Aug. 10, 1883,]' 



» KNOV/LEDGE ♦ 



83 



itself in thought and act. If even now it is matter of 

 popular belief in the wilds of Norway that Finns and 

 Lapps, who from remote times have passed as skilful 

 witches and wizards, can at pleasure assume the shape 

 of bears, the common saying, according to Dr. 

 Dasent, about an unusually daring and savage beast 

 being, "that can be no Christian bear," we may not be 

 surprised that lower races still ascribe power of inter- 

 change to man and brute. The werewolf superstition 

 is extant among the North- Western Indians, but free from 

 those diabolical features which characterised it in medi.-eval 

 times among ourselves. It takes its place in barbaric 

 myth generally, and although it may have repellant or 

 cruel elements, it was never blended with belief in the 

 demoniacal. The Ahts say that men go into the mountains 

 to seek their manitou (that is, the personal deity, generally 

 the first animal seen by the native in the dream produced 

 by his fasting on reaching manhood), and, mixing with 

 wolves, are after a time changed into these creatures. 

 Although the illustration bears more upon what has 

 to be said concerning the barbaric belief in animal- 

 ancestors, it has some reference to the matter in 

 hand to cite the custom among the Tonkanays, a wild and 

 unruly tribe in Texas, of celebrating their origin by a 

 grand annual dance. One of them, naked as he was born, 

 is burifed in the earth, then the others, clothed in wolf- 

 skins, walk over him, sniif around him, howl in wolfish 

 style, and then dig him up with their nails. The lead- 

 ing wolf solemnly places a bow and arrow in his hands, 

 and, to his inquiry as to what he must do for a living, 

 advises him " to do as the wolves do — rob, kill, and rove 

 from place to place, never cultivating the soil." Dr. 

 Brinton, in quoting the above from Schoolcraft, refers to 

 a similar custom among the ancient dwellers on Mount 

 Soracte. 



As in past times among ourselves, so in times present 

 among races such as the foregoing, their wizards and 

 shamans are believed to have power to turn themselves as 

 they choose into beasts, birds, or reptiles. By whatever 

 name these professional impostors are known, whether as 

 medicine-men, or, as in Cherokee, by the high-sounding 

 title of " possessors of the divine fire," they have traded, 

 and wherever credulity or darkest ignorance abide, still 

 trade, on the fears and fancies of their fellows by disguising 

 themselves in voice and gait and covering as the animal 

 which they pretend to be. Among races believing in 

 transformation such tricks have free course, and the more 

 dexter'ous the sorcerer who could play bear's antics in a 

 bear's skin proved himself in throwing olf the disguise and 

 appearing suddenly as a man, the greater his success, and 

 he more firmly grounded the belief. 



The whole subject, although presented here only in the 

 barest outline, would not be fitly dismissed without some 

 reference to the survival of the primitive belief in men- 

 animals in the world-wide stories known as Beast-fables, 

 in which animals act and talk like human beings. When 

 to us all Nature was wonderland, and among our play- 

 fellows were the four-footed, the birds, and the fishes ; 

 when in fireside tale and rhyme they spoke our language 

 and lived that free life which we then sliarcd and can 

 never share again, the feeling of kinship to which the 

 old faljlos gave expression may have checked many a wanton 

 act, and, if we learned it not fully then, at least have 

 taken the lesson to heart since. 



Never to blond our pleasure or our prido 

 With sorrow of tho meanest thing that lives. 



And then those " Fables " of -.SEsop, even with tlie tedious 

 drawback of the " moral," as powder beneath the jam, did 



they not lighten for us in school-days the dark passages 

 through our Valpy (for the omniscient Dr. William Smith 

 was not then the tyro's dread), and again give us com- 

 munion with the fowl of the air and the beast of the 

 field ? Now, our mature thought may interest itself in 

 following the beast-myths to the source whence Babrius 

 and Ph;edrus, knowing not its springhead and antiquity, 

 drew their vivid presentments of the living world, and 

 find in the storied East the wellspring that fed the ima- 

 gination of youngsters thousands of years ago. With 

 some authorities the Egyptians have the credit of first 

 inventing the beast-fable, Vjut among them, as among every 

 other advanced race, such stories are the remains of an 

 earlier deposit ; relics of a primitive philosophy, in which 

 wisdom, and skill, and cunning are no monopoly of man's. 

 The fondness of the negro races, whose traditions are not 

 limited to South and Central Africa, for such fables is well 

 known, as witness the tales of which "Uncle Remus" is 

 a type, and it is strikingly illustrated in the history of the 

 Vai tribe, who having, partly through contact with whites, 

 elaborated a system of writing, made the beast-fable their 

 earliest essay in composition.* 



In former papers, the evidence in support of the common 

 ancestry of the languages spoken by the leading peoples 

 in Europe, and by such important historical races in Asia 

 as the Hindu and the Persian, has been summarised. 

 That evidence is likewise conclusive, not only as to the 

 origin of the myths on which the great Indo-European 

 epics are founded, but also as to the possession by the 

 several clans of a common stock of folk-lore and folk-tale, 

 in which, of course, the beast-fable is included, these being 

 the relics Ln didactic or humorous guise of that serious 

 philosophy concerning the life of man and beast amongst 

 the barbaric ancestors of the Indo-Europeans, upon which 

 stress enough has been laid. 



Even if the common origin could be disproved, the 

 evidence would merely be shifted from local to general 

 foundations, because the uniform attitude of mind before 

 the same phenomena would be proven ; but the resemblances 

 are too minute in detail to be explained by a theory of in- 

 dependent creation of the tales where now we find them. 

 The likenesses are many ; the unlikenesses are few, being 

 the result of local colouring, historical fact blended with 

 the fiction, popular belief, and superstition, all affected by 

 the skill of the professional story-teller. As in the nu- 

 merous variants of the familiar Cinderella, Beauty and the 

 Beast, Punchkin, and the like, the same fairy prince or 

 princess, the same wicked magician and clever, versatile 

 Boots peep through, disclosing the near relationship of 

 Hindu nursery tales to the folk-tales of Norway and the 

 Highlands, of Iceland and Ceylon, of Persia and Serbia, 

 of Russia and the lands washed by the Mediterranean. In 

 the venerable collection of " Buddhist Birth Stories," now 

 in course of translation by Dr. Rhys Davids,! and to which 

 he has prefaced an interesting introduction on the source 

 and migration of folk-tales, we are face to face with many 

 a fable familiar to us in the " .Esop " of our school-days. 

 There is the story of the Ass in the Lion's Skin, not in 

 which, as ^ilsop has it, the beast dressed liimself, but which 

 the hawker put on him to frighten the thieves who would 

 steal his goods. Left one day to browse in a field whilst 

 his master refreshed himself at an inn, some N\atchmen saw 

 him, and, raising hue and cry, brought out the \illagers, 

 armed with their rude implements. The ass, fearing death, 



* C£. Mahaffy'a " Prolegomena to Aijoient History,'" p. 392. 



t A'ol. I. Triibner & Co. See also, for some valuable illnstrations 

 from early English and other sources, au article by Kev. Dr. Morris, 

 in " Contomp. Kov.," May, 18S1. 



