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The Clyde Mystery, a Study in Forgeries and Folklore, a non-fiction book by Andrew Lang |
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XIII - METHOD OF INQUIRY |
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_ XIII - METHOD OF INQUIRY I remarked, early in this tract, that "with due deference, and with doubt, I think Dr. Munro's methods capable of modification." I meant that I prefer, unlike Dr. Munro in this case, to extend the archaeological gaze beyond the limits of things already known to occur in the Scottish area which--by the way--must contain many relics still unknown. I "Let Observation with extensive view to discover whether objects analogous to those under dispute occur anywhere among early races of the past or present. This kind of wide comparison is the method of Anthropology. Thus Prof. Rhys and others find so very archaic an institution as the reckoning of descent in the female line,--inheritance going through the Mother,--among the Picts of Scotland, and they even find traces of totemism, an institution already outworn among several of the naked tribes of Australia, who reckon descent in the male line. Races do not, in fact, advance on a straight and unbroken highway of progress. You find that the Kurnai of Australia are more civilised, as regards the evolution of the modern Family, than were the Picts who built crannogs and dug canoes, and cultivated the soil, and had domesticated animals, and used iron, all of them things that the Kurnai never dreamed of doing. As to traces of Totemism in Scotland and Ireland, I am not persuaded by Professor Rhys that they occur, and are attested by Celtic legends about the connection of men and kinships with animals, and by personal and kinship names derived from animals. The question is very obscure. {63} But as the topic of Totemism has been introduced, I may say that many of the mysterious archaic markings on rocks, and decorations of implements, in other countries, are certainly known to be a kind of shorthand design of the totem animal. Thus a circle, whence proceeds a line ending in a triple fork, represents the raven totem in North America: another design, to our eyes meaningless, stands for the wolf totem; a third design, a set of bands on a spear shaft, does duty for the gerfalcon totem, and so on. {64a} Equivalent marks, such as spirals, and tracks of emu's feet, occur on sacred stones found round the graves of Australian blacks on the Darling River. They were associated with rites which the oldest blacks decline to explain. The markings are understood to be totemic. Occasionally they are linear, as in Ogam writing. {64b} Any one who is interested in the subject of the origin, in certain places, of the patterns, may turn to Mr. Haddon's Evolution of Art . {64c} Mr. Haddon shows how the Portuguese pattern of horizontal triangles is, in the art of the uncivilised natives of Brazil, meant to represent bats. {64d} A cross, dotted, within a circle, is directly derived, through several stages, from a representation of an alligator. {64e} We cannot say whether or not the same pattern, found at Dumbuck, in Central Australia, and in tropical America, arose in the "schematising" of the same object in nature, in all three regions, or not. Without direct evidence, we cannot assign a meaning to the patterns.
{64a} Bureau of Ethnology's Report , 1896-97, p. 324. See also the essay on "Indian Pictographs," Report of Bureau , for 1888-89. {64b} MSS. of Mr. Mullen, of Bourke, N.S.W., and of Mr. Charles Lang. {64c} Scott, London, 1895. {64d} Op. cit. p. 178. {64e} Op. cit. p. 172. _ |
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