Folklore as an Historical ScienceGomme, George Laurence
History
Folklore as an Historical Science
Gomme, George Laurence
Folklore
From any one of these facts of primitive life we arrive at the central
incident in the story of Catskin: the father could marry his daughter
without specially shocking the society of the primitive world, simply
because, according to primitive ideas, father and daughter, as we call
her, were not related.
We now arrive at the second incident--the running away of Catskin.
This again is a very early form of marriage custom. Women of primitive
times often objected to the forced marriages, and they expressed their
objection very often by running away. In the instance of Catskin the
running away was successful, as we all know; but in most instances the
unwilling bride was captured and forced to surrender. Mr. Farrer, in
his _Primitive Manners and Customs_, quite clears the ground for the
refutation of an argument that might be applied if we did not know the
customs of primitive society. It might be asked, why did Catskin run
away if the custom was a usual one? For the same reason, we answer,
that the women of savage society often do run away--objection to the
marriage.[81]
Thus we have to note that the two principal features of our ordinary
Catskin story are explainable by a reference to primitive manners and
customs; and it seems to me much easier and much more reasonable to
thus explain the origin of the Catskin story, than first of all to
create a "lovely myth," as the mythologists would undoubtedly have a
right to call it, of the Sun pursuing the Dawn, and then to say that
the Catskin story is simply a relation of this myth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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