The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1881-06-03
English Totem-W orship.
inc Peculiar Origin of Some Family
Names-Relics Of the Old Clans.

| The unsophistcated Australian black fellow
believes himself and his tribesrnen to be all
literally descended from some particular plant
or animal known to folklore as his Totem. He
IS swan or a black snake or a kangaroo: and he
traces his pedigree back to an ancestor who
actually was what his descendants call them
selves. So, too, the North American Indians
are turtles, or bears, or crows, or rattlesnakes.
Each tribe has all sorts of minute restric-
tions regulating its courtshp and matrimony.
compared to which the English ecclesiastical
table of forbidden degrees is simplicity itself;
and, as rule, all children take the Totem
name of their mother, not of their father, be-
cause as yet in these primitive societies the
rule laid down III the "Eumenides" is exactly
reversed aud paternity is not regarded as
forming any sufficient basis for a claim to re-
lationship. Each tribe refraius with piety
from eating the plant or animal which forms its
Totem Tins the Mohicans will not eat their
ancestor, the turtle, the Kangaroos abstain re-
ligiousy from kangaroo hams, and the Bechu-
anas decline TO partake of crocodile It has
even been ingeniously sugg ested that the He
brew rejection of pork was perhaps due to a
primitive jewish belief that the Hebrews were
descended from boar. But it is not only
among savage races, says the London Pail
Mall Gazette, that relics Of this old Totem wor-
ship are to be found. Even among Aryan na-
tions many traces of Totemism have been
pointed out; and not q few may be detected in
the early annalslof our own heathen English
ancestors. Several OF the old English clans
bore names Indicating their descent from
plants or animals; and evidence that these
plants and animals were held sacred by them
is not altogether wanting.
The semi-mythical genealogies of the early
English kings contain among other ancestors
the horse, the mare, the ash and the whale
while the old heather poem OF "Beowulf'' fur
ther supplies us with the wolf and the boar
Among these animals the horse was perhaps
the most sacred of ALL He had been a promi-
lnent figure in the old Aryan religion ever
since the Central Asian time, and he is much
honored in the primitive Sanskrit epics White |
horses, as Tacitus tells us were kept by the
Germans at the public expense in the groves or |
Enclosures Of the gods, and auguries were taken |
from their neighings and snortings Among |
the Low Dutch people about the mouth of the |
Elbe-the ancestors of our own EuglSh-the |
white horse was especially honored; and a |
white horse rampant still forms the cognZance |
of Hanover and Brunswick. The two first
English chiefs who landed in Britain, accord
ing to the myth, were the Jutish brothers
Hengest and Horsa, the stallion and the mare
Whenever the English race advanced in its
conquest of the country from the Welsh, it
carved white horses through the greensward
into the chalk of the downs: and those which
overlooked the valleys of Vantage and Of
Calne still survive to our own day to mark the
gradual progress OF West Saxon colonization.
The descendants of the horse bore, according
to common Teutonic custom, the patronymic
OF Housings; and their tun OF Horsington in
Lincolnshire still preserves their name and
Almost equally sacred among trees
was the ash. Grimm has noted its holy char
acter in Germany; and sacred ash trees are
mentioned in old English charters. The Aes-
cings, or Jas we shonld now say, the Ash
ings, were kings of Kent; while another fam-
land in Surrey. They have left their mark
On five villages (such as Ashington)
in five different English counties.
Another charter mentions the WINNINGS, or
sons of the VOLTA very sacred Teutonc ami
long had his namesakes in sundry
Eadwulfs, and like forgotten per-
'onages. All the world over the snake is a
common Totem; and in his old English dress
If the Wynn in Scandinavian Orm, whence
0rmskirk and Ormes Head-he has left de-
'csndants at Wormingford in Essex, Worm
nghall in Bucks, and Worminton in Glouces-
er. The raven, as important a bird with the
leathen English as with the heather Danes,
las stamped the memory of his sons at Raven
|
he standard of one great Scandinavian pirate
lorde; and from his Tapping in the wind the
5candinayian5 took auguries, as the Germans
lid from their white horses. The boar was
mother very sacred Teutonic beast AS an
AMULET he was invaluable; as a crest on he'll
net ut preserved Tie hoad rIoLn iujury <.a,uel.
IS the crest still does on our metropolitan DO.
iceman's head-gear); even in the late Middle
Ages VOWS were taken on the boar's head; and
,ne still appears among the heathenish festivi-
les of Yule-tide, only yet half Chrstianzed
nto Christmas "Superstitionis insigne for
mas aprorum gestant," says Tacitus of the
Aestyi. But the good old English word for
boar is just dper, metamorphosed, in accord
:nce with Grimm's law, into eofor. His sons
we're the Eoforings or Evenings, some of whom
It'll remain, while older branches of the family
lave left traces OF their hom at Eyeringham in
Yorkshire. One of Mr.. Kemble's charters con-
aims mention of the Thornings, or sons OF the
ices the Earnings, descendants of the earn or
rom Dodona to Augustine's Oak, in Worces-
ershire, has founded family at Darlington, in
the birch has planted his
sons at Birchington in Kent, and the elm at
Elmington, in Northampton. The sun is a
Ubiquitous Totem, and an object of worship all
he world over; his children settled down in
Summing, in Berks. The Hartings, the Man.
1ings, the Cockings and other less obvious are
'till in our midst. Many of these Totem fami-
les are widely dispersed through all parts of
England, the Hemings, for example, being
net with in six counties, north, south, east and
vest. The popularity doubtless dspen IS upon
he practice of exogamy, and the habit of
counting kindred on the female side only.