We are now in a position to see whither the lines of our inquiries converge, and to draw a few general conclusions. Since each chapter has been provided with its own summary, the retrospect will not detain us long.

We began by reviewing the facts with regard to the existence of Christian churches on ancient pagan sites. It was soon discovered that the chief testimony was afforded by tangible relics. These objects comprise, on the one hand, rude stone monuments, ancient burial mounds, prehistoric earthworks, and sacred wells, existing in close association with parish churches; and, on the other, of scraps of treasure-trove, such as bones, urns, coins, and implements, thrown up by the spade. The material relics, it is true, did not complete the evidence. A little was learned from place-names, and more, perhaps, from folk-stories concerning the deeds of fairies and witches, giants and demons, who baulked the efforts of the early builders. These traditions, widespread and genuinely spontaneous, are—in whatever way we may choose to explain and interpret them—valuable records of true folk-memory. Our general verdict respecting the sites was that, in many instances, they were originally of pagan selection, although no existing building can be produced which exhibits, as a structure, undoubted continuity from the days of heathendom.

From the site we went on to consider the church fabric. It was seen that some of the earliest churches were raised during periods when the community thought it wise to plan buildings adapted both for defence and worship. The truth of this proposition will, by most students, be deemed to have been satisfactorily proved. The part of the building specially designed for protection was the steeple, which was frequently, by turns, conning tower, beacon, treasure-chamber, and fortress. Touching this ancient use, folk-tales have the true ring.

As the centuries passed away, defensive towers became unnecessary, yet the idea survived in slight architectural features, now meaningless, unless interpreted by the light of history. The nave, however, continued to have its social value for several hundred years. Partly owing to the Reformation of the sixteenth century, partly in consequence of the pressure of population and the subsequent provision of more suitable buildings for secular purposes, even the nave was at last forbidden to the trader and the religious dramatist. Only a few trivial vestiges, such as the affixing of public notices on the church door, remain to tell of the old latitude given to customs, almost all traces of which have vanished from the memory of the common folk. We must except from this oblivion the village chatter about Cromwell’s soldiers stabling their horses in the nave, the gossip about dog-whippers and dicing, and the numerous bits of scandal coming down from the less creditable periods of church history. All of these stories possess a germ of reality. With respect, however, to the current explanations of “lepers’ windows,” squints, “priests’ chambers,” and deflected chancels, there is no direct tradition, these explanations having been obtained from outside sources.

Again, with regard to the orientation of churches, the reasons given by country folk are obviously hearsay presentations of what has been taught by educated persons. We have, it is true, the records of ecclesiological writers to aid us, but these are, unfortunately, rather contradictory. Priest and architect seem to have conspired to keep any actual details of tradition to themselves, supposing, indeed, that any precise canons ever existed. This select corporation may have handed down the theory and the practice, but the rite is now shorn of much ceremonial, and the custom is followed almost blindly. Moreover, modern builders appear to be very careless in their alinements. The staple rudimentary idea of orientation is clearly pagan, and the broad general tradition of sun-alinements must have been well kept during the early centuries of church-building, whether any definite, exact rules as to seasonal alinement were observed or not. If the orientation of modern churches is settled in a somewhat haphazard manner by the builders, and if the primitive idea has become blurred and indefinite, the orientation of graves affords a splendid example of unconscious folk-memory. Not only a sexton, but probably any villager chosen at random, would take into account the East-and-West direction in digging a grave, though he might not be able to assign a reason for his method. The primitive purpose has long since been driven aside by the force of events, and even the symbolists have had to introduce secondary explanations.

In burial customs, with their numerous little superstitious observances, the survival of folk-memory is well displayed. It is needless to repeat the evidence here—how, in recent years, objects have been surreptitiously, and even openly, buried with the dead; how the funeral feast, in an attenuated form, lingers on; how we still scrupulously don the funeral garb, once the sign of deprecation or fear; how graveyard teeth are used as charms and remedies. True, the underlying ideas have much altered; witness, for instance, the modern reasons put forward to justify the wearing of mourning; but so far as the practices are affected, we are still living, though, of course, unavowedly, in the Neolithic period. The superstitions relating to death cannot be expelled from the uneducated mind, which realizes too well that the event itself is inescapable. Hence the prejudice against cremation, stubbornly defying enlightened opinion, and hence the stories of ghosts and apparitions furtively believed in by many persons who would be ashamed to admit such credulity.

The folk-memory connected with the points of the compass supplied us with some curious little touches of local superstition, and with the familiar objection to burial on the North side of the churchyard—an inherited antipathy coming down from prehistoric times. Next, the churchyard yew presented a complicated problem. During the eighteenth century there appears to have existed an echo of the days when the churchyard yew was pruned for purposes of archery. In the few instances where traditions concerning archery are still extant, there is a strong suspicion that folk-memory has been “assisted” by local writers and rambling antiquaries. Indeed, the strange silence about the yew in genuine popular legend is so complete as to be amazing. One does not refer to accounts of the employment of the yew on Palm Sunday, and other similar observances; at most, these are valid only as furnishing secondary motives. The real puzzle remains. Here we have a graveyard tree, possessing strong distinctive characters—sombreness, strength, longevity, perpetual verdure—appealing eloquently to human sentiment. The planting of the tree was a custom in the early days of British Christianity, and the practice has never become obsolete. Individual trees, when decayed or uprooted, have been replaced by fresh ones. In face of the cumulative testimony we cannot believe that the choice of the yew, like that of the elm or ash, was merely casual; yet most of the trustworthy tradition respecting the tree has long since disappeared in a most extraordinary manner.

Rapidly passing on, we recall the chapter relating to the horse-cult. Neglecting the minor details, we observe, in the obstinate prejudice against eating horseflesh, a reversal of prehistoric ideas. Here, at least, the Church made little admitted compromise, though the pagan habit died hard, and backslidings are recorded. Strange to say, few persons could give a reason, except that derived from the Jewish law, for the general repugnance. On broad grounds, we should have expected to find some curious, inconsequent explanation, such as that involved in the superstitious fear of killing robins and swallows, or of eating certain kinds of fish. There could scarcely be any rooted distaste for horseflesh, nor natural repulsion to so clean an animal. Yet the original ecclesiastical ban has lingered long after its actual effective force has been lost. Perhaps a partial explanation is found in the fact that we have always had numerous other domestic animals which have furnished us with flesh food, though the native stores have had to be supplemented by importation.

While folk-memory has sub-consciously kept alive the antipathy to horseflesh, the story of the working ox supplies us with an excellent illustration of the direct failure of oral tradition. The use of the bullock as a beast of draught constituted an economic question simply. So soon as the immediate material advantage was removed, owing to the disuse of ox-labour, all interest in keeping up the tradition was lost. Consequently, it is extremely difficult to get sound information respecting a custom so recently abandoned, and not one person in a hundred has ever seen an ox-shoe. Had the ox been pre-eminently connected with British and Early Teutonic sacrifices and superstitions, as was the horse, we should almost certainly have inherited a number of vagrant traditions. As it is, we possess but a few old ballads, legends, and nursery rhymes, like that of the Dun Cow of Warwick, or the cow that jumped over the moon.

The study of the ox, indeed, helps us to appreciate exactly where the strength and the weakness of folk-memory lie. Roughly speaking, the soundest traditions are concerned either with essential details of urgent social economy, or with religion and superstition. In these matters, oral transmission is usually faithful. “This story shall the good man teach his son.” But let an industrial practice be dropped, through its being no longer necessary or profitable, and a few decades will wipe out all direct remembrance. The most stupid myths will arise to account for this or that visible relic of the industry or custom. So long as the occupation brings material gain, the tradition is scrupulously passed on from father to son. Of superstition, or of widely-felt fears, affecting both body and spirit, there is the same careful transmission and the same vivid retention. Scenes of horror also remain long in the memory of the people; hence we meet with traditions of battles, massacres, raids, burnings. Just in proportion as the historical facts grow tenuous, the accounts become distorted and exaggerated, as, for instance, in the Irish legends about Cromwell. There are minor divisions of each series, such as those which comprise the stories about buried treasure, ghosts and “barguests,” omens and amulets, together with superstitions respecting personal characteristics, times and seasons, health and disease, with many other matters.

Viewing broadly the tract occupied by folk-memory, we indeed find certain stable elements. We see the peasantry, diminishing numerically, but still forming a great multitude, slow-moving by nature, and tenacious of their heritage of folklore. The dull, mechanical monotony of the lives of many of the industrial classes, again, tends to check any breaking away from tradition. Our educational system is, alas, still so uniform as to put a curb on originality, hence there is a tendency for ideas to keep their traditional set. Opposed to these conservative factors, there is at work a well-known biological principle. As our society—to use the Spencerian phrase—is being slowly transformed from a state of homogeneity to one of heterogeneity, as the individual becomes separated and specialized from the mass, the habit of acting instinctively like blind units of the human crowd is slowly lost, while race-memory is weakened, and the primitive faculty of unconsciously preserving and transmitting unwritten lore becomes atrophied and almost worthless.

Even the wofully scanty records of folk-memory such as those which we have noticed, are destined soon to disappear. Education, in spite of its cramped conditions, is destroying many foolish beliefs and baneful superstitions. But it is doing more than this; for the printed book and the daily newspaper not only obliterate folk-memory, but remove the need for its lawful exercise. The reader no longer relies on oral tradition, but on the printed pages of history and on works of reference. Scarcely can we tell whether an important event took place five years ago, or a dozen years ago. The speech and actions of famous men become confused in popular tradition—always there is some book wherein the record is kept. A credulous antiquary may proclaim that a certain mound is a barrow, and though the “barrow” was actually raised within the past twenty years, few folk can come forward to gainsay the statement. Or some old shepherd “believes” that he has used flint celts for bell-clappers, whereas it is more likely that he has merely heard, or read, of such a practice. In fact, we are swiftly approaching the time when folk-custom and folk-memory will be so utterly vitiated by books and lectures as to be worthless. Caution is especially necessary at the present day. In his address to the British Association in 1910, Mr W. Crooke gave a timely warning respecting the “half-trained amateur.” Such a person, visiting India, “may see a totem in every hedge, or expect to meet a corn-spirit on every threshing floor.” And, at home, the rash enthusiast may see an idol in every stone heap, an Iberian in every dark-haired man, a symbol in every line of an ancient building, a prehistoric grave in every stray bit of potsherd.

There is, however, a middle course of action. And, though folk-memory is waning, there is work which can be done, if it be done quickly. There are still waifs and strays of custom to be collected and correlated. Every village clergyman has his parish registers, which, though unfortunately not reaching back so far as one could wish, may yet give information on some of the topics which we have studied. The local antiquary who will make a precise record of all discoveries which connect the present with the past, will do great service. The muniment room, with its deeds and charters, sometimes yields us timely help. The old chest, with its wills, leases, and covenants, may, in a few scattered sentences, throw light on some quaint custom. The ballads and folk-songs, which are now being so sedulously collected and studied, still safeguard many curious fancies and superstitions. All these sources will gradually yield less and less to the searcher. It is true that there are libraries full of volumes which treat of antiquities, folk-customs, and folk-lore, but the details need to be carefully re-arranged, and, in many instances, to be re-vivified by comparison with the living present.