SURVIVALS OF SUN-WORSHIP. 249 



SURVIVALS OF SUN-WORSHIP. 



By FANNY D. BEEGEN. 



WHEN happy boys and girls sing, " Here we go round the 

 mulberry bush," or "Oats, peas, and barley grow," and 

 gracefully step time to the words as they circle round and round, 

 they dream not that in these and other ring games they often 

 keep alive survivals of ancient sacred ceremonies. When some 

 careful housewife tells her daughter or servant to be sure to stir 

 cake or beat eggs in the same direction in which she begins, 

 neither the matron nor her assistant has the faintest notion that 

 this rather general rule in domestic affairs may be the survival of 

 some very old religious rite. In this brief paper no attempt will 

 be made to trace definite relationships between trivial customs of 

 to-day and their ancient prototypes, or to draw any serious conclu- 

 sions from the few miscellaneous illustrations that I have here 

 and there picked up of the dextral and the sinistral circuits. I 

 simply add them for what they may be worth to the mass of 

 material on the subject that is gradually being accumulated by 

 ethnologists. All sorts of unexpected survivals of old religious 

 observances constantly appear in common everyday life. They 

 are but degraded, tattered remnants of what ages ago were digni- 

 fied, sacred rites. Considering how English-speaking folk have 

 inherited influences from a great variety of sun-worshiping peo- 

 ples, it would not be strange if there were found among them 

 many outcrops of a worship that has been, and still is, in some 

 form or other extremely widespread among primitive peoples. 

 The early trading and colonizing Phoenicians, the Druids, the 

 North German and Scandinavian invaders, all have left traces of 

 their religious customs confusedly intermingled with Christianity. 

 In dealing with the origination of actions or customs in which is 

 involved what Dr. Fewkes calls the ceremonial circuit,* it is diffi- 

 cult to determine the value of the factor, whether it be large or 

 small, that is due to the greater convenience of moving in a right- 

 handed direction. Occasionally the dextral circuit is followed in 

 cases in which it is evidently less convenient than the sinistral 

 would be, as in dealing cards in all ordinary games. Also who 

 can tell just how large or small an element may depend upon the 

 tradition that the left hand in itself is uncanny without reference 

 to the sun's apparent motion ? There certainly is a general feel- 

 ing of wide distribution that to be left-handed is unfortunate. 

 Dr. Fewkes's careful and valuable researches among the Moki 

 Indians of Arizona, however, show without doubt that thev in 



* Journal of American Folklore, vol. v, No. 16, p. 33. 

 vol. xlvii. 21 



