Excerpts from Myth, Ritual, and Religion (1887) by Andrew Lang
“… we shall be able to detect the survival of the savage ideas with least modification, and the persistence of the savage myths with least change, among the classes of a civilised population which have shared least in the general advance. These classes are, first, the rustic peoples, dwelling far from cities and schools, on heaths or by the sea; second, the conservative local priesthoods, who retain the more crude and ancient myths of the local gods and heroes after these have been modified or rejected by the purer sense of philosophers and national poets.
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The persistence of the myths after their significance had become obsolete is accounted for by the well-known conservatism of the religious sentiment—a conservatism noticed even by Eusebius. “In later days, when they became ashamed of the religious beliefs of their ancestors, they invented private and respectful interpretations, each to suit himself. For no one dared to shake the ancestral beliefs, as they honoured at a very high rate the sacredness and antiquity of old associations, and of the teaching they had received in childhood.”” [I, 36-37]
“First we have that nebulous and confused frame of mind to which all things, animate or inanimate, human, animal, vegetable, or inorganic, seem on the same level of life, passion, and reason. The savage draws no hard and fast line between himself and the things in the world. He regards himself as literally akin to animals and plants and heavenly bodies; he attributes sex and procreative powers even to stones and rocks, and he assigns human speech and human feelings to sun and moon and stars and wind, no less than to beasts, birds, and fishes.” [I, 47]
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“It is not unusual to assign a ghost to all objects, animate or inanimate, and the spirit or strength of a man is frequently regarded as something separable, or something with a definite locality in the body. A man's strength and spirit may reside in his kidney fat, in his heart, in a lock of his hair, or may even be stored by him in some separate receptacle. Very frequently a man is held capable of detaching his soul from his body, and letting it roam about on his business, sometimes in the form of a bird or other animal.” [I, 48]
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““Les sauvages se persuadent que non seulement les hommes et les autres animaux, mais aussi que toutes les autres choses sont animées." Again, “Ils tiennent les poissons raisonnables, comme aussi les cerfs." [12] In the Solomon Islands Mr. Romilly sailed with an old chief who used violent language to the waves when they threatened to dash over the boat, and “old Takki's exhortations were successful.” Waitz discovers the same attitude towards the animals among the Negroes. Man, in their opinion, is by no means a separate sort of person on the summit of nature and high above the beasts...” [I, 55]
“The Christian Quiches of Guatemala believe that each of them has a beast as his friend and protector, just as in the Highlands “the dog is the friend of the Maclaines.” When the Finns, in their epic poem the Kalewala, have killed a bear, they implore the animal to forgive them… The Red Men of North America have a tradition showing how it is that the bear does not die… It is a most curious fact that the natives of Australia tell a similar tale of their "native bear." “He did not die” when attacked by men. In Australia it is a great offence to skin the native bear, just as on a part of the west coast of Ireland, where seals are superstitiously regarded, the people cannot be bribed to skin them. In New Caledonia, when a child tries to kill a lizard, the men warn him to “beware of killing his own ancestor.” The Zulus spare to destroy a certain species of serpents, believed to be the spirits of kinsmen…” [I, 57]
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“… a savage's belief that beasts are on his own level is so literal, that he actually makes blood-covenants with the lower animals, as he does with men, mingling his gore with theirs, or smearing both together on a stone; l while to bury dead animals with sacred rites is as usual among the Bedouins and Malagasies today as in ancient Egypt or Attica. In the same way the Ainos of Japan, who regard the bear as a kinsman, sacrifice a bear sacramentally once a year… In Lagarde's Reliquiae Juris Ecclesiastici Antiquissimae [Leipzig, 1856] a similar Syrian covenant of kinship with insects is described. About 700 CE, when a Syrian garden was infested by caterpillars, the maidens were assembled, and one caterpillar was caught. Then one of the virgins was “made its mother,” and the creature was buried with due lamentations. The “mother” was then brought to the spot where the pests were, her companions bewailed her, and the caterpillars perished like their chosen kinsman, but without extorting revenge.” [I, 139]
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