Alfred Cort Haddon

“ It may be taken for granted that the persistence of almost any action or idea is due to the fact that it more or less satisfies some need, and thus from the point of view of psychology it may be regarded as a survival. On the other hand we now recognise that many elements in folklore are disrupted customs or parts only of culture complexes, which formerly were what might be described as “going concerns,” but now they have lost their social utility, and in this sense they are social vestiges. ”

“ There is a time to sow and a time to reap, and it is of the utmost importance that man should know what is the best time for the execution of the various operations connected with hunting, fishing, horticulture, and the like, and, having by practical experience discovered the best time, then to know when it recurs. ”

“ Certain peoples with mother-right, or those who have emerged therefrom, pay reverence to a mother goddess. Christianity, as is befitting to a religion that aspires to universal extension, is a regular museum of creeds and rites of this kind; its symbolism is drawn from herding, fishing, agriculture, arboriculture and other occupations.
So far I have considered certain aspects of the culture of any given people, but we know that there are very few, if any, peoples who have not been affected by intercourse with other peoples, and thereby a mixture of culture has resulted. ”

“ In March 1872 he was appointed to the chair of botany in the Royal College of Science, Dublin, which he held till his death from heart disease, on 3 Dec. 1889. Besides other appointments Dr. McNab was scientific superintendent of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin, Dublin, and at the time of his death was Swiney lecturer on geology at the British Museum. His style as a lecturer was precise, lucid, and simple. He was the author of numerous communications to various societies on all branches of botany. ”

“ The relation of religion to the life of a people is by no means a simple one. And it is further complicated by the well-known power of religious conservatism, which enables both ideas and practices to survive long after there is any reason for them. Past methods and manners of life, the good old times, proverbially have their stronghold in religion. ”

“ The idea of God tends to assume the form of whatever is useful to the community. On the practical side of religion we find a similar effect of utilitarian influence. Those customs which are in themselves beneficial are given a religious sanction. . . . In tracing the relation of religion and economics, it is well to begin our interpretation of a people’s faith by asking what is their chief dependence, and then looking to see whether an idealization of it has been taken up and incorporated into the religious ideas ”

“ I now turn to the record of our Society, and when we look at the length of some ten feet which the bound volumes take up on the bookshelf we cannot but feel gratified at the amount which has been accomplished during the past years. ”

“ Many folklorists pay almost as much attention to the facts of ethnology as to vestiges of older cultures in a civilised community, and not without reason, as from these data they hope to find an explanation of the vestiges, Our own excellent Handbook of Folklore (1914) is as much a textbook on certain aspects of ethnology as it is of folklore. It is also for this reason that the Society is justified in publishing papers on the manners and customs of primitive and backward peoples which might equally appropriately be published in journals devoted to ethnology. ”

“ The broad economic conditions of a people imprint themselves on the customs and religious life of that people, for example, in Central and Western Asia and in Arabia the pastoral life of so many of the inhabitants affects the social grouping, and as we so commonly have a patriarchal organisation so a sublimated patriarch would readily be an attribute of a supreme god, who might persist for a long time as a tribal god. ”

“ No doubt the Inca, as the Spaniards themselves, used the name of religion as a pretext for extending their power, but the power once gained was not abused, and the laws by which they governed, though strict, were not unnecessarily harsh, and were well suited to the psychology of their subjects. ”

“ Very few historians recognise the sources of information that are available to them, even now they are too much obsessed by written documents. In 1908 Sir Laurence Gomme published an extremely valuable book entitled Folklore as an Historical Science, in which he further developed and added to the principles he laid down in his earlier book. He says, “Every nation has the right to go back as far in its history as it is possible to reach. It can only do this by the help of comparative folklore. ”

“ Our Father the Sun seeingthe human race in the condition I have described, had compassion upon them, and sent down from heaven to the earth a son and daughter to instruct them in the knowledge of our Father the Sun, that they might adore Him and adopt Him as their God; also to give them precepts and laws by which to live as reasonable and civilised men, and to teach them to live in houses and towns, to cultivate maize and other crops, to breed flocks, and to use the fruits of the earth like rational beings, instead of living like beasts. ”

“ Survivals are carried along the stream of time by people whose culture-status is on a level with the culture in which the survivals originated. It matters not that these people are placed in the midst of a higher civilisation or alongside of a higher civilisation. ”

“ Should the followers of a tribal god, by captivity or otherwise, come into close relation with other forms of religion, their god may be freed from tribal shackles and become a god of a more universal nature. A fishing population projects its avocations into its magico-religious life. ”

“ An adjustment introduces a new factor into each element of the population and the final result may eventually be different from either condition. Certain factors in one culture will prove themselves to be prepotent and they will characterise the resultant cultures; this seems always to be the case when a patrilineal community fuses with one with a matrilineal organisation, so that while the new condition is patrilineal there are persistent vestiges of matrilineal descent, and thus we come more directly within the field of folklore. ”

“ I think all will agree that without doubt the first duty of our Society is to record the items of folklore in our own country and in Europe generally, such publication being based upon direct enquiries in the field. All that is now possible to collect should be collected and preserved by being printed. There are many persons who have a peculiar facility for the collection of folklore, and they should all be utilised, but should it be difficult or impossible for them to record their observations others may be found to do this for them. ”

“ Sir Laurence was a pioneer in this method of research and blazed the trail for his successors,—doubtless further investigations will in time enable a finer analysis to be made, and certain folklore items may yet be allocated to some at least of the various cultural drifts which at different times reached our islands. The history of ancient England cannot be written without the aid of folklore, and even the historian of later dates requires the assistance of folklorists. ”

“ It is easy to see why even the most religious people’s moral ideas are often inconsistent with their beliefs. They have grown up separately in different relation to economic needs, and are so often estranged that even the most ardent desire for unity of life cannot harmonize them. ”

“ What is so evident in the customs of savage and barbaric peoples must have held good for the ancestors of civilised peoples, and therefore they should be sought for among the lore of the folk. We may anticipate that many suggestive conclusions will be reached when various scattered items of folklore are grouped in chronological order, and it may be found that there is an unexpected connection between various apparently unrelated items of folklore, even in those in which periodicity is not now an essential feature. ”

“ A large proportion of the usages and beliefs classed as folklore certainly do not retain the individuality and functions which they once had, in this sense they are not survivals. They are attenuated, broken-down, and, so far as the folk are concerned, practically meaningless phenomena. ”

“ The mass of data that has not been seen, or very imperfectly seen, that has been misunderstood, or incorrectly recorded, the many pitfalls of omission and commission cause one at times to wonder at the temerity of those who feel confidence in what is termed the comparative method. ”

“ The lunar clock has, so-to-speak, a more varied and mysterious mechanism than the solar, and it certainly has impressed itself to a great extent in folklore, a fact to which Dr. Rivers has drawn the attention of the Society. [5] Finally, the sidereal clock, by the rising and setting of stars and constellations with its annual periodicity, gives the precise information that is required, thus the agricultural and other operations are generally regulated by the very backward peoples by the movements of stars. ”

“ The solar clock records daily time at too frequent intervals to be of any practical value, and in the tropics at all events the variations in its apparent rising and setting at different times of the year are too slight to be of much practical importance unless a certain degree of culture has been attained. ”

“ As I referred in my previous Presidential Address to the recent trend of ethnology which is concerned with this problem I need not now enlarge upon it.
In conclusion, one fact stands out prominently, and that is the extreme complexity of our science. The lore of the folk, may seem simple, possibly trivial, to most “superior persons,” but the problems that it opens out to the folklorist are bewildering in their complexity. They cannot be solved, as is too often attempted, by guesses ”

“ There are the observations which are made on natural phenomena in order to indicate when operations should begin or end, there are ceremonies or rites to be observed just before or at the beginning of the operations, others may take place during their continuance, more especially in horticulture or agriculture, finally, others occur at their termination. ”

“ As his account deals with earlier customs and their persistence into his time, and the imposition of Inca rule and religion upon a conquered population, it may be regarded as a handbook of folklore which had the inestimable advantage of being written while most of the customs were survivals and few had become vestiges, the mechanism by means of which such a change takes place is also clearly indicated. ”

“ Stars are grouped by most peoples into constellations representing human and animal forms, concerning which numerous tales have arisen, but always one finds that the basis of this interest in the heavenly bodies is its practical utility in the economic life of the people. ”

“ I have known in other fields of much valuable information being lost because the person who collected it lacked the power or the interest to write it down; even in this country co-operation may frequently be necessary. ”

“ Most frequently they are connected with tillage of the soil, but the opening of a fishing or hunting season is often ushered in with analogous observances, and the ripening of wild fruit may be the occasion for rites which we loosely term as magical. ”

“ They thus more or less unconsciously strengthen a feeling of solidarity between the ages. The socialising effects of conjoint action whether in simple rite or play are true psychological survivals, attenuated they may be, but they still belong to the same category as those which permeated the social act when it was an important function of the community. ”

“ When this takes place, whether it be between two peoples of similar grades of culture or of different grades of culture some adjustment must take place. The adjustment that takes place, say, for example, between a matrilineal and a patrilineal people will have much the appearance of an evolution from one condition to the other. ”

“ The custom seems to be established that your President is expected to make his retirement as well as his election the occasion for an Address, quite irrespective of whether he has anything he particularly wishes to say. ”

“ This he does in order that the customs and gods of the Incas may not be confounded with those of the indigenous population. “It must be understood, then, that in the first epoch some of the Indians were little better than tame beasts, and others much worse than wild beasts. . . . Each province, each nation, each house had its gods, different from one another. ”

“ It can be adapted practically for all the data of folklore, though doubtless only certain types or groups of the data would yield definite results.
3. A third method is to group together all the data of folklore which have a periodicity in a time sequence. This is the work which is being undertaken by our Brand Committee.
When one studies the ceremonies and lesser rites of backward peoples it becomes evident that many of them have their roots in the economic life of these peoples. ”