The hints of totemism among the ancient Irish are interesting. One hero, Conaire, was the son of a bird, and before his birth his father (the bird) told the woman (his mother) that the child must never eat the flesh of fowls. 'Thy son shall be named Conaire, and that son shall not kill birds.'[225] The hero Cuchullain, being named after the dog, might not eat the flesh of the dog, and came by his ruin after transgressing this totemistic taboo. Races named after animals were common in ancient Ireland. The red-deer and the wolves were tribes dwelling near Ossory, and Professor Rhys, from the frequency of dog names, inclines to believe in a dog totem in Erin. According to the ancient Irish 'Wonders of Eri,' in the _Book of Glendaloch_, 'the descendants of the wolf are in Ossory,' and they could still transform themselves into wolves.[226] As to our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, there is little evidence beyond the fact that the names (in many cases patronymics) of the early settlements of Billings, Arlings, and the rest, are undeniably derived from animals and plants. The manner in which those names are scattered locally is precisely like what results in America, Africa, and Australia from the totemistic organisation.[227] In Italy the ancient custom by which animals were the leaders of the _Ver sacrum_ or armed migration is well known. The Piceni had for their familiar animal or totem (if we may call it so) a woodpecker; the Hirpini were like the 'descendants of the wolf' in Ossory, and practised a wolf-dance in which they imitated the actions of the animal.
Such is a summary of the evidence which hints that Aryans may once have been totemists, therefore savages, and therefore, again, had probably been in a stage when women were scarce and each woman had many husbands.
(4) _Evidence from the Gens or ~genos~._--There is no more puzzling topic in the history of the ancient world than the origin and nature of the community called by the Romans the _gens_, and by the Greeks the ~genos~. To the present writer it seems that no existing community of men, neither totem kin, nor clan, nor house community, nor _gotra_, precisely answers to the _gens_ or the ~genos~. Our information about these forms of society is slight and confused. The most essential thing to notice for the moment is the fact that both in Greece and Rome the ~genos~ and _gens_ were extremely ancient, so ancient that the ~genos~ was decaying in Greece when history begins, while in Rome we can distinctly see the rapid decadence and dissolution of the _gens_. In the laws of the Twelve Tables, the _gens_ is a powerful and respected corporation. In the time of Cicero the nature of the _gens_ is a matter but dimly understood. Tacitus begins to be confused about the gentile nomenclature. In the Empire gentile law fades away. In Greece, especially at Athens, the early political reforms transferred power from the ~genos~ to a purely local organisation, the Deme. The Greek of historical times did not announce his ~genos~ in his name (as the Romans always did), but gave his own name, that of his father, and that of his deme. Thus we may infer that in Greek and Roman society the ~genos~ and _gens_ were dying, not growing, organisations. In very early times it is probable that foreign _gentes_ were adopted _en bloc_ into the Roman Commonwealth. Very probably, too, a great family, on entering the Roman bond, may have assumed, by a fiction, the character and name of a _gens_. But that Roman society in historical times, or that Greek society, could evolve a new _gens_ or ~genos~ in a normal natural way, seems excessively improbable.