S.A. NATIVES AND PRIMITIVE FOLK CUSTOM. 407 



not, handle not" instead of a reasonable service. Hence I 

 suggested that there need not be anything essentially wrong in 

 the heathen members of a family partaking of their social and 

 ceremonial feasts, while it might yet be a duty for Christians 

 to protest against the abuses connected with them by refraining 

 trom all participation in them ; but ideally we should strive to 

 purify these customs, if possible, and retain them. I may say 

 that I am giving voice to a growing consensus of missionary 

 opinion as v;:ell as following St. Patrick's example with the 

 bards and St. Gregory's advice to St. Augustine the Apostle 

 of England (supposing the letter in Bede to be genuine) that 

 he should hallow the feasts and fanes of the heathen rather than 

 destrov them. I pointed out to my elders that we Europeans 

 still preserve immemorial heathen customs like that of the 

 Yule log or of eating pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. I 

 illustrated their frequent social dithculties with heathen by 

 asking what an early Christian in a Roman family would do, 

 when the head of it poured at table his thanksgiving libation to 

 the gods. St. Paul, probably, would not have him dishonour 

 the religion of his people by protesting or leaving the table : 

 he would, I imagine, offer his own grace simultaneously, 

 giving a fuller meaning to the old familiar rite. This illustration 

 of mine elicited from our deacon the exclamation, " Why I 

 always flick out from the gourd some of my leting before 

 drinking, but I never knew it was a sacrifice," while an old 

 man, on the other hand, testified that it really was a libation 

 to ancestral souls, and was also used with grain. Here we 

 have among our natives the idea of first-fruits rendered to the 

 god and sanctifying our eating, the meal and drink offering so 

 familiar in the Bible and in the ancient religions of Europe. 



I began my paper by recalling this passage with our elders at 

 Modderpoort, in order to show how intimately connected is the 

 subject of our paper with problems of to-day, and how survivals 

 which are becoming unintelligible to the native correspond with 

 and explain survivals from primitive European life, which to 

 most of us have been meaningless. Having illustrated this 

 point, let us review somewhat more methodically this paral- 

 lelism of peoples geographically so remote. And I propose to 

 begin at the end ; I mean with burial, as furnishing the chief 

 or only documentary evidence of custom in primitive Europe. 

 These sepulchral documents, so to' speak, go back far into 

 geological time. Whatever be the date of man's appearance, 

 whatever the authenticity of Miocene flints as man-made, from 

 the glacial period and on, we have increasing evidence in 

 sepulchral finds of the methods of burial, which can be inter- 

 preted to illustrate the belief and ideas of early races. The 

 Palaeolithic people of Western Europe, which provides us with 

 most of our proof, were buried lying on the side with knees 

 drawn up. Some have explained this remarkable position as 

 that of the foetus before birth, and there is a fitness in second 

 childhood returning the outworn bodv to Mother Earth "as it 

 was." The idea is a beautiful one, but seems perhaps rather 

 far gone for primitive intelligences. 



