Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1892-09-10
OUR SAVAGE FOREFATHERS,
Even Those Classic Old Humbugs, tn
Creeks, Were Barbarians.

Even Those Classic Old Humbugs, the
Greeks, Were Barbarians.
From the London News.
We oil know the schoolboy's famous mistrans-
lation of Horace:
Dec.s majorum immeritus tues,
1.-THE delights of our ancestors were unmitigated
filth" That is the impression left on the mod
ern mind by n study of Mr.. Gomme's book,
"Ethnology in Folklore Mr.. CONNIE shows
us our ancestors eating theirs, knocking elderly
men on the head merely because they were
elderly. making torches Of human fat, placing
fragments of corpses over stable doors, daubing
the bridegroom's feet with SCOT Gin Scotland and
in short. as the poet says. doing divers and
disgusting things" This does not at all sur
prise the folk-orist. They all do ii, he saws,
in the words Of the old comic song, and be is
quite prepared to admit that unmitigated filth
was the delight of our ancestors
They were savages, says he. and our descend
ants may and probably will be savages again.
Mankind is like the little royal child, who
wanted to make mud pies with the small gamins
In the gutter. Some races have to a certain ex-
tent been weaned from the inclination to make
mud pies. But give them a chance. say in
Africa, where the eve of their nurse Of public
opinion, is not on them, and back they 20 to
their pies. both Of mud and blood. 1t il not
difhcult, III certain circumstances. TO imagine a
universal degradation, from which the race
would very slowly climb back into the feudal
period. But Mr.. CONNIE and some other stu
dents do not entirely accept this view. Were
the people who daubed the bridegroom with
SCOT and did the other divers and disgusting
things, we're they really Of our kindred after
all? Or. if they were, dkl they invent these dis
creditable performances or did they merely
borrow the customs from some neighboring and
conquered savages?
Mr.. CONNIE seems to be of the latter opinion,
1t has been proved that there was, perhaps, no
dirty, savage trick which did not exist in the
Greek religion. A civilized people, they danced
about with snakes in their hands like the Mo-
quis; they worshiped obscene images and kept
hlthy sacred pictures in their temples; thew
adored stones; they performed unpleasant rites
with pigs flesh: their sacrifices were often
ridiculous and revoit,ng they told highly dis
credltable stories of gods who went about dis
gulsed as dogs, serpents, ants, swans and
wolves. All these things the lowest savages also
do, and the conclusion is that Greeks too had
once been savages, and that the conservatism
OF their religion retained customs which puz-
lied and annoyed their common sense and
piety. Nothing but Christianity made an end
tlanity did not eradicate all of them among
country folk. Folk lore peasant custom, is full
of traces of sacrifice and of savage beliefs in
local spirits. Here Mr.. CONNIE. as We under
stand him, demurs and tries. as others have
tried, to save the credit of our ancestors. They
were "Aryans; an Aryan Was a gentleman, he
never could have invented and initiated all
these stupidities and denominations. Where he
practced them chat is eyerywhere) he must
have merely adopted the customs Of sayages
whom he had conquered.