Rumanian Bird and Beast Stories Rendered into English. Anonymous
our disposal allow us to follow it much further and to arrive at conclusions differing from those of Tylor. From the moment that we find in Europe similar beast tales to those found among primitive peoples in other parts of the world, we are confronted by a new problem. We may recognise the same spiritual agency at work: we may see the same action of the mind, asking everywhere for an explanation of the phenomena from beast and bird, from sky and sea. Thus far the minds of all the nations run on parallel lines. The differentiation begins with the answer, and here, then, the problem sets in. How many nations give the same answer, and in so doing form, as it were, a group by themselves? How old is this or that answer or the tale that contains it? And what is the form in which it is given? Is it a fable or has it a religious colouring? In endeavouring to reply to these queries we find ourselves face to face with the problems of indigenous character, primitive origin, independent evolution and question of survival. We are thus brought face to face with yet another theory—the theory of survivals—the most important of all, which sways the trend of the study of modern folk-lore. I must deal with it here at some greater length. I mean, of course, the theory that sees in every manifestation of the popular spirit, in every story, in every ballad or song, a survival from hoary antiquity, a remnant of prehistoric times, to which the people have clung with a marvellous tenacity, although they have entirely forgotten its meaning. Out of an unconscious antiquarian weakness they are supposed to have preserved every fossil even if and when it had become burdensome to them. But it must not be forgotten that the people retain only those practices and beliefs by means of which they hope to obtain health, wealth and power, and they will take care not to jeopardise such benefits by any neglect. So long as these results are expected, the people will cling tenaciously to the beliefs which promise them the greater gifts. It is not impossible that such beliefs, being too deeply rooted, might survive local political changes.
But in order to survive, two conditions are essential, continuity of place and continuity of ethnical unity. The religious continuity is also an important condition, though not by any means so essential. The clash of two or more religious doctrines causes on the one hand the destruction of the official system of religious ceremonies and practices, and on the other drives to the bottom that mass of ceremonies from the observance of which benefits to health and wealth are expected. In the moment when the belief in their efficacy has gone they disappear without leaving a trace. Very little, if anything, survives. It is a fallacy to believe, as is now the fashion, that without such continuity any real survival can take place. This theory has been carried to extreme lengths, without the slightest justification. It all rests on finely spun hypotheses in which time and space have entirely disappeared.
No connecting link has been brought forward to bind the present to the past. However plausible some aspects of the “vegetation god” may appear, one must remember the essential fact, that there is now not a single nation in Europe living on the soil where such practices as the slaying of an annual king god has been practised, if, indeed, they have ever been practised, beyond a very strictly limited area in Asia Minor and possibly in Sicily or Italy. With whom could such practices survive, for example, in Bulgaria or even in Thrace? It is known that the population there has changed its character many times, even within the last eight hundred years. There is such a medley of races, some old, some new, that it would be impossible to expect survivals from the Pelasgian or Dacian past. Nor would they have anything in common. The Rumanians of Latin origin are certainly not the oldest inhabitants of Rumania. If, then, each of these ethnical unities had separate practices or, to come nearer to our subject, separate tales and stories marked with its own individuality, it might perhaps be argued that these stories and popular beliefs are survivals from prehistoric times, remnants of a past long forgotten, embodying a folk-lore and popular psychology which date back to remote antiquity. None of these nations, and, in fact, none of the modern nations of Europe, reach back to any extreme antiquity, nor are they homogeneous in their ethnical character nor the descendants of the autochthonous inhabitants. There may be a few rare strains of other blood in the modern admixture, but not of any decisive character, certainly it is not strong enough to have preserved any survivals.
True, many of the modern practices are no more of yesterday than these tales and stories are, but again, they are certainly not so old as a modern school of thought endeavours to make out. Comparatively modern nations, often alien to the soil which they inhabit, none of them of a pure unmixed origin, cannot have retained beliefs, tales, etc., of which their forefathers knew nothing. They could not have laid stress on things which had disappeared with the nations whom their successors or victors had destroyed. If, then, we find that these nations of diverse origins and of diverse times possess a certain stock of folk-lore in common, it follows naturally that they must have obtained it in common at a certain definite period, when in spite of their ethnical and possibly political differences they were all subjected together to one pervading influence. A great spiritual force moulded them at one and the same time, and this produced one common result, which, in spite of its genetic unity, would have allowed a certain latitude for individual development. If, as I assume, it was the all-pervading influence of religious sects which stretched from far East to extreme West and embraced all the cultured nations of Europe, impressing them with the same seal—a certain popularly modified Christianity embellished with legends and tales appealing to the imagination, containing a strong didactic and ethical strain, propounding a new solution of the world’s problem suited to the understanding of the people, accounting satisfactorily for the evil in the world, warding off the effects of these spirits of evil—then it is small wonder that their teaching sunk deeper into the heart of the people and brought about that surprising spiritual unification in the religion of the masses which survives in folk-lore.
They would thus date from more or less the same period, when the whole of Europe felt the influence of teachings which lasted two to three centuries at least, quite long enough to leave indelible traces.
It is not to be denied that among these tales some may belong to an anterior period. The newer facts had in some cases been grafted on older ones. Some remnants of ancient myths had survived the first process of forcible Christianisation. But only there where ancient paganism can be shown to have flourished when this new wave of proselytism set in, only there might one be able to discover such traces. These are the local incidents, the local colouring, which give to each tale its own popular character without changing its substance. Such process of assimilation is akin to the other before mentioned, viz. the substitution of the European fauna for Asiatic or Indian animals. Though references to ancient Greek myths occur in these stories, yet in spite of that the Rumanian versions approximate more closely to the later Byzantine than the ancient classical forms. The transformation sets in practically where the Middle Ages part from antiquity. Here is yet another proof for the more recent phase of this popular literature.
A grave danger threatens the scientific character of folk-lore, if a wrong method of investigation be persisted in much longer. I refer to the system of haphazard comparisons arising out of the view that everything done and every rite kept by the folk must of necessity be a survival from extreme antiquity and belong to a period anterior to our modern civilization—a fossil from the age of man’s childhood embedded in layers of more recent date. For proof of this theory parallels are sought and found among primitive nations, or those who we believe have not yet left the rude stage of primitive culture. If, then, something is found among them which resembles closely or remotely any of the customs, tales, and beliefs, in our own midst, we are convinced that these customs, tales or beliefs are really remnants of an older stage, through which the modern nations have passed before they reached the present stage of development, and which they have cherished and kept unchanged throughout the ages. The history of comparative philology offers the best analogy for the demonstration of the futility of such reasoning. Nothing contributed so much to make the study of comparative philology a laughing-stock as this endeavour to build up theories of the origin of the language on such arbitrary foundations.
How deceptive such haphazard similarities can be is best demonstrated by the endeavours to derive all the European languages from the Hebrew. This was believed to have been the original language which Adam spoke. Nothing more natural, then, than to trace all the languages back to the Hebrew, which moreover was a holy language. Much ingenuity and immense learning were spent—nay wasted—for centuries in this undertaking. The most trifling incident, the most superficial identity in sound or meaning was looked upon as complete