656 EVENING DISCOURSE. 



EVENING DISCOURSE. 



ON THE STUDY OF POPULAR SAYINGS. 



By Prof. Edward Westermarck. 

 Being the Frazer Lecture in Social Anthropology, 1928. 



{Abstract.) 



In the lecture I have been invited to deliver in honour of Sir James Frazer I shall 

 take the opportunity to emphasise the importance of his writings from a point of view 

 which is apt to be overshadowed by their more prominent merits as inexhaustible 

 mines of facts and as storehouses of far-reaching generalisations and brilliant theories. 

 When I set out to gain some personal experience of native customs and beliefs and 

 made Morocco my field of research, ' The Golden Bough ' drew my attention to many 

 facts that otherwise, in all probability, would have escaped my notice. It offered 

 suggestions and explanations, which were none the less valuable because they were 

 not always applicable to the particular data that came under my observation. And 

 it brought home to me the great lesson, never to rest content with recording the 

 mere external modes of native behaviour without endeavouring, so far as possible, 

 to find the ideas or sentiments underlying them. For this reason I desire to render 

 homage to my great teacher by stating some general results of my experience as a field- 

 anthropologist. 



It has been said to be a diflScult or hopeless task to try to discover why people 

 perform rites and ceremonies, that directly one approaches the underlying meaning 

 of rite or custom one meets only with uncertainty and vagueness. I cannot say that 

 this view is confirmed by my own observations in Morocco, where I generally found 

 the natives to have quite definite ideas about their rites. But the direct inquiry into . 

 these ideas is not the only way in which they may be ascertained. The most con- 

 vincing information is often obtained, not from what the natives say about their rites, 

 but from what they say at the moment when they perform them. To take a few 

 instances. That the fire-ceremonies practised in Morocco, as in Europe, on Midsummer 

 Day or on some other particular day of the year, are purificatory in intention is obvious 

 from the words which people utter when they leap over them or take their animals 

 over the ashes. The Moorish methods of covenanting, which always imply some 

 kind of bodily contact, for example, by the partaking of a common meal, derive their 

 force from the idea that both parties thereby expose themselves to each other's 

 conditional curses ; and the idea that food eaten in common embodies such a curse 

 is very clearly expressed in the imprecation addressed to a faithless participant. 

 These customs, and the sayings connected with them, have led me to believe that 

 the very similar methods — such as a sacrificial meal — used by the ancient Hebrews 

 in their covenanting with the Deity were intended, not, as has been supposed, to 

 establish communion, but to transfer conditional curses both to the men and their 

 god. That one idea underlying the Moorish custom of tying rags or clothing to some 

 object connected with a dead saint is to tie up the saint, and to keep him tied until 

 he renders the assistance asked for, is directly proved by words said on such occasions. 

 This has suggested to mo that some similar idea may perhaps be at the root of the 

 Latin word for religion, religio, if, as has been conjectured, this word is related to the 

 verb religare, ' to tie.' It might have implied, not that man was tied by his god, but 

 that the god was in the religious ritual tied by the man. 



While a saying uttered on the occasion when a rite is performed is apt to throw 

 light on the meaning of the rite, there are other sayings that can themselves be 

 explained only by the circumstances in which they are used. This is the case with 

 a large number of proverbs. It has been said that the chief ingredients which go to 



