Folklore as an Historical ScienceGomme, George Laurence
History
Folklore as an Historical Science
Gomme, George Laurence
Folklore
I shall not take up all these points on the present occasion,
especially as they have in all essentials appeared in the study to
which I have referred; but as an example of the scattering of totem
beliefs I will refer to the well-known passage in Cæsar (lib. v. cap.
xii.), from which we learn that certain people in Britain were
forbidden to eat the hare, the cock, or the goose, and see whether
this does not receive its only explanation by reference to the totemic
restriction against using the totem for food. Mr. Elton, with this
passage in his mind, notices that "there were certain restrictions
among the Britons and ancient Irish, by which particular nations or
tribes were forbidden to kill or eat certain kinds of animals;" and he
goes on to suggest that "it seems reasonable to connect the rule of
abstaining from certain kinds of food with the superstitious belief
that the tribes were descended from the animals from which their names
and crests or badges were derived."[405]
Let us see whether this reasonable conjecture holds good. The most
famous example is that of Cuchulainn, the celebrated Irish chieftain,
whose name means the hound of Culain. It is said that he might not eat
of the flesh of the dog, and he came by his death after transgressing
this totemistic taboo. The words of the manuscript known as the Book
of Leinster are singularly significant in their illustration of this
view. "And one of the things that Cúchulainn was bound not to do was
going to a cooking hearth and consuming the food [_i.e._ the dog];
and another of the things that he must not do was eating his
namesake's flesh."[406] Diarmaid, whose name seems to be continued in
the current popular Irish name for pig (Darby), was intimately
associated with that animal, and his life depended on the life of the
boar.[407] These examples are so much to the point that we may examine
the cases mentioned by Cæsar from the same standard.
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