ing hill was suddenly announced, when forthwith started the great snake doctor with tobacco and other presents: when he had offered these, and had had a long talk with the snake, he returned to his village, with the satisfactory news that his tribesmen might now travel in safety, as peace had been made between them and the snakes.1 But perhaps of all natural objects that have attracted human worship, and been regarded as a supreme source of human woe or welfare, none can compare with the moon. For the moon's changes of aspect being far more remarkable than any of the sun's, and more calculated to inspire dread by the nocturnal darkness they contend with, are held in popular fancy nearly everywhere to cause, portend, or accord with changes in the lot of mortals and all things terrestrial. In the Hervey Islands cocoa-nuts. are invariably planted at the full of the moon, the size of the latter being held symbolical of the future fulness of the fruit; 2 and in South Africa it is unlucky to begin a journey or any work of importance in the last quarter of the moon.3 The moon's wane makes. things on earth wane too; when it is new or full, it is everywhere the proper season for new crops to be sown, new households to be formed, new weather to begin. 1 Schoolcraft, iii. 273, 231. 2 Gill, 312. 3 Pinkerton, xvi. 875. The feeling of the Congo Africans, who at the sight of the new moon fall on their knees or stand and clap their hands, praying that their lives may be renewed like that of the moon, corresponds exactly with the idea of English folk-lore that crops are more likely to be plentiful if sown when the moon is young, or with the idea of German folk-lore that the new moon is the season for counting money which it is desired may increase. On the first appearance of the new moon, which,' says Mungo Park, 'the Kafirs look upon as newly created, the pagan natives, as well as Mahomedans, say a short prayer,' seemingly the only adoration they offer to the Supreme Being ;' so that the sentiment of the Congo prayer may be guessed to underlie, consciously or not, the salutations by which the new moon is greeted generally throughout Africa, from the salutations of the Hottentots to the prayers of the Makololos, for the success of their journeys or the destruction of their enemies.2 More difficult to understand than the worship of either animals or the heavenly bodies is that of such inanimate things as stones, trees, or rivers. Yet the state of thought is not so far remote from our own but that we can still listen with pleasure, in stories like Undine,' to the voices of the forest or the river. To a savage, however, it is not only the motion or the sound of natural objects which suggests their divinity, 1 Pinkerton, xvi. 875. 2 Livingstone, South Africa, p. 235. but the danger that is ever latent in them; and it is rather to prevent the river from drowning him or the tree from falling on him than from any perception of their beauty that he makes offerings to them and pays them homage. Such feelings as that of the Cree Indians, who believed that a deer, found dead within a few yards of a willow bush which they worshipped and of which it had eaten, had fallen a victim to the sin of its sacrilege, are not confined to savage lands nor times. As savages have been known to apologize to a slain elephant or bear, assuring it that its death was accidental, so it is said that in parts of Germany a woodcutter will still (or would recently) beg the pardon of a fine healthy tree before cutting it down.2 In our own midland counties there is a feeling to this day against binding up elder-wood with other faggots; and in Suffolk it is believed misfortune will ensue if ever it is burnt. In Germany formerly an elder-tree might not be cut down entirely; and Grimm was himself an eye-witness of a peasant praying with bare head and folded hands before venturing to cut its branches. That trees are still popularly endowed with a conscious personality is further proved by the custom, not yet extinct, of trying to secure the future favours of fruit trees by presents and prayers. The placing of money in a hole dug at the foot of them, the pre senting them with money on New Year's Day, the shaking under them of the remainder of the Christmas dinner, the beating of them with rods on Holy Innocents' Day-all German methods to incite fruit trees to further fertility-answer closely to the English custom of apple-howling or wassailing, when at Christmas or Epiphany the inhabitants of a parish, walking in procession to the principal orchards, and there singling out the principal tree, sprinkle it with cider, or place cider-soaked cakes of toast and sugar in its branches, saluting it at the same time with set words in the form of a prayer to the trees to be fruitful for the ensuing year, as the doggerel verses following show plainly enough:— Here's to thee, old apple tree, Whence thou mayst bud and whence thou mayst blow, Hats full, caps full, Bushel, bushel, sacks full, And my pocket full too.' And similar prayers, as lifeless now as the fossil shells on the shore of some ancient coral sea, lie scattered abundantly in many an English rhyme and ballad, serving to show how the philosophy of one age passes into the nonsense of a later one, and how ideas which constituted a religion for one time may only survive as an amusement for another. 1 Polwhele, History of Cornwall, p. 48. 78 III. SOME SAVAGE PROVERBS. THE German proverb, 'Speak, that I may see thee,' may be applied as truly to a whole community as to an individual. For proverbs—or, roughly defining, popular sayings-reflect conspicuously the general character of a nation, constituting its actual code of social, political, and moral philosophy, Besides the beauty and wisdom, from which alone many of them derive an imperishable charm, they serve as a kind of literature in miniature, in which the inner life of a nation is more clearly legible than in its more voluminous writings. And in spite of the general resemblance which seems to pervade the proverbial lore of the world, arising partly from the direct interchange of thought inseparable from international commerce of any kind, partly from a uniformity of experience—such, for example, as has impressed on all people the wisdom of caution and truth-there are yet well-marked differences in the proverbs of nations, |