nolls, and the custom of distributing yearly upon WhitSunday pieces of bread and cheese to the congregation at church, are connected by tradition with a right obtained of some Earl of Hereford, then lord of the forest of Dean, at the instance of his lady, 'upon the same hard terms that Lady Godiva obtained the privilege for the citizens of Coventry.'

Thus, then, we have as the basis for considering these singular survivals—

(a) The Coventry legend and ceremony, kept up as municipal custom, and recorded as early as the thirteenth century by Roger of Wendover.

(b) The Southam ceremony, kept up as local custom, unaccompanied by any legend as to origin.

(c) The St. Briavels legend, not recorded until towards the end of the eighteenth century, and accompanied by a totally different custom.

This variation in the local methods of keeping up this remarkable survival is one of some significance in the consideration of its origin,2 and I now go on to compare it with an early ceremony in Britain, as noted by Pliny: Both matrons and girls,' says this authority, among the people of Britain are in the habit of staining their body all over with woad when taking part in the performance of certain sacred rites; rivalling thereby the swarthy hue of the Ethiopians, they go in a state of

1 Rudder, History of Gloucestershire, 1779, p. 307; Gomme, Gentleman's Magazine Library-Manners and Customs, p. 230; Hartland op. cit. p. 78.

2 I have enlarged upon this in Folklore, i. 12.

nature.' Between the customs and legends of modern folklore and the ancient practice of the Britons there is intimate connection, and the parallel thus afforded to the Indian festival seems complete. The attendance of votaries at a religious festival in a state of nudity has also been kept up in another form. At Stirling, on one of the early days of May, boys of ten and twelve years old divest themselves of clothing, and in a state of nudity run round certain natural or artificial circles. Formerly the rounded summit of Demyat, an eminence in the Ochil range, was a favourite scene of this strange pastime, but for many years it has been performed at the King's Knot in Stirling, an octagonal mound in the Royal gardens. The performances are not infrequently repeated at Midsummer and Lammas.2 The fact that in this instance the practice is continued only by 'boys of ten and twelve years old' shows that we have here one of the last stages of an old rite before its final abolition. It would have been difficult, perhaps, to attach much importance to this example as a survival of a rude prehistoric cult unless we had previously discussed the Godiva forms of it. But anyone acquainted with the frequent change of personnel in the execution of ceremonies sanctioned only by the force of local tradition will have little difficulty in conceding that the

1 Nat. Hist. lib. xxii. cap. 1. I think the passage in the poem of Dionysius Periegeta about the rites of the Amnites may be compared, the women being 'decked in the dark-leaved ivy's clustering buds.' See Mon. Hist. Brit. p. xvii.

2 Rogers, Social Life in Scotland, iii. 240.

Scottish custom has a place in the series of folklore items which connects the Godiva ceremony with the religious rites of the ancient Britons as recorded by Pliny, thus cementing the close parallel which the whole bears to the Indian village festival.

I think it will be admitted that these parallels are sufficiently obvious to suggest that they tell the same story both in India and Europe. They do not, by actual proof, belong to the Aryans of India; they do not, therefore, by legitimate conclusion, belong to the Aryans of Europe.

But it may be argued that customs which in India are parts of one whole cannot be compared with customs in Europe which are often isolated and sometimes associated with other customs. The argument will not hold good if the conditions of survivals in folklore already set forth are duly considered. But it can be met by the test of evidence. Some of the customs which in South India form a part of the festival of the village goddess are in other parts of India and in other countries independent customs, or associated with other surroundings altogether, thus substantiating my suggestion that this village festival of India has been welded together by the influence of races antagonistic to each other which have been compelled to live together sideby side for a long period.

41

CHAPTER II1

THE MYTHIC INFLUENCE OF A CONQUERED RACE

It appears, then, that the influence of a conquered race does not die out so soon as the conquerors are established. Their religious customs and ritual are still observed under the new régime, and in some cases, as in India, very little, if any, attempt is made to disguise their indigenous origin. Another influence exerted by the conquered over the conquerors is more subtle. It is not the adoption or extension of existing customs and beliefs, or the evolution of a new stage in custom and belief in consequence of the amalgamation. It is the creation of an entirely new influence, based on the fear which the conquered have succeeded in creating in the minds of the conquerors.

Has anyone attempted to realise the effects of a permanent residence of a civilised people amidst a lower civilisation, the members of which are cruel, crafty, and unscrupulous? In some regions of fiction, such as Kingsley's.' Hereward' and Lytton's 'Harold,' a sort of picture has been drawn-a picture drawn and coloured, however, in times far separated from those which wit

nessed the events. Fennimore Cooper has attempted the task with better materials in his stories of the white man and his relations to the Red Indians. But by far the truest accounts are to be found in the dry records of official history. One such record has been transferred to the archives of the Anthropological Institute,' and it would be described by any ordinary reader as a record of the doings of demons.

Of course this phraseology is figurative. But figures of speech very often survive from the figures of the ancient mythic conceptions of actual events, and though we should simply style the doings of the Tasmanians fighting against the Whites demoniacal as an appropriate figure of speech, people of a lower culture, and our own peasantry a few years back, would believe them to be demoniacal in the literal sense of that term. No one will doubt that there is much in savage warfare to suggest these ideas, and when it is remembered that savage warfare is waged by one tribe against another simply because they are strangers to each other-that not to be a member of a tribe is to be an enemy-it will not be surprising that the condition of hostility has produced its share of superstition.

It is the hostility between races, not the hostility between tribes of the same race, that has produced the most marked form of superstition; and it may be put down as one of the axioms of our science that the

1 Journ. Anthrop. Inst. iii. 9; cf. Nilsson's Primitive Inhabitants of Scandinavia, p. 176.