July 



1888.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



195 



Fitri of mankind ; that one should always invoke a blessing 

 on a sneeze, itself a relic of the well-nigh universal barbaric 

 belief that the sneeze indicates the expulsion of a demon, 

 whose return the invocation prevents ; that whooping-cough 

 can be cured by passing the suflerer under a donkey's bell_y, 

 or by popping a trout's head in its mouth, or putting a hair 

 of the patient's Lead between two slices of bread-and-butter 

 and giving it to a dog ; that toothache can be cured by a 

 chaim written in a liible, as in Africa the sick native drinks 

 the water in which a board with written characters on it 

 has been washed ; that rheumatism can be cured by con- 

 firmation, or cramp prevented by placing one's shoes toe to 

 heel ; that the hair of a dog will cure a dog's bite, a very 

 widespread superstition, from China to Iceland, for the 

 Edda commends it ; that the pining away of a child is due 

 to the evil eye ; that the idiot child is a fairy's changeling, 

 of the existence of which Dr. Martin Luther was as firmly 

 convinced as was John Wesley of the existence of witches. 

 "Eight years ago," said the famous doctor, "there was a 

 changeling in Dessau, which I, Dr. IMartin Luther, have 

 both seen and touched . . . and which I would have had 

 thrown into tlie water at the ri.sk of being a homicide. But 

 the Elector of Saxony wouldn't follow my advice. I then 

 said they ought to cau.se a paternoster to be said in the 

 church, that God would take the devil away from them. 

 This was done daily, and the said changeling died two years 

 after." 



Such superstitions as are illustrated by the foregoing 

 examples, which could be multiplied indefinitely, are expli- 

 cable only on the ground that they are survivals of a barbaric 

 past, which have remained persistent throughout the lower 

 culture in these islands from prehistoric times. They have, 

 with differences of detail incident to local characteristics, 

 their parallels in all barbaric thought, and are the product 

 of an age when the races dwelling in Europe were in the 

 animistic stage of belief That these superstitions remain 

 among us despite the good Providence which has left no 

 parish without a parson and a squire, onlj- shows how the 

 apathy and impotence of these time-honoured institutions 

 have been conserving forces to which the Church, in incor- 

 porating into itself what it found too deeply-seated to 

 destroy, and with which it had, without knowing it, much 

 in common, has added her influence and .sanction. The 

 main conclusion to which the evidence leads is that the 

 history of races and of their religions in Britain is con- 

 tinuous from the earliest Neolithic times to this day : that 

 the non-Aryan — Iberian, Euskarian, or by whatever name 

 we call them — are not extinct; and that the great body of 

 superstitious beliefs and customs extant witness to stages of 

 spiritual development among the peoples of these islands 

 corresponding exactly to those of every other people who 

 have emerged from fetichisms to those higher animistic 

 conceptions which yet form the backbone of current theo- 

 logies from " China to Peru." 



In our desire to give prominence to the facts which 

 wai'rant that conclusion, we have left ourselves no space to 

 enlarge upon the copious and valuable analyses of the Welsh 

 and Irish heroic legends, in which Professor Rhys discovers 

 traces of Celtic deities, both major and minor, and of Celtic 

 mythology. The process of transmutation, sometimes in- 

 volving the degradation which the gods of an older faith 

 undergo, has ample illustration here, and it is in the identi- 

 fication of the ancient divinities with the kings and heroes 

 of romantic legends common to both Wales and Ireland 

 that the ingenious and cautious scholarship of Professor 

 Rhys is especially manifest. 



While not committing himself to that wholesale rejection 

 of the philological method of interpieting myths. Professor 

 Rhys honestly admits that his views and methods have under- 



gone material change, and he further wins our confidence 

 by his recantation of that " Aryan heresy " of which 

 Professor Max Miiller seems likely soon to find himself the 

 sole defender, and by his frank acceptance of the method 

 which compares savage myths and rites with th.e traces of 

 like absurdities and practices imbedded in the literatures 

 and theologies of civilised races. In the concluding lecture, 

 after justifying the dethronement of Sanskrit from its over- 

 exaggerated place as the special representative of the Aryan 

 parent-speech, and expressing his agreement with the 

 revived theory of the Northern European origin of the 

 Aryans,* he concludes his learned book with the following 

 summary of what he regards as the earliest creed of the 

 Celts :— 



In the beginning Eartb and Heaven were great world-giants, and 

 they were the parents of a numerous offspring ; hut the Heaven in 

 tlioEC days lay upon the Eartli, and their childicn, crowded between 

 them, were unhappy and without light, as was also their mother. 

 So she and they took counsel together against Heaven, and one ot 

 his sons, who was bolder than the others, undertook shamefully to 

 mutilate Heaven— nay, he and his brothers stayed not their hands 

 till they had cut the world-giant, their father, into many pieces.f 

 Out of his skull they made the firmament, and the spilling o£ the 

 blood of his body caused a great flood, which, as it settled in the 

 hollows ot the earth, made up the sea. J 



Some of the children of Earth and Heaven were born bright 

 beings or gods, who mostly loved the light and the upper air; and 

 some were giants or Titans, who were of a darker and glromier hue. 

 These latter hated the gods, and the gods bated them. The daring 

 son of earth who began the mutilation ot the world-giant was one 

 of the Titans, and he became their king ; but the gods did not wish 

 him to rule over them and their abode, so he was driven from his 

 throne by his youngest son, who was bom a god. The king, beaten 

 in battle, sailed away to other parts of hisiealm; and after much 

 wandering on the sea, he was at last received in the country of the 

 happy departed, whence he was afterwards thought to bless the 

 farmer's toil and to help man in other ways. 



"When the great flood caused by the mangling of the world-giant 

 took place, all men were drowned save a single pair saved in a ship. 

 He who made and owned the ship was not a man, nor did the gods 

 own him as one of them, but he was a giant or Titan who was 

 kindly disposed towards the race ; .nnd when he had safely landed 

 them where they were to dwell, he went away to the same place 

 as the dethroned king. For he was of his kith and kin, unless 

 perhaps those are to be followed who thought the two were but one 

 and the .same person, and that person no other than the ruler of the 

 departed himself, the god of all beginning and all end. Viewed 

 through the medium of the latter, he appeared to be the demon of 

 darkness and horror and death, ever busily adding to the number of 

 his victims ; but through the former he was seen to be the first 

 father and great parent of all, so it was ever a matter of piety to 

 reckon darkness before light, the night before the day, and winter 

 before summer. 



The new king of the gods was of a passing brilliant nature, so 

 they called him Bright and Day and Father Sky. He was a mighty 

 warrior, but he had terrible foes, wlio forced him to take part in many 

 a fearful struggle. When he fought in summer he always triumphed, 

 but he fared ill in the winter c-nflicts. On one occasion he was 

 badly wounded, and would never have recovered his former strength 

 and form but for the timely aid of a man who was a cunning leech, 

 and on another he and the other gcds would have been hard beset 

 liad they not taken care to secure the help of the Sun-hero. This 

 last was' not a god, but the youthful son of a mortal. There was, 

 however, no spearman anywhere to equal him, and his father was 

 fo wise and crafty that he had forced the gods to treat mankind 

 far better than they had before been wont to do. For the good 

 things bestowed on man were often begrudged by the gods, and 

 most of all by the owners of the wealth of the nether world and the 

 land of the happy dead. They hated this mortal, so kind to his 

 race, and made him suffer untold pain and torture, but he always 

 succeeded in the end in all that he set his mind on achieving, as 

 when, for example, he cheated them of the dog that was to be the 

 hunter s friend and servant ; also of the other animals he stole from 



* Cf. Professor Ehys's excellent discussion of this question in 

 his article on " Race Theories and European Politics " in the jVrw 

 Princeton Setiew, .Tanuary 1888. 



t Vid. Knowledge, April 1888, p. 1.16. 



X Cf. Grimm, "T. Mythol.," 559; and Vigfusson and Powell's 

 " Corpus Poet. Boreale," i. 64. 



