Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 27, 2025
"Yankee that I am," he admitted, "I seem to be Scot enough to observe the prejudices and folk-ways of my forebears." "Is it your clan flag?" "Bratach Bhan Chlaun Aoidh," he said smilingly. "The White Banner of the McKays." "Good! And what may that be that bunch of weed you wear in your button-hole?" Again the young fellow laughed: "Seasgan or Cuilc in Gaelic just reed-grass, Miss Yellow-hair."
These "folk-ways" were born long before human laws and were enforced more rigidly than the statutes of a later age. Slowly men embodied their "taboos," their incantations, their habits and customs into religions and statutes. A law was only a codification of a habit or custom that long ago was a part of the life of a people.
The criminologist must face the fact that, in spite of contrary pretenses by most of our social doctors, we are still in our work-a-day life guided almost exclusively by the mores the folk-ways of old founded on expediency as revealed by experiences, and acquired by the only known process, that of trial and error.
The scientist and the modern philosopher were making their contributions to the world of thought, and these contributions were slowly affecting life and conduct. A doubt of old creeds and doctrines and faiths was coming over the minds of men. Social conventions were loosening, new customs and habits were becoming folk-ways. In short, society and life were growing more fluid and adaptable.
Sometimes it is a genetic group like the family, sometimes an artificial group like a band of huntsmen; in either case the group is held together by a psychic unity and comes to have its peculiar group characteristics. Fixed ways of thinking and acting are revealed. Social habits they may be called, or folk-ways, as some prefer to name them.
Man's structure is fixed; his inherent instincts are of ancient origin, always urging him to primitive reactions; his habits are slowly formed and slowly changed. Slowly he settles himself to the conditions that surround him. He learns their demands; he manages to conform, but the folk-ways that he knew and the way of life he learned must be changed to something else.
Criminal codes were lengthened; methods of getting property and keeping it were provided for, and other ways condemned. It must be obvious that it was not easy for man with his age-old machine, his inherited institutions and his ancient folk-ways, to adjust himself rapidly to the change. New conditions and laws created new criminals.
In some of the most afflicted ones civil government for a time has virtually broken down. Both the great need for food and clothing and the overthrowing of conventions, customs and habits are responsible for the change. Here we perceive a notable example of the almost instantaneous disruption of established folk-ways. For more than four years most of the western world did nothing but kill.
She gazed at him in amazement, then: "I could go out on the street, too, as far as that is concerned. It would be no more disgraceful." "Folk-ways sanction self-sale, when guaranteed by the clergy," he said. She turned her head and he saw the pure, cold profile against the golden table-lamp, and he saw something else under the palms beyond Graylock's light eyes riveted upon them both.
The basis that the world has always followed, and perhaps always will accept, is not hard to find. The criminal is the one who violates habits and customs of life, the "folk-ways" of the community where he lives. These customs and folk-ways must be so important in the opinion of the community as to make their violation a serious affair.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking