AMERICAN FOLK-LORE. VOL. 33.-APRIL-JUNE 1920.-No. 128. THE STUDY OF VARIANTS.1 BY ELSIE CLEWS PARSONS. THE first theory in science to make an effectual demand, as the economists say, or used to say, on my imagination, was Gabriele Tarde's theory of social imitation. I translated "Les Lois d'Imitation." No doubt somewhere in that treatise Tarde refers to the innovation or variation or new model which does not get itself imitated; but, as far as I remember, there is little or no attempt to analyze why a model is imitated or why it fails of imitation. Indeed, it is doubtful if Tarde could have made such a discussion very serious or penetrating, not only because of limitations as an ethnologist, but because ethnological data were in themselves inadequate. Data to determine why certain cultural variations or inventions "take," and others do not "take," were inadequate twenty or thirty years ago; they are inadequate to-day. That to every successful cultural variation there are a number of unsuccessful ones, we know in a general way; we know, of course, that when two different cultural groups come into contact, borrowing occurs; we know that within the same group there may be more or less persistent variations both in material culture and in ideology. But all this general knowledge, however illuminated with illustrations, does not bring us very close to the problem of success or failure in variation. Nor will general discussion of the factor of accident in history, or the priority of individual or group initiative, or the existence of a super-organic, however interesting all such discussion in itself, lead to the heart of the problem of cultural selection. What does lead there? The study of variants. Just as we have been asserting the need of studying culture in terms of culture, so we may assert the need of studying variation in terms of variants. To meet this need we must of course have records, -systematic records of cultural variants, and for the most part such records are lacking. Lately I have had occasion to go through the ethnographical 1 Address of the retiring President at the thirty-first annual meeting of the American Folk-Lore Society, held in Cambridge, Mass., Dec. 30, 1919. literature of several distinctive cultures, the Pueblo Indian of the Southwest, the Bantu Thonga of Southeast Africa, the Dravidian Toda of India, the Australian, the Chukchee of Siberia, the Melanesian of the Banks Islands; and in all cases, cases of otherwise good workmanship, I have been struck by the failure to record at all fully or systematically the variations in the cultural life that are referred to, and often more or less specified, but rarely detailed. Of course, it is a step in the right direction to have one Bantu people described instead of Bantu culture at large, or to have the Arunta described instead of Blackfellows in general; and it may be urged, that, while the supply of ethnographers is so low, the larger units must receive attention before the subdivisions. You must know something about the Arunta or the Thonga as a whole before you begin to compare the local totemic groups or the several clans. Apart from this consideration, however, I cannot but think that the differentiation is comparatively unnoted, or at least not systematically recorded, because its importance is not thoroughly realized. Differentiations, whether in the economies or arts, in the social organization or in ideology, tend to be overlooked not only because the study of variation is as a whole overlooked, but because all these subjects are apt to be thought of as detached subjects of interest, not as primarily interesting as expressions of mental processes. Take folk-tales. The recorder of folk-tales often seems to think of the tale as a kind of independent entity, which travels about according to its opportunities, experiencing in the course of its travels various vicissitudes. What happens to the tale from people to people is the main interest. The tale is regarded, so to speak, as an organism; and, as you are working out its life-history, of course you give variations as they occur from one set of narrators to another; but the tale, not the teller of the tale, is the centre of attraction. In the early days of folk-lore this concentration of interest was natural enough; and the interest did, of course, lead to knowledge, knowledge of tale migration in general, and more advanced and significant knowledge of areas of distribution. Such knowledge is necessary to the mere statement of the problem; or rather, like all knowledge, in answering one problem, it leads to others. If it is viewed as conclusive knowledge, it is not only unfruitful, it may lead to mysticism the tale may come to be endowed with a life of its own, subject to laws of its own nature or of some super-psychic reglement of culture. Again, the tale may be thought of as a kind of storeroom for language or custom, a linguistic showcase or reliable bed-rock for the study of ceremonialism or of the ways of daily life. From this point of view, variants of the tale may have even less chance of being collected - or even, if collected, of being presented than from the point of view of the tale as an independent entity. In the one case the tale is too independent of its cultural setting, in the other it becomes a mere serf to other cultural factors. As of narration, so of the other arts and even customs. In the mind of the observer, they become part of the general history of arts or of customs, independent of their cultural setting; or they are subordinated to some special feature or character of the culture, or, more properly, accounted just a part of the whole cultural content. As data for the study of variation in the culture, or, implicitly the same. thing, for the study of mental processes in the culture, they are rarely, if ever, considered. Let me illustrate the effect of some of these prepossessions in at field with which I am becoming somewhat familiar,-folk-tale borrowing by Indians or Negroes. As you know, only a short time ago. tales suspected of having been learned from whites were not recorded, or, if recorded, were not published, by observers of the American. Indian. These tale-suspects were thrown out because they were thought of either as not contributing to Indian folk-lore as such or as not contributing to the study of Indian custom, the process of acculturation not being viewed as in itself a significant subject of study. As among Indians, so among Negroes, only those tales were recorded which were supposed to be genuinely African, not borrowed from whites, a discrimination which, for one thing, needless to say, made the determination of what was genuinely African extremely difficult: for, quite arbitrarily, only animal tales were supposed to be real Negro tales, with perhaps now and then a tale about witches. or ghosts. I have no doubt that in music, in design, in language, analogous prepossessions have led ethnographers everywhere to analogous exclusions and discriminations. In the fields of ceremonialism and of social organization, illustrations from the Southwest occur to me. For over three centuries the Spaniards were in missionary contact with the Pueblo Indians, and yet early students of the Southwest paid little or no attention to Spanish influence in the ceremonial life of the Indians. During the last half-century, if not before, in the eastern pueblos, and even in Laguna, the characteristic Pueblo Indian system of houseowning has been changing, and to-day American patronymics are coming in. By these changes the matrilineal clan is bound to be affected; but it did not occur to any one until lately that here under our eyes a change of descent is going on which may be just as significant for the study of kinship as the change from matrilineal descent to patrilineal, or vice versa, in Australia or on the Northwest coast. When we are such a short time away from the prepossessions that make for unscientific discrimination, it is perhaps asking too much (to return to folk-lore) to ask that every variant of every tale, borrowed or not, be published; but, until this is done, we cannot get all the help possible in determining not only what Indians and Negroes took from white story-tellers, but what they did not take, or, if taking, what did not stick in tradition. In other words, the story of what is not borrowed is as important as that of what is borrowed, - important, that is, if you are studying borrowing as a cultural process. In the particular case of borrowing white, perhaps more specifically Hispanic Peninsula tales, a comparative treatment of what was and what was not taken over by Indian and Negro groups respectively, and of what happened to the tale subsequently, would yield interesting material for the study of the habits of mind which are characteristic of Negro or Indian culture. Important, too, not only in the study of acculturation, but of variation from within, is knowledge of the extent of circulation of a folk-tale. Here, again, large and weighted collections are necessary, as well as collections made at different periods. It should be the ambition of every folk-tale collector to revisit his field after a more or less prolonged period. Whether or not in the future anthropologists will be called upon to direct cultural contacts or to suggest cultural experiments, seems doubtful. Efforts to direct or control will probably continue to express merely group will-to-power, the desire to have people like yourself or to have them amenable to immediate group ends, such efforts as are well exemplified in the current movement for Americanization or in bureaus of immigration or Colonial or foreign offices. However, if ever the desire for cultural inventiveness or experiment does arise in Administration circles, - desire based not only in tolerance for group differences, but in appreciation of their value, the desire will fail of satisfaction unless attention shall have been paid meanwhile to the study of cultural variants, and unless anthropologists really learn something about cultural variation, whether due to foreign contact or to individual departure. NEW YORK, N.Y. SOME PLAY-PARTY GAMES IN MICHIGAN. BY EMELYN E. GARDNER. It is not the purpose of the present writer to attempt to add anything to the very able discussion of "Some Play-Party Games in the Middle West," by Edwin F. Piper, in Volume 28 of this Journal. It may be said, however, that play-party games are still popular in small towns in Michigan. Some towns are so isolated, that the round dances have not yet made their way to them; others are controlled socially by churches which have a strong prejudice against dancing. In the former, the traditional games, with the exception of occasional localized forms, show comparatively little variation from those forms which were recorded by Gomme. In the latter, the old games are often localized, and many modern dance-steps introduced. Several informants contributing to the following collection reported that the words of some game approved by church-members are sometimes sung to accompany a waltz or two-step, and that any game is likely to be ended with a round dance. In such cases the kissing-formula is sometimes omitted, but more often it is not. Some of the tunes below, all of which were collected by Miss Mary O. Sleeper, Detroit, Mich., are medleys of old well-known tunes, and some are new. The latter, according to reports, are usually improvisations by some musical member of the company, who, by virtue of his musical talent, is accepted as a leader. If the players like the tune, they adopt it in place of the old one.1 A satisfactory study of the games in the present collection has been impossible, on account of lack of time and difficulty in obtaining source material. The references cited by Gomme and Newell have not been repeated. The versions of the games given were collected in the main from students in freshman composition-classes in the Michigan State Normal College during the fall terms of 1914 and 1915. Many versions offered were identical, and in that case only one was recorded. I. THE BEAR WENT OVER THE MOUNTAIN.2 1. The bear went over the mountain:] [three times] The bear went over the mountain To see what he could see. 1 The words accompanying the tunes represent in a number of cases versions obtained by Miss Sleeper, while the texts represent versions collected by me. 2 Tune the same as that of "We'll all go down to Rowser" (Mrs. Ames, "Missouri Play-Party," JAFL 24: 297). |