Note 30.1 — Chapter VIII · THE LIFE-TOKEN IN TALE AND CUSTOM.

This broad distinction is natural in a story the plot of which is made to depend upon it. It is easy to understand, however, that the distinction could not be maintained in any corresponding practical superstition. To assume, for instance—what is quite possible—that the lives of the monks of Saint Maurice were actually believed to be bound up with those of the fishes in the fishpond of the monastery, how could it be determined whether a fish’s death caused the death of one of the brethren or only betokened it? In the course of the following pages we shall meet with many cases of sympathy between a child and a tree or other object. The child’s death and the withering of the tree, or some other corresponding change, are believed to be coincident. Experience will very soon show that sometimes the injury may happen to the child, sometimes to the life-token. If the superstition survive, it can only do so by supposing that both alike are vulnerable, and that the consequences of an injury to either are mysteriously transmitted to the other.30.1 Even in a story, however, the distinction between the Life-token and the “External Soul,” as Mr. Frazer calls it, is not always maintained. In the tale of Prince Lionheart, referred to at the beginning of this chapter, the hero derives his origin from a barleycorn. His life-token, multiplied in a lavish oriental manner by three, consists of three barley-plants. It is noteworthy that he directs that every one of them shall be carefully tended, for so long as they flourished he would be alive and well, and, on the contrary, if they drooped, misfortune would be at hand: implying that his life and prosperity were dependent upon them. His external soul proper is a sword. When its hilt comes off, his head falls, and at the same instant the ear of each of the barley-plants snaps. Other stories may easily be recalled where a plant as the hero’s life-token is commended to the special care of the friend or kinsman left behind, as if injury to the plant would affect its absent owner. We shall, accordingly, be justified in treating the Life-token and the External Soul as almost always one and the same thing in belief and custom.