Custom and Myth | Page 8

us return to the example of the flint arrowheads. Everywhere
neolithic arrow-heads are pretty much alike. The cause of the
resemblance is no more than this, that men, with the same needs, the
same materials, and the same rude instruments, everywhere produced
the same kind of arrow-head. No hypothesis of interchange of ideas nor
of community of race is needed to explain the resemblance of form in
the missiles. Very early pottery in any region is, for the same causes,
like very early pottery in any other region. The same sort of similarity
was explained by the same resemblances in human nature, when we
touched on the identity of magical practices and of superstitious beliefs.
This method is fairly well established and orthodox when we deal with
usages and superstitious beliefs; but may we apply the same method
when we deal with myths?
Here a difficulty occurs. Mythologists, as a rule, are averse to the
method of folklore. They think it scientific to compare only the myths
of races which speak languages of the same family, and of races which
have, in historic times, been actually in proved contact with each other.
Thus, most mythologists hold it correct to compare Greek, Slavonic,
Celtic, and Indian stories, because Greeks, Slavs, Celts, and Hindoos
all speak languages of the same family. Again, they hold it correct to
compare Chaldaean and Greek myths, because the Greeks and the
Chaldaeans were brought into contact through the Phoenicians, and by
other intermediaries, such as the Hittites. But the same mythologists
will vow that it is unscientific to compare a Maori or a Hottentot or an
Eskimo myth with an Aryan story, because Maoris and Eskimo and
Hottentots do not speak languages akin to that of Greece, nor can we
show that the ancestors of Greeks, Maoris, Hottentots, and Eskimo
were ever in contact with each other in historical times.
Now the peculiarity of the method of folklore is that it will venture to
compare (with due caution and due examination of evidence) the myths
of the most widely severed races. Holding that myth is a product of the
early human fancy, working on the most rudimentary knowledge of the
outer world, the student of folklore thinks that differences of race do

not much affect the early mythopoeic faculty. He will not be surprised
if Greeks and Australian blacks are in the same tale.
In each case, he holds, all the circumstances of the case must be
examined and considered. For instance, when the Australians tell a
myth about the Pleiades very like the Greek myth of the Pleiades, we
must ask a number of questions. Is the Australian version authentic?
Can the people who told it have heard it from a European? If these
questions are answered so as to make it apparent that the Australian
Pleiad myth is of genuine native origin, we need not fly to the
conclusion that the Australians are a lost and forlorn branch of the
Aryan race. Two other hypotheses present themselves. First, the human
species is of unknown antiquity. In the moderate allowance of 250,000
years, there is time for stories to have wandered all round the world, as
the Aggry beads of Ashanti have probably crossed the continent from
Egypt, as the Asiatic jade (if Asiatic it be) has arrived in Swiss
lake-dwellings, as an African trade-cowry is said to have been found in
a Cornish barrow, as an Indian Ocean shell has been discovered in a
prehistoric bone-cave in Poland. This slow filtration of tales is not
absolutely out of the question. Two causes would especially help to
transmit myths. The first is slavery and slave-stealing, the second is the
habit of capturing brides from alien stocks, and the law which forbids
marriage with a woman of a man's own family. Slaves and captured
brides would bring their native legends among alien peoples.
But there is another possible way of explaining the resemblance
(granting that it is proved) of the Greek and Australian Pleiad myth.
The object of both myths is to account for the grouping and other
phenomena of the constellations. May not similar explanatory stories
have occurred to the ancestors of the Australians, and to the ancestors
of the Greeks, however remote their home, while they were still in the
savage condition? The best way to investigate this point is to collect all
known savage and civilised stellar myths, and see what points they
have in common. If they all agree in character, though the Greek tales
are full of grace, while those of the Australians or Brazilians are rude
enough, we may plausibly account for the similarity of myths, as we
accounted for the similarity of flint arrow-heads. The myths, like the

arrow-heads, resemble each other because they were originally framed
to meet the same