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Title: Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1

Author: Andrew Lang

Release Date: November 12, 2009 [EBook #2832]

Last Updated: November 26, 2012

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION, VOL. 1 ***

Produced by Donald Lainson, and David Widger

MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION

Volume One

By Andrew Lang

CONTENTS

PREFACE TO NEW IMPRESSION.

PREFACE TO NEW EDITION.

MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION CHAPTER I.   SYSTEMS OF MYTHOLOGY

CHAPTER II.   NEW SYSTEM PROPOSED

CHAPTER III.   THE MENTAL CONDITION OF SAVAGES—CONFUSION WITH NATURE—TOTEMISM

CHAPTER IV.   THE MENTAL CONDITION OF SAVAGES—MAGIC—METAMORPHOSIS—METAPHYSIC—PSYCHOLOGY

CHAPTER V.   NATURE MYTHS

CHAPTER VI.   NON-ARYAN MYTHS OF THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD AND OF MAN

CHAPTER VII.   INDO-ARYAN MYTHS—SOURCES OF EVIDENCE

CHAPTER VIII.   INDIAN MYTHS OF THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD AND OF MAN

CHAPTER IX.   GREEK MYTHS OF THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD AND MAN

CHAPTER X.   GREEK COSMOGONIC MYTHS

CHAPTER XI.   SAVAGE DIVINE MYTHS

DETAILED CONTENTS

PREFACE TO NEW IMPRESSION.

PREFACE TO NEW EDITION.

CHAPTER I.—SYSTEMS OF MYTHOLOGY.

Definitions of religion—Contradictory evidence—"Belief in

spiritual beings"—Objection to Mr. Tylor's definition—Definition

as regards this argument—Problem: the contradiction between

religion and myth—Two human moods—Examples—Case of Greece—

Ancient mythologists—Criticism by Eusebius—Modern mythological

systems—Mr. Max Muller—Mannhardt.

CHAPTER II.—NEW SYSTEM PROPOSED.

Chapter I. recapitulated—Proposal of a new method: Science of

comparative or historical study of man—Anticipated in part by

Eusebius, Fontenelle, De Brosses, Spencer (of C. C. C., Cambridge),

and Mannhardt—Science of Tylor—Object of inquiry: to find

condition of human intellect in which marvels of myth are parts of

practical everyday belief—This is the savage state—Savages

described—The wild element of myth a survival from the savage

state—Advantages of this method—Partly accounts for wide

DIFFUSION as well as ORIGIN of myths—Connected with general

theory of evolution—Puzzling example of myth of the water-

swallower—Professor Tiele's criticism of the method—

Objections to method, and answer to these—See Appendix B.

CHAPTER III.—THE MENTAL CONDITION OF SAVAGES—CONFUSION WITH

NATURE—TOTEMISM.

The mental condition of savages the basis of the irrational element

in myth—Characteristics of that condition: (1) Confusion of all

things in an equality of presumed animation and intelligence;

(2) Belief in sorcery; (3) Spiritualism; (4) Curiosity; (5) Easy

credulity and mental indolence—The curiosity is satisfied, thanks

to the credulity, by myths in answer to all inquiries—Evidence for

this—Mr. Tylor's opinion—Mr. Im Thurn—Jesuit missionaries'

Relations—Examples of confusion between men, plants, beasts and

other natural objects—Reports of travellers—Evidence from

institution of totemism—Definition of totemism—Totemism in

Australia, Africa, America, the Oceanic Islands, India, North Asia—

Conclusions: Totemism being found so widely distributed, is a proof

of the existence of that savage mental condition in which no line

is drawn between men and the other things in the world. This

confusion is one of the characteristics of myth in all races.

CHAPTER IV.—THE MENTAL CONDITION OF SAVAGES—MAGIC—

METAMORPHOSIS—METAPHYSIC—PSYCHOLOGY.

Claims of sorcerers—Savage scientific speculation—Theory of

causation—Credulity, except as to new religious ideas—"Post hoc,

ergo propter hoc"—Fundamental ideas of magic—Examples:

incantations, ghosts, spirits—Evidence of rank and other

institutions in proof of confusions of mind exhibited in magical

beliefs.

CHAPTER V.—NATURE MYTHS.

Savage fancy, curiosity and credulity illustrated in nature myths—

In these all phenomena are explained by belief in the general

animation of everything, combined with belief in metamorphosis—Sun

myths, Asian, Australian, African, Melanesian, Indian, Californian,

Brazilian, Maori, Samoan—Moon myths, Australian, Muysca, Mexican,

Zulu, Macassar, Greenland, Piute, Malay—Thunder myths—Greek and

Aryan sun and moon myths—Star myths—Myths, savage and civilised,

of animals, accounting for their marks and habits—Examples of

custom of claiming blood kinship with lower animals—Myths of

various plants and trees—Myths of stones, and of metamorphosis

into stones, Greek, Australian and American—The whole natural

philosophy of savages expressed in myths, and survives in folk-lore

and classical poetry; and legends of metamorphosis.

CHAPTER VI.—NON-ARYAN MYTHS OF THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD AND OF MAN.

Confusions of myth—Various origins of man and of things—Myths of

Australia, Andaman Islands, Bushmen, Ovaherero, Namaquas, Zulus,

Hurons, Iroquois, Diggers, Navajoes, Winnebagoes, Chaldaeans,

Thlinkeets, Pacific Islanders, Maoris, Aztecs, Peruvians—

Similarity of ideas pervading all those peoples in various

conditions of society and culture.

CHAPTER VII.—INDO-ARYAN MYTHS—SOURCES OF EVIDENCE.

Authorities—Vedas—Brahmanas—Social condition of Vedic India—

Arts—Ranks—War—Vedic fetishism—Ancestor worship—Date of Rig-

Veda Hymns doubtful—Obscurity of the Hymns—Difficulty of

interpreting the real character of Veda—Not primitive but

sacerdotal—The moral purity not innocence but refinement.

CHAPTER VIII.—INDIAN MYTHS OF THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD AND OF MAN.

Comparison of Vedic and savage myths—The metaphysical Vedic

account of the beginning of things—Opposite and savage fable of

world made out of fragments of a man—Discussion of this hymn—

Absurdities of Brahmanas—Prajapati, a Vedic Unkulunkulu or Qat—

Evolutionary myths—Marriage of heaven and earth—Myths of Puranas,

their savage parallels—Most savage myths are repeated in Brahmanas.

CHAPTER IX.—GREEK MYTHS OF THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD AND MAN.

The Greeks practically civilised when we first meet them in Homer—

Their mythology, however, is full of repulsive features—The

hypothesis that many of these are savage survivals—Are there other

examples of such survival in Greek life and institutions?—Greek

opinion was constant that the race had been savage—Illustrations

of savage survival from Greek law of homicide, from magic,

religion, human sacrifice, religious art, traces of totemism, and

from the mysteries—Conclusion: that savage survival may also be

expected in Greek myths.

CHAPTER X.—GREEK COSMOGONIC MYTHS.

Nature of the evidence—Traditions of origin of the world and man—

Homeric, Hesiodic and Orphic myths—Later evidence of historians,

dramatists, commentators—The Homeric story comparatively pure—The

story in Hesiod, and its savage analogues—The explanations of the

myth of Cronus, modern and ancient—The Orphic cosmogony—Phanes

and Prajapati—Greek myths of the origin of man—Their savage

analogues.

CHAPTER XI.—SAVAGE DIVINE MYTHS.

The origin of a belief in GOD beyond the ken of history and of

speculation—Sketch of conjectural theories—Two elements in all

beliefs, whether of backward or civilised races—The Mythical and

the Religious—These may be coeval, or either may be older than the

other—Difficulty of study—The current anthropological theory—

Stated objections to the theory—Gods and spirits—Suggestion that

savage religion is borrowed from Europeans—Reply to Mr. Tylor's

arguments on this head—The morality of savages.

PREFACE TO NEW IMPRESSION.

When this book first appeared (1886), the philological school of interpretation of religion and myth, being then still powerful in England, was criticised and opposed by the author. In Science, as on the Turkish throne of old, Amurath to Amurath succeeds; the philological theories of religion and myth have now yielded to anthropological methods. The centre of the anthropological position was the ghost theory of Mr. Herbert Spencer, the Animistic theory of Mr. E. R. Tylor, according to whom the propitiation of ancestral and other spirits leads to polytheism, and thence to monotheism. In the second edition (1901) of this work the author argued that the belief in a relatively supreme being, anthropomorphic was as old as, and might be even older, than animistic religion. This theory he exhibited at greater length, and with a larger collection of evidence, in his Making of Religion.

Since 1901, a great deal of fresh testimony as to what Mr. Howitt styles the All Father in savage and barbaric religions has accrued. As regards this being in Africa, the reader may consult the volumes of the New Series of the Journal of the Anthropological Institute, which are full of African evidence, not, as yet, discussed, to my knowledge, by any writer on the History of Religion. As late as Man, for July, 1906, No. 66, Mr. Parkinson published interesting Yoruba legends about Oleron, the maker and father of men, and Oro, the Master of the Bull Roarer.

From Australia, we have Mr. Howitt's account of the All Father in his Native Tribes of South-East Australia, with the account of the All Father of the Central Australian tribe, the Kaitish, in North Central Tribes of Australia, by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen (1904), also The Euahlayi Tribe, by Mrs. Langley Parker (1906). These masterly books are indispensable to all students of the subject, while, in Messrs. Spencer and Gillen's work cited, and in their earlier Native Tribes of Central Australia, we are introduced to savages who offer an elaborate animistic theory, and are said to show no traces of the All Father belief.

The books of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen also present much evidence as to a previously unknown form of totemism, in which the totem is not hereditary, and does not regulate marriage. This prevails among the Arunta nation, and the Kaitish tribe. In the opinion of Mr. Spencer (Report Australian Association for Advancement of Science, 1904) and of Mr. J. G. Frazer (Fortnightly Review, September, 1905), this is the earliest surviving form of totemism, and Mr. Frazer suggests an animistic origin for the institution. I have criticised these views in The Secret of the Totem (1905), and proposed a different solution of the problem. (See also Primitive and Advanced Totemism in Journal of the Anthropological Institute, July, 1906.) In the works mentioned will be found references to other sources of information as to these questions, which are still sub judice. Mrs. Bates, who has been studying the hitherto almost unknown tribes of Western Australia, promises a book on their beliefs and institutions, and Mr. N. W. Thomas is engaged on a volume on Australian institutions. In this place the author can only direct attention to these novel sources, and to the promised third edition of Mr. Frazer's The Golden Bough.

A. L.

PREFACE TO NEW EDITION.

The original edition of Myth, Ritual and Religion, published in 1887, has long been out of print. In revising the book I have brought it into line with the ideas expressed in the second part of my Making of Religion (1898) and have excised certain passages which, as the book first appeared, were inconsistent with its main thesis. In some cases the original passages are retained in notes, to show the nature of the development of the author's opinions. A fragment or two of controversy has been deleted, and chapters xi. and xii., on the religion of the lowest races, have been entirely rewritten, on the strength of more recent or earlier information lately acquired. The gist of the book as it stands now and as it originally stood is contained in the following lines from the preface of 1887: While the attempt is made to show that the wilder features of myth survive from, or were borrowed from, or were imitated from the ideas of people in the savage condition of thought, the existence—even among savages—of comparatively pure, if inarticulate, religious beliefs is insisted on throughout. To that opinion I adhere, and I trust that it is now expressed with more consistency than in the first edition. I have seen reason, more and more, to doubt the validity of the ghost theory, or animistic hypothesis, as explanatory of the whole fabric of religion; and I present arguments against Mr. Tylor's contention that the higher conceptions of savage faith are borrowed from missionaries.(1) It is very possible, however, that Mr. Tylor has arguments more powerful than those contained in his paper of 1892. For our information is not yet adequate to a scientific theory of the Origin of Religion, and probably never will be. Behind the races whom we must regard as nearest the beginning are their unknown ancestors from a dateless past, men as human as ourselves, but men concerning whose psychical, mental and moral condition we can only form conjectures. Among them religion arose, in circumstances of which we are necessarily ignorant. Thus I only venture on a surmise as to the germ of a faith in a Maker (if I am not to say Creator) and Judge of men. But, as to whether the higher religious belief, or the lower mythical stories came first, we are at least certain that the Christian conception of God, given pure, was presently entangled, by the popular fancy of Europe, in new Marchen about the Deity, the Madonna, her Son, and the Apostles. Here, beyond possibility of denial, pure belief came first, fanciful legend was attached after. I am inclined to surmise that this has always been the case, and, in the pages on the legend of Zeus, I show the processes of degeneration, of mythical accretions on a faith in a Heaven-God, in action. That the feeling of religious devotion attests high faculties in early man (such as are often denied to men who cannot count up to seven), and that the same high mental faculties... would infallibly lead him, as long as his reasoning powers remained poorly developed, to various strange superstitions and customs, was the belief of Mr. Darwin.(2) That is also my view, and I note that the lowest savages are not yet guilty of the very worst practices, sacrifice of human beings to a blood-loving God, and ordeals by poison and fire, to which Mr. Darwin alludes. The improvement of our science has freed us from misdeeds which are unknown to the Andamanese or the Australians. Thus there was, as regards these points in morals, degeneracy from savagery as society advanced, and I believe that there was also degeneration in religion. To say this is not to hint at a theory of supernatural revelation to the earliest men, a theory which I must, in limine disclaim.

(1) Tylor, Limits of Savage Religion. Journal of the Anthropological Institute, vol. xxi.

(2) Descent of Man, p. 68, 1871.

In vol. ii. p. 19 occurs a reference, in a note, to Mr. Hartland's criticism of my ideas about Australian gods as set forth in the Making of Religion. Mr. Hartland, who kindly read the chapters on Australian religion in this book, does not consider that my note on p. 19 meets the point of his argument. As to the Australians, I mean no more than that, AMONG endless low myths, some of them possess a belief in a maker of everything, a primal being, still in existence, watching conduct, punishing breaches of his laws, and, in some cases, rewarding the good in a future life. Of course these are the germs of a sympathetic religion, even if the being thus regarded is mixed up with immoral or humorous contradictory myths. My position is not harmed by such myths, which occur in all old religions, and, in the middle ages, new myths were attached to the sacred figures of Christianity in poetry and popular tales.

Thus, if there is nothing sacred in a religion because wild or wicked fables about the gods also occur, there is nothing sacred in almost any religion on earth.

Mr. Hartland's point, however, seems to be that, in the Making of Religion, I had selected certain Australian beliefs as especially sacred and to be distinguished from others, because they are inculcated at the religious Mysteries of some tribes. His aim, then, is to discover low, wild, immoral myths, inculcated at the Mysteries, and thus to destroy my line drawn between religion on one hand and myth or mere folk-lore on the other. Thus there is a being named Daramulun, of whose rites, among the Coast Murring, I condensed the account of Mr. Howitt.(1) From a statement by Mr. Greenway(2) Mr. Hartland learned that Daramulun's name is said to mean leg on one side or lame. He, therefore, with fine humour, speaks of Daramulun as a creator with a game leg, though when Baiame is derived by two excellent linguists, Mr. Ridley and Mr. Greenway, from Kamilaroi baia, to make, Mr. Hartland is by no means so sure of the sense of the name. It happens to be inconvenient to him! Let the names mean what they may, Mr. Hartland finds, in an obiter dictum of Mr. Howitt (before he was initiated), that Daramulun is said to have died, and that his spirit is now aloft. Who says so, and where, we are not informed,(3) and the question is important.

(1) J. A. I., xiii. pp. 440-459.

(2) Ibid., xxi. p. 294.

(3) Ibid., xiii. p. 194.

For the Wiraijuri, IN THEIR MYSTERIES, tell a myth of cannibal conduct of Daramulun's, and of deceit and failure of knowledge in Baiame.(1) Of this I was unaware, or neglected it, for I explicitly said that I followed Mr. Howitt's account, where no such matter is mentioned. Mr. Howitt, in fact, described the Mysteries of the Coast Murring, while the narrator of the low myths, Mr. Matthews, described those of a remote tribe, the Wiraijuri, with whom Daramulun is not the chief, but a subordinate person. How Mr. Matthews' friends can at once hold that Daramulun was destroyed by Baiame (their chief deity), and also that Daramulun's voice is heard at their rites, I don't know.(2) Nor do I know why Mr. Hartland takes the myth of a tribe where Daramulun is the evil spirit who rules the night,(3) and introduces it as an argument against the belief of a distant tribe, where, by Mr. Howitt's account, Daramulun is not an evil spirit, but the master of all, whose abode is above the sky, and to whom are attributed powers of omnipotence and omnipresence, or, at any rate, the power to do anything and to go anywhere.... To his direct ordinances are attributed the social and moral laws of the community.(4) This is not an evil spirit! When Mr. Hartland goes for scandals to a remote tribe of a different creed that he may discredit the creed of the Coast Murring, he might as well attribute to the Free Kirk the errors of Rome. But Mr. Hartland does it!(5) Being cunning of fence he may reply that I also spoke loosely of Wiraijuri and Coast Murring as, indifferently, Daramulunites. I did, and I was wrong, and my critic ought not to accept but to expose my error. The Wiraijuri Daramulun, who was annihilated, yet who is an evil spirit that rules the night, is not the Murring guardian and founder of recognised ethics.

(1) J. A. I., xxv. p. 297.

(2) Ibid., May, 1895, p. 419.

(3) Ibid.

(4) Ibid., xiii. pp. 458, 459.

(5) Folk-Lore, ix., No. iv., p. 299.

But, in the Wiraijuri mysteries, the master, Baiame, deceives the women as to the Mysteries! Shocking to US, but to deceive the women as to these arcana, is, to the Australian mind in general, necessary for the safety of the world. Moreover, we have heard of a lying spirit sent to deceive prophets in a much higher creed. Finally, in a myth of the Mystery of the Wiraijuri, Baiame is not omniscient. Indeed, even civilised races cannot keep on the level of these religious conceptions, and not to keep on that level is—mythology. Apollo, in the hymn to Hermes, sung on a sacred occasion, needs to ask an old vine-dresser for intelligence. Hyperion sees all and hears all, but needs to be informed, by his daughters, of the slaughter of his kine. The Lord, in the Book of Job, has to ask Satan, Whence comest thou? Now for the sake of dramatic effect, now from pure inability to live on the level of his highest thought, man mythologises and anthropomorphises, in Greece or Israel, as in Australia.

It does not follow that there is nothing sacred in his religion. Mr. Hartland offers me a case in point. In Mrs. Langloh Parker's Australian Legendary Tales (pp. 11, 94), are myths of low adventures of Baiame. In her More Australian Legendary Tales (pp. 84-99), is a very poetical and charming aspect of the Baiame belief. Mr. Hartland says that I will seek to put the first set of stories out of court, as a kind of joke with no sacredness about it. Not I, but the Noongahburrah tribe themselves make this essential distinction. Mrs. Langloh Parker says:(1) The former series (with the low Baiame myths) were all such legends as are told to the black picaninnies; among the present are some they would not be allowed to hear, touching as they do on sacred things, taboo to the young. The blacks draw the line which I am said to seek to draw.

(1) More Legendary Tales, p. xv.

In yet another case(1) grotesque hunting adventures of Baiame are told in the mysteries, and illustrated by the sacred temporary representations in raised earth. I did not know it; I merely followed Mr. Howitt. But I do not doubt it. My reply is, that there was something sacred in Greek mysteries, something purifying, ennobling, consoling. For this Lobeck has collected (and disparaged) the evidence of Pindar, Sophocles, Cicero and many others, while even Aristophanes, as Prof. Campbell remarks, says: We only have bright sun and cheerful life who have been initiated and lived piously in regard to strangers and to private citizens.(2) Security and peace of mind, in this world and for the next, were, we know not how, borne into the hearts of Pindar and Sophocles in the Mysteries. Yet, if we may at all trust the Fathers, there were scenes of debauchery, as at the Mysteries of the Fijians (Nanga) there was buffoonery (to amuse the boys, Mr. Howitt says of some Australian rites), the story of Baubo is only one example, and, in other mysteries than the Eleusinian, we know of mummeries in which an absurd tale of Zeus is related in connection with an oak log. Yet surely there was something sacred in the faith of Zeus! Let us judge the Australians as we judge Greeks. The precepts as to speaking the straightforward truth, as to unselfishness, avoidance of quarrels, of wrongs to unprotected women, of unnatural vices, are certainly communicated in the Mysteries of some tribes, with, in another, knowledge of the name and nature of Our Father, Munganngaur. That a Totemistic dance, or medicine-dance of Emu hunting, is also displayed(3) at certain Mysteries of a given tribe, and that Baiame is spoken of as the hero of this ballet, no more deprives the Australian moral and religious teaching (at the Mysteries) of sacred value, than the stupid indecency whereby Baubo made Demeter laugh destroys the sacredness of the Eleusinia, on which Pindar, Sophocles and Cicero eloquently dwell. If the Australian mystae, at the most solemn moment of their lives, are shown a dull or dirty divine ballet d'action, what did Sophocles see, after taking a swim with his pig? Many things far from edifying, yet the sacred element of religious hope and faith was also represented. So it is in Australia.

(1) J. A. I., xxiv. p. 416.

(2) Religion in Greek Literature, p. 259. It is to be regretted that the learned professor gives no references. The Greek Mysteries are treated later in this volume.

(3) See A picture of Australia, 1829, p. 264.

These studies ought to be comparative, otherwise they are worthless. As Mr. Hartland calls Daramulun an eternal Creator with a game leg who died, he may call Zeus an eternal father, who swallowed his wife, lay with his mother and sister, made love as a swan, and died, nay, was buried, in Crete. I do not think that Mr. Hartland would call Zeus a ghost-god (my own phrase), or think that he was scoring a point against me, if I spoke of the sacred and ethical characteristics of the Zeus adored by Eumaeus in the Odyssey. He would not be so humorous about Zeus, nor fall into an ignoratio elenchi. For my point never was that any Australian tribe had a pure theistic conception unsoiled and unobliterated by myth and buffoonery. My argument was that AMONG their ideas is that of a superhuman being, unceasing (if I may not say eternal), a maker (if I may not say a Creator), a guardian of certain by no means despicable ethics, which I never proclaimed as supernormally inspired! It is no reply to me to say that, in or out of Mysteries, low fables about that being are told, and buffooneries are enacted. For, though I say that certain high ideas are taught in Mysteries, I do not think I say that in Mysteries no low myths are told.

I take this opportunity, as the earliest, to apologise for an error in my Making of Religion concerning a passage in the Primitive Culture of my friend Mr. E. B. Tylor. Mr. Tylor quoted(1) a passage from Captain John Smith's History of Virginia, as given in Pinkerton, xiii. pp. 13-39, 1632. In this passage no mention occurs of a Virginian deity named Ahone but Okee, another and more truculent god, is named. I observed that, if Mr. Tylor had used Strachey's Historie of Travaile (1612), he would have found a slightly varying copy of Smith's text of 1632, with Ahone as superior to Okee. I added in a note (p. 253): There is a description of Virginia, by W. Strachey, including Smith's remarks published in 1612. Strachey interwove some of this work with his own MS. in the British Museum. Here, as presently will be shown, I erred, in company with Strachey's editor of 1849, and with the writer on Strachey in the Dictionary of National Biography. What Mr. Tylor quoted from an edition of Smith in 1632 had already appeared, in 1612, in a book (Map of Virginia, with a description of the Countrey) described on the title-page as written by Captain Smith, though, in my opinion, Smith may have had a collaborator. There is no evidence whatever that Strachey had anything to do with this book of 1612, in which there is no mention of Ahone. Mr. Arber dates Strachey's own MS. (in which Ahone occurs) as of 1610-1615.(2) I myself, for reasons presently to be alleged, date the MS. mainly in 1611-1612. If Mr. Arber and I are right, Strachey must have had access to Smith's MS. before it was published in 1612, and we shall see how he used it. My point here is that Strachey mentioned Ahone (in MS.) before Smith's book of 1612 was published. This could not be gathered from the dedication to Bacon prefixed to Strachey's MS., for that dedication cannot be earlier that 1618.(3) I now ask leave to discuss the evidence for an early pre-Christian belief in a primal Creator, held by the Indian tribes from Plymouth, in New England, to Roanoke Island, off Southern Virginia.

(1) Prim. Cult. ii. p. 342.

(2) Arber's Smith, p. cxxxiii.

(3) Hakluyt Society, Strachey, 1849, pp. xxi., xxii.

THE GOD AHONE.

An insertion by a manifest plagiary into the work of a detected liar is not, usually, good evidence. Yet this is all the evidence, it may be urged, which we have for the existence of a belief, in early Virginia, as to a good Creator, named Ahone. The matter stands thus: In 1607-1609 the famed Captain John Smith endured and achieved in Virginia sufferings and adventures. In 1608 he sent to the Council at home a MS. map and description of the colony. In 1609 he returned to England (October). In May, 1610, William Strachey, gent., arrived in Virginia, where he was secretary of state to Lord De la Warr. In 1612 Strachey and Smith were both in England. In that year Barnes of Oxford published A Map of Virginia, with a description, etc., written by Captain Smith, according to the title-page. There was annexed a compilation from various sources, edited by W. S., that is, NOT William Strachey, but Dr. William Symonds. In the same year, 1612, or in 1611, William Strachey wrote his Historie of Travaile into Virginia Britannia, at least as far as page 124 of the Hakluyt edition of 1849.(1)

(1) For proof see p. 24. third line from foot of page, where 1612 is indicated. Again, see p. 98, line 5, where last year is dated as 1610, about Christmas, which would put Strachey's work at this point as actually of 1611; prior, that is, to Smith's publication. Again, p. 124, this last year, myself being at the Falls (of the James River), I found in an Indian house certain clawes... which I brought away and into England.

If Strachey, who went out with Lord De la Warr as secretary in 1610, returned with him (as is likely), he sailed for England on 28th March, 1611. In that case, he was in England in 1611, and the passages cited leave it dubious whether he wrote his book in 1611, 1612, or in both years.(1)

(1) Mr. Arber dates the MS. 1610-1615, and attributes to Strachey Laws for Virginia, 1612.

Strachey embodies in his work considerable pieces of Smith's Map of Virginia and Description, written in 1608, and published in 1612. He continually deserts Smith, however, adding more recent information, reflections and references to the ancient classics, with allusions to his own travels in the Levant. His glossary is much more extensive than Smith's, and he inserts a native song of triumph over the English in the original.(1) Now, when Strachey comes to the religion of the natives(2) he gives eighteen pages (much of it verbiage) to five of Smith's.(3) What Smith (1612) says of their chief god I quote, setting Strachey's version (1611-1612) beside it.

(1) Strachey, pp. 79-80. He may have got the song from Kemps or Machumps, friendly natives.

(2) Pp. 82-100.

(3) Arber, pp. 74-79.

SMITH (Published, 1612).

But their chiefe God they worship is the Diuell. Him they call Oke, and serue him more of feare than loue. They say they have conference with him, and fashion themselues as near to his shape as they can imagine. In their Temples, they have his image euile favouredly carved, and then painted, and adorned with chaines, copper, and beades; and covered with a skin, in such manner as the deformity may well suit with such a God. By him is commonly the sepulcher of their Kings.

STRACHEY (Written, 1611-12).

But their chief god they worship is no other, indeed, then the divell, whome they make presentments of, and shadow under the forme of an idoll, which they entitle Okeus, and whome they worship as the Romans did their hurtful god Vejovis, more for feare of harme then for hope of any good; they saie they have conference with him, and fashion themselves in their disguisments as neere to his shape as they can imagyn. In every territory of a weroance is a temple and a priest, peradventure two or thrie; yet happie doth that weroance accompt himself who can detayne with him a Quiyough-quisock, of the best, grave, lucky, well instructed in their misteryes, and beloved of their god; and such a one is noe lesse honoured then was Dianae's priest at Ephesus, for whome they have their more private temples, with oratories and chauneells therein, according as is the dignity and reverence of the Quiyough-quisock, which the weroance wilbe at charge to build upon purpose, sometyme twenty foote broad and a hundred in length, fashioned arbour wyse after their buylding, having comonly the dore opening into the east, and at the west end a spence or chauncell from the body of the temple, with hollow wyndings and pillers, whereon stand divers black imagies, fashioned to the shoulders, with their faces looking down the church, and where within their weroances, upon a kind of biere of reedes, lye buryed; and under them, apart, in a vault low in the ground (as a more secrett thing), vailed with a matt, sitts their Okeus, an image ill-favouredly carved, all black dressed, with chaynes of perle, the presentment and figure of that god (say the priests unto the laity, and who religiously believe what the priests saie) which doth them all the harme they suffer, be yt in their bodies or