subdued the island and called it after his own name; he scoffs at the four sons of Japhet, called Francus, Romanus, Alemannus, and Britto. But when he comes to Brutus and the Trojan legends of old English history, his sceptical courage fails him: 'those old and inborn names of successive kings, never any to have bin real persons, or don in their lives at least som part of what so long hath bin remember'd, cannot be thought without too strict an incredulity.'[1]
Among ruder races of the world, asserted genealogies of this class may be instanced in South American tribes called the Amoipira and Potyuara,[2] Khond clans called Baska and Jakso,[3] Turkoman hordes called Yomut, Tekke, and Chaudor,[4] all of them professing to derive their designations from ancestors or chiefs who bore as individuals these very names. Where criticism can be brought to bear on these genealogies, its effect is often such as drove Brutus and his Trojans out of English history. When there appear in the genealogy of Haussa, in West Africa, plain names of towns like Kano and Katsena,[5] it is natural to consider these towns to have been personified into mythic ancestors. Mexican tradition assigns a whole set of eponymic ancestors or chiefs to the various races of the land, as Mexi the founder of Mexico, Chichimecatl the first king of the Chichimecs, and so forth, down to Otomitl the ancestor of the Otomis, whose very name by its termination betrays its Aztec invention.[6] The Brazilians account for the division of the Tupis and Guaranis, by the legend of two ancestral brothers, Tupi and Guarani, who
- ↑ On the adoption of imaginary ancestors as connected with the fiction of a common descent, and the important political and religious effects of these proceedings, see especially Grote, 'History of Greece,' vol. i.; McLennan, 'Primitive Marriage,' Maine, 'Ancient Law.' Interesting details on eponymic ancestors in Pott, 'Anti-Kaulen, oder Mythische Vorstellungen vom Ursprunge der Völker und Sprachen.'
- ↑ Martius, 'Ethnog. Amer.' vol. i. p. 54; see p. 283.
- ↑ Macpherson, 'India,' p. 78.
- ↑ Vambéry, 'Central Asia,' p. 325; see also Latham, 'Descr. Eth.' vol. i. p. 456 (Ostyaks); Georgi, 'Reise im Russ. Reich,' vol. i. 242 (Tunguz).
- ↑ Barth, 'N. & Centr. Afr.' vol. ii. p. 71.
- ↑ J. G. Müller, 'Amer. Urrelig.' p. 574.
