Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Sam W. and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net CUSTOM AND MYTH BY ANDREW LANG, M.A. HON. FELLOW OF MERTON COLLEGE OXFORD _NEW EDITION_ LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 1893 _All rights reserved_ TO E. B. TYLOR AUTHOR OF 'PRIMITIVE CULTURE' THESE STUDIES OF THE OLDEST STORIES Are Dedicated PREFACE. Since the first publication of _Custom and Myth_, many other works have appeared, dealing on the same principles with matters of belief, fable and ritual. Were the book to be re-written, numerous fresh pieces of evidence might be adduced in support of its conclusions. In Mr. Frazer's _Golden Bough_ (Macmillan) the student will find a carefully conceived argument, and a large collection of testimonies, bearing on the wide diffusion, among savages and civilised peoples, of ancient rites and ancient ideas. The works of Mannhardt have practically been introduced to the English reader by Mr. Frazer, with much new matter of his own. The main topics are the worship of human gods and the superstitions connected with vegetation. To push a theory too far is the common temptation of mythologists, and perhaps Mr. Frazer's cornstalk does rather threaten to overshadow the whole earth and exclude the light of sun and sky. But the reader, whatever his opinions, will find great pleasure and profit in Mr. Frazer's remarkable studies, and in those of Mannhardt, which were unknown to myself when I wrote _Custom and Myth_. In Miss Harrison's volume on Athenian Myths the student will find the ætiological theory (namely, that many myths were invented to explain obscure points of ritual) applied in a number of classical instances. A singularly ingenious study of Roman myths is presented in Mr. Jevons's edition of Plutarch's _Romaine Questions_ (Nutt). These are recent instances of the use of the 'anthropological' method, first firmly established by Mr. Tylor's _Primitive Culture_, and now holding its own as a recognised instrument in the study of the historical development of the imagination. In Rosscher's _Ausführliches Lexikon_ of Greek and Roman mythology, the earlier method of the philologists is usually adopted, and the work, still in course of publication, is most useful for its recondite learning. These notes are meant for the guidance of any reader who may care to push his studies further than the sketches of the present volume.