H.—ANTHROPOLOGY 149 
THE ORIGIN OF THE TRADITIONAL NARRATIVE. 
I said at the beginning of this address that all forms of tradition, with 
the apparent exception of the traditional narrative, were rules of conduct, 
and I do not believe that the traditional narrative is really an exception 
at all. In my view all traditional narratives are, or once were, rules— 
rules for the performance of rites or ritual dramas. Every rite or drama 
necessarily consists of a sequence of incidents, and the account of such rite 
or drama is therefore necessarily in narrative form. Unlike historical 
events, the interest of which can seldom be more than academic, the 
account of these rites must be preserved, because on their correct per- 
formance is believed to depend the prosperity of the community, and can 
be preserved because, unlike historical events, which occur but once, and 
usually in the presence of but few, these rites are performed repeatedly, 
and in the presence of all. Many of these rites and these narratives are 
world-wide, or nearly so, but variations occur, because there is always a 
tendency to tighten up the ritual in times of adversity and slack off in 
times of prosperity, and the narrative, being an account of what has been 
done rather than what zs done, is usually a little different from the ritual. 
Finally, in many cases, the ritual ceases altogether to be performed, but 
the narrative has itself acquired sanctity, and may be passed on, neces- 
sarily with minor modifications, for many generations, until at last it is 
either written down or forgotten. 
In my view this represents, in brief, the history of every genuine tradi- 
tional narrative. I hope to make this view convincing by the performance 
of three tasks : the first is to show by illustration that there is no connec- 
tion between tradition and history ; the second is to show that the ritual 
drama has in fact played a large enough part in the life of mankind to 
account for the number and variety of the traditional narratives ; the third 
is to show that the features of these narratives can be explained, and can 
only be explained satisfactorily, as features of the ritual drama. It will 
first, however, be as well to deal with two forms of pseudo-tradition, the 
* family tradition ’ and the ‘ local tradition.’ 
‘ FaMILY TRADITION.’ 
There are in this country many families whose ‘ traditions ’ take them 
back to the time of the Norman Conquest, when their ancestors are 
alleged to have distinguished themselves either on the side of the Normans 
or of the Saxons. It can be said without fear of contradiction from those 
who have studied the subject that not one of these is a genuine tradition. 
All are the work of pedigree fakers, who have flourished from very early 
times, and there is not a word of truth in any of them. No English 
family can trace a genuine descent to the Saxons, and though there are a 
few families with a genuine Norman descent, this in no cases goes as far 
back as the eleventh century. Innumerable examples of these faked 
pedigrees and spurious traditions can be found in the works of Dr. Horace 
Round and Mr. Oswald Barron. Those who believe that a craving for 
historical accuracy is the ruling passion of the human race would no doubt 
suppose that all these families were very grateful to Dr. Round and 
