FOLK-LORE IN JEST AND EARNEST.*

MR. ANDREW LANG is so delightful a writer in his lighter vein that one is apt to forget that he is also one of our • Magic and Religion. By Andrew Lang. London Longman' and Co. [IN. &I. net.), soundest and most trustworthy students of anthropology. J a his stew book, however, he handles some of the most vexed luestions of the modern mythologist in a light and airy fashion that almost masks his heavy batteries till the moment when they pour in a destructive fire. The work—much of which has already appeared in the magazines—is largely a .criticism of Mr. J. G. Frazer's position in the second edition -of The Golden. Bough, with special reference to Mr. Frazer's theory of the origin of religion, and of the belief in Christ's divinity. Mr. Lang, like the rest of us, regards the industry and scholarship of Mr. Frazer with all the respect that they deserve :— "No writer," he says, "is so erudite, and few are so exact in

their references. While venturing to differ from Mr. Frazer, I must often, as it were, make use of his own ammunition in this war. Let me say sincerely that I am not pitting my knowledge -or industry against hie. I rather represent the student who has an interest in these subjects, and peruses 'The Golden Bough' not as • the general reader' does, but with some care and with some verification of the citations and sources."

Mr. Lang for once poses chiefly as the destructive critic,—the sceptical" man of the world" who admits all the evidence, but -demurs, in the light of his acquaintance with human nature, to some of the conclusions that are drawn from it. In writing thus he has probably done excellent service to the cause of truth. Most of us, as he says of himself, were " hypnotised " by the first, and even the second, reading of Mr. Frazer's great book ; one felt so small and ignorant—though in_ terested—in the presence of its overwhelming array of facts laboriously discovered and skilfully marshalled, that one scarcely dared to suggest that some of the hypotheses based upon them were not only flimsy, but top-heavy,—a veritable array of Alpine snow-bridges buttressing one another, which might "let in" the unwary climber who ventured on them in broad sunshine, though they were strong enough at the dawning. Mr. Lang has awoke from that pleasant obsession, and blows a clear note of challenge at the door of Mr. Frazer's enchanted castle. We entirely agree with much of his criticism, especially with that which is levelled at Mr. Frazer's central hypothesis, which finds the origin of the general acceptance of Christ's divinity in an identification of Him with the divine victim sacrificed annually by the Jews in imitation of an ancient Babylonian rite. A great deal of Mr. Lang's criticism of this amazing theory is simply "chaff" of the most joyous and irresponsible kind; but it is convincing enough. It is true that his argument from human nature is a -somewhat dangerous and double-edged weapon. Mr. Frazer's theory, it will be remembered, involves the hypothesis—among others—that there was a time when the King of Babylon was sacrificed annually. After an indefinite time the actual sacrifice was avoided by the appointment of a substitute,—at first a son -431. other relative of the King, and ultimately a criminal. Here is a portion of Mr. Lang's light-hearted criticism :— " Mr. Frazer overestimates human ambition. We wonder that Moray, Lennox, and Morton pined to be Regents of Scotland. Yet at least they had a faint chance of escaping. death within the year. But the Rings of Babylon had no chance; they were sacrificed annually. Mr. Frazer asks us to suppose that any men of royal race, anywhere, men free and noble, not captives, not condemned criminals, would accept a crown, followed, in 365 days, by a death of fire! A child knows that no men have

ever acted in this way No government could be earned on in the circumstances imagined by Mr. Frazer. The country would not stand it. No individual king would ever accept the crown. Human beings never had such a preposterous institution."

This is a good a priori criticism, and when taken in con- junction with Mr. Lang's exposition of the ffimsy support that Mr. Frazer has to offer for his hypothesis of the Baby- lonian Royal sacrifice it is justified. But the method is a somewhat dangerous one,—as Mr. Lang knows as well as any-

body. It has been condemned once for all by Mr. Spencer in a well-known passage :—

"If, going beyond our own society and our own time, we observe what has happened among other races and among the earlier generations of our own race, we meet, at every step, workings-out of human nature utterly unlike those which we assume when making political forecasts. Who, generalising the -experiences of his daily life, would suppose that men, to please the gods, would swing for hours from hooks drawn through the muscles of their backs, or let their nails grow through the palms of. their clenched hands, or roll over and over hundreds of aides to visit a shrine ? Who would have thought it possible that a public sentiment and a private feeling might be as in 'China, where a criminal can buy a substitute to be executed in

his stead; the substitute's family having the money ?

Who could have imagined that robber-kings and bandit-barons, with vassals to match, would, generation after generation. have traversed all Europe through hardships and dangers to risk their lives in getting possession of the reputed burial-place of one whose injunction was to turn the left cheek when the right was smitten ?"

It is needless to multiply instances. Mr. Lang's argu- ment from experience would go far to disprove some of the best established facts of history. We hear it used every day to throw doubt on the latest marvels of science by

the unscientific. Sometimes it triumphs ; often, as in the case of the Röntgen rays and wireless telegraphy, it is entirely wrong. If it is ever justified, however, it is in a case like the present, where a purely hypothetical con- jecture can best be attacked by a jest. Nobody could do that better than Mr. Lang, who first shows categorically how very vague indeed the fabric of the theory is, and then stabs it with a spear as sharp and bright almost as that of Voltaire himself, who excelled in the use of this controversial weapon.

But Mr. Lang is not merely a destructive critic. He here gives us one delightfully characteristic contribution to folk- lore in the shape of a rival hypothesis of the "Golden

Bough" itself. Mr. Frazer, as he points out, has very slender warrant for identifying Virgirs Golden Bough, which served

as a passport to hell, with the branch that a claimant for the

priesthood of the Arician grove had to pluck before he could challenge the "ghastly priest" to fight for his life and

dignity. Setting that apart, Mr. Lang thinks that there is no need to assume any but a most natural origin for the custom.

The grove of which the "ghastly priest" called himself King was, to begin with, a sanctuary for fugitive slaves—as Rome

is said to have been at first—for which there are plenty of

precedents all over the world. The slave who reached it would be safe from his master's pursuit as long as he stayed within the shadow of the sanctuary tree. This is easy enough to understand and paralleL But why had the fugitive to pluck a branch of the sacred tree, and then to fight his pre- decessor a. outranc3 I That is the difficulty, which Mr. Lang solver in his inimitable fashion :— "An unlimited asylum of fugitive slaves was an inconvenient neighbour to Aricia. Hence the asylum was at fast limited to one fugitive slave at a time. . . . . 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 was to act as garde

champitre to one certain 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. If the bough was mistletoe, and if the fugitive slave, like the Druids in Pliny, 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 . . . . . The bough was broken, then, as a taunt, a challenge, and a warning. 'You cant keep your old tree, make room for a better man ! ' That is the spirit of the business."

This is very plausible and charming, but it leaves an uneasy

feeling in the mind that the new-fangled science of the inter- pretation of folk-lore and mythology, which was expected to throw so much light on the origins of human history and the

beginning of civilisation, cannot be good for much if one of its chief exponents can so easily " rot " the most essential

theories of another. So much must always depend on a col- lection of parallels (which meet much sooner than in Euclid) that rationalism of this kind will "go to the root of any" anthropology. In attacking Mr. Frazer's main hypothesis Mr. Lang has struck a dangerous blow at the claims of anthropology —so far as it rests on myth and folk-lore--to be a science at all. It is, he says, hut a nascent science at best ; and any work

that helps it to shed the swaddling-clothes of superstition is welcome. But it is rather difficult to see how, if Mr. Lanes explanation of the Arician story is meant seriously, there can ever be any science of folk-lore at all. We should like to know if Mr. Lang meant to go as far as that : we rather doubt it. But his " common-sense " method is very useful, always

entertaining, as be handles it, and in such an admirable essay as that on "First-fruits and Taboos" it is also extremely helpful. In the essays on Mr. Tylor's " loan-gods " hypothesis and on the "cup and ring" marks„ and in the very interesting account of fire-walking which concludes this volume, we find the much more serious student of anthropology who made his appearance in that epoch-making book on Myth, Ritual, and Religion.