study on the subject, we
ascertain what parallels to these beliefs and customs may be found in
the folklore of Britain. And then our position seems to be very
clearly defined. We prove that in folklore certain customs and
superstitions are identical, or nearly so, with the beliefs and
customs of totemism among savage tribes, and we conclude that this
identity in form proves an identity in origin, and therefore that
this section of folklore originated from the totemistic people of
early Britain.

I shall not take up all these points on the present occasion,
especially as they have in all essentials appeared in the study to
which I have referred; but as an example of the scattering of totem
beliefs I will refer to the well-known passage in Caesar (lib. v. cap.
xii.), from which we learn that certain people in Britain were
forbidden to eat the hare, the cock, or the goose, and see whether
this does not receive its only explanation by reference to the totemic
restriction against using the totem for food. Mr. Elton, with this
passage in his mind, notices that "there were certain restrictions
among the Britons and ancient Irish, by which particular nations or
tribes were forbidden to kill or eat certain kinds of animals;" and he
goes on to suggest that "it seems reasonable to connect the rule of
abstaining from certain kinds of food with the superstitious belief
that the tribes were descended from the animals from which their names
and crests or badges were derived."[405]

Let us see whether this reasonable conjecture holds good. The most
famous example is that of Cuchulainn, the celebrated Irish chieftain,
whose name means the hound of Culain. It is said that he might not eat
of the flesh of the dog, and he came by his death after transgressing
this totemistic taboo. The words of the manuscript known as the Book
of Leinster are singularly significant in their illustration of this
view. "And one of the things that Cuchulainn was bound not to do was
going to a cooking hearth and consuming the food [_i.e._ the dog];
and another of the things that he must not do was eating his
namesake's flesh."[406] Diarmaid, whose name seems to be continued in
the current popular Irish name for pig (Darby), was intimately
associated with that animal, and his life depended on the life of the
boar.[407] These examples are so much to the point that we may examine
the cases mentioned by Caesar from the same standard.

Mr. Frazer points out tha