Segnius Irritant Or Eight Primitive Folk Lore Stories

Author : W. Strickland
Publisher : Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN 13 : 9781530262724
Total Pages : 126 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (627 download)

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Download or read book Segnius Irritant written by W. Strickland and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2016-02-26 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An important work on folk-lore has just been issued by Mr. Forder. It is entitled, translated and compared by W. W. Strickland. The word "primitive" may be objected to as not strictly accurate. But the stories, translated from the Czech and Slovenien, are certainly of very archaic character, and, although they have some analogues in Southern and Western Europe, probably represent earlier phases of some better known folk tales. Besides giving the stories themselves as they are still told by the folk, Mr. Strickland comments upon, compares, and explains them. He gives reasons for believing that they originated in the arctic regions, and that they represent in the main the mythology of the seasons, especially the triumph of spring over winter. Mr. Clodd has recently pointed out that folk-lorists are apt, out of deference to the Christian taboo, to avoid the real issue of their studies. This is not the case with Mr. Strickland. He errs, if at all, on the other side. He does not scruple to find in his old folk tales the origin of "the Bethlehem legend." He says: "Just as the hero of the primitive myth leaves home to wander through darkness and bring back the light, so Jesus, the putative child of the Jewish Tvashtar, runs away from home, and, disputing with the doctors of divinity, proves himself to be more enlightened than any of them; and, not long after this, after a forty days' fast, which is perhaps a faint reminiscence of the forty-two days' Arctic winter night, occurs the struggle for the light in its usual triple form, but vulgarised into a trial of moral strength between a devil and a saint, perhaps having been modified by ancient Buddhist legends. Such is the staff religions and religious thought are formed of." It should be mentioned that Mr. Strickland gives reason to believe that some items of his stories are prior to Virgil, and pre-Christian. Mr. Strickland has some notable remarks-on the mental position of our savage ancestors. He says: "At present, enlightened by science, we refer all the vital phenomena of the surface of our globe to the heat of the sun. But the instinct of savage people is just the other way. There is with them a complete inversion of cause and effect. It is not the sun that creates mankind, but mankind that creates the sun. It is not the sun that brings back the spring, but the gathering vital forces of nature that conjure back the sun - And it this habit of mind, still prevalent among religious folk whose superstitions represent the dying cosmical blunders of primitive barbarism, is still powerful enough to cause hundreds of thousands of Christians to believe that by prayer they can conjure the climatic effects dependent upon the movements of cyclones and anti-cyclones, or thereby change the course of epidemics or their own lives and conduct, it is not wonderful if savages within the Arctic circle, with few or no means of accurate observation and scanty stores of accumulated knowledge, mistook cause for effect, and imagined it was the cold which killed the sun, and not the sun which killed the cold.".... -Freethinker, Vol.16, Pt. 1 [1896]