Current Superstitions | Page 3

the first considerable printed collection made in America of superstitions belonging to English-speaking folk. Numerous as are the items here presented, only a part of the matter is included, the collector having preferred to reserve for separate presentation superstitions connected with animal and plant lore, material which would require a space about equal to that here occupied. Again, the present gathering by no means pretends to completeness; while certain departments may be adequately represented, other sections exhibit scarce more than a gleaning. The collection, therefore, will be looked on as a first essay, subject to revision and enlargement.
The designations of locality will suffice to show the width of the area from which information has been obtained, as well as the degree of similarity which appears in the folk-lore of different regions belonging to this wide territory. Here and there may be observed items showing a measure of originality; a new superstition may have arisen, or an ancient one been modified, according to the fancy of an individual, in consequence of defective memory, or in virtue of misapprehension. But on the whole such peculiarities make no figure, nor does recent immigration play any important part. Almost the entire body of this tradition belongs to the English stock; it is the English population which, together with the language, has imposed on other elements of American life its polity, society, ethics, and tradition.
This relation is not an isolated phenomenon; on the contrary, it is entirely in the line of experience. Language is the most important factor which determines usage and influences character; this result is effected through the literature, oral or written, with which, in virtue of the possession of a particular speech, any given people is brought into contact. In this process race goes for little. Borrowing the tongue of a superior race, a subject population receives also the songs, tales, habits, inclinations which go with the speech; human nature, in all times essentially imitative, copies qualities which are united with presumed superiority; to this process not even racial hostility is a bar; assimilation and transmission go on in spite of hatred directed against the persons who are the object of the imitation; such a process may be observed in the recent history of Ireland.
Reception of new ideas, however, though promoted by the possession of a common language constituting a means of exchange, is not limited by its absence; on the contrary, in all historical time among contiguous races takes place a transference of ideas which dislike and even warfare do not prevent. Here the law seems to be that the lower culture has relatively little effect on the higher with which it is in contact, while the superior civilization speedily influences an inferior one. Nor is the effect confined to the higher classes of any given society; beginning with these, the new knowledge descends through all ranks, and everywhere carries its transforming influence. What is true of written literature in a less degree is true of oral; songs and tales, rites and customs, beliefs and superstitions, diffuse themselves from the civilization which happens to be in fashion, with a rapidity greater or less according to the interworking of a multitude of modifying forces. In the other direction, from the lower culture to the higher, exchange is slow, albeit likely to be promoted, in certain cases, by peculiar conditions, such as the deliberate literary choice which seeks opportunity for archaistic representation, or the respect which an advanced race may have for the magical ability of a simple tribe, believed to be nearer to nature, and therefore more likely to remain in communion with natural forces.
But these exceptional effects are of small relative moment; the general principle, continually at work, in the main controls the result. In regard to the themes of stories especially, the many tongues and dialects of Western Europe offer scarcely more variation than will be often found to exist among the versions of the same tale which may be discovered in a single canton. The spirit of the language, already mentioned as constituting the element of nationality, taking possession of this common stock of knowledge, moulds its precise form and sentiment in accordance with its own character; it is in details, rather than in outlines, that racial differences are found to exist; this principle applies in a considerable degree in the field of folk-tales, even between cultures so opposite as those of Western Europe and Western Africa.
In the case of superstitions, the diffusive process, though less rapid or effectual than in tales, is nevertheless continually active; in Europe, at least, a similar identity will probably be discovered. But in this category the problem of separating what is general, because human, from that which is common, because diffused, always a complicated task, will be found more difficult than in literary