were Honorary Members of the Society, which studies Polynesian languages, customs, and conditions. Mr. Tregear attests the upright, truth-telling character of the British official, who is the narrator of his own experiment. As the journal is not widely circulated in England, I quote the whole of the brief report.

THE UMU-TI, OR FIRE-WALKING CEREMONY

BY COLONEL GUDGEON, BRITISH RESIDENT, RAROTONGA

[In this Journal, vol. ii p. 105, Miss Teuira Henry describes this ceremony as practised in Raiatea, of the Society group. We have lately received from Colonel Gudgeon the following account of his experiences in walking barefooted across the glowing hot stones of a native oven, made in Rarotonga by a man from Raiatea. Since the date of the paper quoted, it has come to light that the Maoris of New Zealand were equally acquainted with this ceremony, which was performed by their ancestors. On reading Colonel Gudgeon's account to some old chiefs of the Urewera tribe, they expressed no surprise, and said that their ancestors could also perform the ceremony, though it has long gone out of practice.—EDITORS.]

I must tell you that I have seen and gone through the fire ceremony of the Umu-ti.

The oven was lit at about dawn on the 20th of January, and I noticed that the stones were very large, as also were the logs that had been used in the oven for heating purposes.

About 2 P.M. we went to the oven and there found the tohunga (a Raiatea man) getting matters ready, and I told him that, as my feet were naturally tender, the stones should be levelled down a bit. He assented to this, and evidently he had intended to do so, for shortly after, the men with very long poles, that had hooks, began to level the stones flat in the oven, which was some 12 ft. in diameter. He then went with his disciple and pointed to two stones that were not hot, and instructed him the reason was that they had been taken from a marae, or sacred place.

He then unwound two bundles, which proved to be branches of a large-leaved Ti (or Dracæna) plucked, it is said, from two of these trees standing close together, and it is said that the initiated can on such occasions see the shadow of a woman with long hair, called te varua kino (evil spirit), standing between the trees. The right-hand branch is the first plucked, and it is said that the branches bend down to be plucked.