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Updated: June 13, 2025
In general this sort of representation in savage and ancient civilized communities is often either simple realism or indecency. Folk-stories abound in details that sound indecent to modern ears, but were for the authors often merely copies of current usages.
It may be compared to its own advantage with "The Lost Phoebe" by Theodore Dreiser, which was equally memorable among the folk-stories of 1916, and the comparison suggests that in both cases the author's training as a novelist has not been to his disadvantage as a short-story teller.
Which of these views will seem the more probable will depend partly on the degree of importance assigned to certain traditions and folk-stories of the Northwestern tribes, partly on one's construction of the general history of totemistic observances. In so obscure a subject a definite theory can hardly be maintained.
Among the Central Australians there were folk-stories of early men who traveled under the ground, but this is represented as merely an extraordinary way of getting from one place to another on the surface of the earth.
This Svenska maid is full of folk-stories. She tells the children how St. John's eve is celebrated in Sweden. The young men and girls bring boughs and construct arbors. They stay up all night, eating, playing, and visiting from arbor to arbor. About midsummer, it is true, there is very little night in Northern Sweden. "This was once in the papers," says Marie innocently. "They said it was true.
Reports from all over the savage world testify to the prominence of sexual intercourse in the lower forms of human life. Folk-stories are full of coarse details of the practice. Popular festivals are often characterized by gross license. To lend a wife to a guest is in many places a recognized rule of hospitality.
All that has been possible to me is to suggest an inquiry that any one can pursue for himself. It is the difficulty of treating so wide and fascinating a subject in briefest outline that so many things that should be noticed have to be passed over. The witness afforded by these folk-stories for mother-right cannot be neglected.
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