Custom and Myth | Page 7

Demeter and
Persephone! However, the days of that old school of antiquarianism are
numbered. To return to the Peruvian harvest home:--
They take a certaine portion of the most fruitefull of the Mays that
growes in their farmes, the which they put in a certaine granary which
they do calle Pirua, with certaine ceremonies, watching three nightes;
they put this Mays in the richest garments they have, and, being thus
wrapped and dressed, they worship this Pirua, and hold it in great
veneration, saying it is the Mother of the Mays of their inheritances,
and that by this means the Mays augments and is preserved. In this
moneth they make a particular sacrifice, and the witches demand of this
Pirua, 'if it hath strength sufficient to continue until the next yeare,' and
if it answers 'no,' then they carry this Mays to the farme to burne,
whence they brought it, according to every man's power, then they
make another Pirua, with the same ceremonies, saying that they renue it,
to the ende that the seede of the Mays may not perish.
The idea that the maize can speak need not surprise us; the Mexican
held much the same belief, according to Sahagun:--
It was thought that if some grains of maize fell on the ground, he who
saw them lying there was bound to lift them, wherein, if he failed, he
harmed the maize, which plained itself of him to God, saying, 'Lord,
punish this man, who saw me fallen and raised me not again; punish
him with famine, that he may learn not to hold me in dishonour.'
Well, in all this affair of the Scotch kernababy, and the Peruvian Mama
cora, we need no explanation beyond the common simple ideas of
human nature. We are not obliged to hold, either that the Peruvians and
Scotch are akin by blood, nor that, at some forgotten time, they met
each other, and borrowed each other's superstitions. Again, when we
find Odysseus sacrificing a black sheep to the dead, {20} and when we
read that the Ovahereroes in South Africa also appease with a black
sheep the spirits of the departed, we do not feel it necessary to hint that
the Ovahereroes are of Greek descent, or have borrowed their ritual

from the Greeks. The connection between the colour black, and
mourning for the dead, is natural and almost universal.
Examples like these might be adduced in any number. We might show
how, in magic, negroes of Barbadoes make clay effigies of their
enemies, and pierce them, just as Greeks did in Plato's time, or the men
of Accad in remotest antiquity. We might remark the Australian black
putting sharp bits of quartz in the tracks of an enemy who has gone by,
that the enemy may be lamed; and we might point to Boris Godunof
forbidding the same practice among the Russians. We might watch
Scotch, and Australians, and Jews, and French, and Aztecs spreading
dust round the body of a dead man, that the footprints of his ghost, or
of other ghosts, may be detected next morning. We might point to a
similar device in a modern novel, where the presence of a ghost is
suspected, as proof of the similar workings of the Australian mind and
of the mind of Mrs. Riddell. We shall later turn to ancient Greece, and
show how the serpent-dances, the habit of smearing the body with clay,
and other odd rites of the mysteries, were common to Hellenic religion,
and to the religion of African, Australian, and American tribes.
Now, with regard to all these strange usages, what is the method of
folklore? The method is, when an apparently irrational and anomalous
custom is found in any country, to look for a country where a similar
practice is found, and where the practice is no longer irrational and
anomalous, but in harmony with the manners and ideas of the people
among whom it prevails. That Greeks should dance about in their
mysteries with harmless serpents in their hands looks quite
unintelligible. When a wild tribe of Red Indians does the same thing, as
a trial of courage, with real rattlesnakes, we understand the Red Man's
motives, and may conjecture that similar motives once existed among
the ancestors of the Greeks. Our method, then, is to compare the
seemingly meaningless customs or manners of civilised races with the
similar customs and manners which exist among the uncivilised and
still retain their meaning. It is not necessary for comparison of this sort
that the uncivilised and the civilised race should be of the same stock,
nor need we prove that they were ever in contact with each other.
Similar conditions of mind produce similar practices, apart from

identity of race, or borrowing of ideas and manners.
Let