Whoever has had patience to read through the material collected in the previous chapter will now no doubt be clear as to the process by which the cycle of months arose. The necessity was felt of distinguishing the months, of marking them. After the fashion of primitive man this was done, not by means of an abstract enumeration, but by some concrete reference. But the relation to a solitary historical event, by which rather more highly civilised peoples denote the years, can hardly, or only in isolated instances, be applied to the month: for the life of primitive peoples is very monotonous, and is not so rich in events which make an impression upon the mind that one of these will occur in every month, and even supposing that such events could be found, the months in a human life are too numerous for it to be possible to keep a series of this nature in mind. A second circumstance also proved decisive. The moon, whose phases always recur with regularity, served better than anything else to determine the date of any future event within a shorter period. The primitive peoples, with their undeveloped faculty of counting, could in this fashion numerically determine only a couple of months before or after the time of the moon that was then visible in the heavens. This is what we must understand by the statement made for the western tribe of the Torres Straits, viz. that they had no division of the year into months or days and never numbered the years, in view of the following statement that they commonly counted time in ‘suns’, i. e. days, and ‘moons’, i. e. months[806]. That is, they numbered two or three months, but had no series of months. The same initial stage is found also on the Australian continent. The natives of Central Australia reckon time by moon-phases, moons, and in the case of a longer period by seasons[807]. The Kakadu of Northern Territory reckon in moons and seasons, otherwise everything is more or less vague with the exception of the present and the immediate past and future[808].

Primitive man does not get very far in this fashion. In accordance with his custom and his whole habits of thought he must have some concrete factor to enable him to conceive of the different moons. This is found in the fact that the moon covers a part of the natural year. Herein lies a connexion which constantly recurs. The moons were therefore distinguished and named with reference to the phenomena of the natural year, to the phases of nature and to the occupations, labours, and conditions determined by them, and further to the risings of the stars. Within the series of from twelve to thirteen moons the month was determined by these means. Or, expressed somewhat differently, seasons and moons were mutually connected.

Originally this grouping together of the months was only incidental. The original state of affairs is well illustrated by the detailed description given by Codrington for the Melanesians:—

“It is impossible to fit the native succession of moons into a solar year, months have their names from what is done and what happens when the moon appears and while it lasts; the same moon has different names. If all the names of moons in use in one language were set in order the periods of time would overlap, and the native year would be artificially made up of 20 or 30 months. The moons and seasons of Mota in the Banks’ Islands may serve as an example. The garden work of the year is the principal guide to the arrangement, the succession of 1, clearing garden ground, uma, 2, cutting down the trees, tara, 3, turning over and piling up the stuff, rakasag, 4, burning it, sing, 5, digging the holes for yams, nur, and planting, riv. Then follows the care of the yam plants till the harvest, after which preparation for the next crop begins again. At the same time the regular winds and calms are observed, the spring of grass, the conspicuous flowering of certain trees, the bursting into leaf of the few deciduous trees. When a certain grass, magoto, springs, the winter, as it must be called, is over; when the erythrina, rara, is in flower, it is the cool season; magoto, therefore, and rara are names of seasons in native use, and answer roughly to summer and winter. The strange and exciting appearance of the palolo, un, sets a wide mark on the seasons. The April moon coincides pretty well with the time of the magoto qaro, the fresh grass; clearing, uma, of gardens goes on, the trade wind is steady. This is followed by the magoto rango, the withered grass; both are months of cutting down trees in the gardens, vule taratara, and in the latter the stuff is burnt. In July the erythrina, rara, begins to flower; this is nago rara, the face of winter; gardens are fenced, it is a moon of planting yams, vule vutvut. Planting continues into August, when the erythrina is in full flower, tur rara, the gaviga, Malay apple, flowering at the same time; the S. E. wind, gauna, blows, the yams begin to shoot and are stuck with reeds. In the next month the erythrina puts out its leaves, it is the end of it, kere rara; the yam vines run up the reeds and are trained, taur, upon them; the reeds are broken and bent over, ruqa, to let them run freely; the ground is kept clear of weeds; the tendrils curl, and the tubers are well formed. Then come the months of calm, when three moons are named from the un, palolo: first the un rig, the little un, or the bitter, un gogona, when at the full moon a few of the annelids appear. It is now the tau matua, the season of maturity; yams can be taken up and eaten, and if the weather is favourable, a second crop is planted. The un lava, the great palolo, follows, when at the full moon for one night the annelids appear on the reefs in swarms; the whole population is on the beach, taking up the un in every vessel and with every contrivance. This is the moon of the yam harvest; the vines are cut, goro, and the tubers very carefully taken up with digging-sticks to be stored. A few un appear at the next moon, the werei, which may be translated ‘the rump of the un’. In this moon they begin again to uma, clear the gardens; the wind blows again from the west, the ganoi, over Vanua Lava. It is now November or December, the togalau-wind blows from the north-west, it is exceedingly hot, fish die in the shallow pools, the reeds shoot up into flower; it is the moon of shooting up, vule wotgoro. The next month is the vusiaru, the wind beats upon the casuarina-trees upon the cliffs, the next again is called tetemavuru, the wind blows hard and drives off flying fragments from the seeded reeds; these are hurricane months. The last in order is the month that beats and rattles, lamasag noronoro, the dry reeds; the wind blows strong and steady, work is begun again, they rakasag, dry the rubbish of their clearings, and make ready the fences for new gardens. By this time the heat is past, the grass begins to spring again, and the winter months return”[809].

According to another report the natives of New Britain (Bismarck Archipelago) are still at the initial stage of the development. They numbered the months of the monsoons, five for each, and gave one month each to the two intervening periods. They had no names for each month, but only for the season. However they had terms for the planting and for the digging-moon, i. e. the harvest[810].

Another example may serve to shew how near to one another lists of months and seasons may under certain circumstances come. The Chukchee divide the year into twelve lunar months or ‘moons’. The year begins with the winter solstice, the time of which is marked pretty accurately. The dark interval between two moons is called ‘moon interval’. The names are:—1, the old-buck month; 2, cold udder (month); 3, genuine udder (month); 4, calving month; 5, water (month); 6, making-leaves month; 7, warm month, or summer month; 8, rubbing-off velvet (antlers) month, or midsummer month; 9, light-frost month; 10, autumn month, or wild-reindeer rutting month; 11, unexplained, perhaps ‘muscles of the back’, since it is believed that the muscles in the back of the reindeer become stronger in winter: also called ‘new-snow cover’; 12, shrinking (days) month. The Koryak have different names in different localities, but most of them call the third and the fourth months respectively the ‘false’ and the ‘true reindeer-birth month’. In ordinary speech, however, the names of months often give place to names of seasons, which are far more numerous than among us. Those most commonly used are:—1, ‘in the extending’, sc. of the days, corresponds approximately to the first month of the year; 2, ‘in the lengthening’, corresponds to the second month; 3, ‘during (the days) growing long’, lasts about six weeks, until the reindeer begin to calve; 4, ‘in the calving-(time)’; 5, ‘in the new summer growing’; 6, ‘in the first summer’; 7, ‘in the second summer’; 8, ‘in the middle summer’; 9, ‘with the fresh air going out’; 10, ‘with the first light frost’; 11, ‘with the new snow’; 12, ‘in the fall’; 13, ‘in the winter’[811]. Certainly these are seasons, and one of them has six weeks, but our authority himself explains a couple of them by a comparison with the moon-month. There are just thirteen of them, which, if the number is more than an accident, is an accurate series of months. In every case the addition of the word ‘moon’ would make the names descriptive of a month. The names in both the lists just given are of a similar nature.

Few travellers and scholars have been so unfettered and unprejudiced by our inherited ideas of the calendar as Codrington; accordingly they have usually striven to establish a proper series of months, or at least normal series. How much is lost to view owing to this tendency can hardly be imagined, but there are sufficient indications in the reports to point to the fluctuating, manifold, and unstable nature of the primitive naming of the months.

One of these indications is the great variability of the names. Many peoples have remained at the stage at which a fixed connexion between month and season does not exist: every season—taking the word in its broadest sense—, every natural event and occupation may be associated with a month. If these relationships are treated as names of months, there will arise a great number of names of months, which will vary according to circumstances and to the whim of the speaker. Thus it is said[812] of the Eskimos of the Behring Straits that very often different names are used to describe the same month, when this month occurs at a time at which different occupations or natural phenomena are in progress. That the situation is, or at least was, the same among most peoples is shewn by the numerous variants which are to be found even in the preceding lists, and would certainly be much more numerous if the authorities, in their efforts to establish a normal series, had not passed them over. In the same fashion is to be explained the next surprising phenomenon, viz. that certain peoples, in the matter of the number of months in the year, give a far greater number than twelve or thirteen. This is not always to be set down to the inability to count. That explanation serves when prominent Igorot declare that the year has a hundred months[813], but not when the Kiowa number 14 or 15[814]. The Hopi year too may have 14 months, since the second part of October receives a special name[815]. Perhaps the month is halved, just as when among the Central Eskimos the days of a certain month, which has only twilight and no sun, receive one name, and the rest of the month another[816]. A traveller of the 18th century states that the Tahitians reckon 14 months, and adds that it is a mystery how they count them[817]. But these traces are here seen to be relics of an earlier state of affairs such as Codrington has clearly described:—“Months have their names from what is done and what happens when the moon appears and while it lasts; the same moon has different names. If all the names of moons in use in one language were set in order, the periods of time would overlap, and the native year would be artificially made up of 20 or 30 months”.

This fluctuating character of the nomenclature explains the instability of the names of the months; when anything new happens which is of importance for the life of the people, it serves to describe a month. Thus the Lenope, after they migrated inland, where no shads were found, renamed the shad-month the sugar-refining month[818]; and the Pima, after they had learnt to cultivate wheat, named a month from the wheat harvest[819]. The best evidence is the multiplicity and diversity of the names of months, which is found everywhere, even among the most closely related peoples and tribes, or different groups of the same tribe, as is shewn by the above series of months from beginning to end. Most significant and by no means isolated is the case of the Cheyenne, different groups of whom have separate names for the months. Since they are well acquainted with the customs of the animals and roam over wide areas, they easily recognise any name for a month, even if they themselves do not use it. The reason for this is also that the seasons, which serve as descriptions of the months, are common to all and at once become intelligible[820]. They have not been fixed in a conventional series, as is the case with the months as we conceive them; ours is the final point of the development, which begins with a chaotic mass of names of months.

We see that at this stage the number of months is indifferent: the question how many months the year has simply does not exist, and consequently there is no need to make the series of moon-months fit into the solar year. There are peoples who do not even extend the reckoning by moons to the whole year. There is a time ‘in which nothing happens’, which is quite without interest and in which no one takes the trouble to observe or name the moons. Such a period is e. g. the depth of winter in the far north, when people only vegetate, as well as they can. Among the tribes of the Kamchatka river the tenth and last month is said to be as long as three others[821]. The Amansi, one of the Ibo-speaking tribes, reckon ten months and an evulevu (idiot, nothing, empty month)[822]. More often we find series of months with less than twelve names. The inhabitants of the Marquesas Islands had a ten-month year, although as well as this they knew the complete year, which was reckoned and named according to the Pleiades[823]. Even the Maoris are said to have counted no more months after the tenth[824]. The Yurak Samoyedes and the Tunguses of the Amur count only eleven months, the northern Kamchadales ten[825]. The Yeneseisk Ostiaks name only the months of one half of the year, the seven winter months[826], and so do many Indian tribes. The Bannock have no names for the months of the warm season of the year[827]. Many Cheyenne tribes have only six months with names[828]; the present condition of the calendar of the Hopi and Zuñi points to the fact that this was really the case with these tribes also[829]. The Diegueño of S. California have only six months[830]. Even where a full series of months has arisen, there are traces of this earlier state of affairs. Thus the Omaha have one month ‘in which nothing happens’[831]. Of the 13 months of the Upper Wellé those occupying the 7th and 13th positions have no names[832]. Among the Voguls of the Tawda three months seem to be unnamed[833].

A further very wide-spread phenomenon of the nomenclature of the months—the pairs of months, in which two months of the same name are distinguished as the big and the little, the former and the latter, etc.—is due to the connecting of the month with somewhat larger divisions of the natural year, covering a period of about two months. Thus the Tchuvashes have a very steep month and a month of little steepness, the Ugric Ostiaks a big and a little winter-ridge month, the Minusinsk Tatars a little and a big cold, the Karagasses a frost month and a big frost month, the Samoyedes a first and a big dark month, the Voguls a little and a big autumn-hunting month, perhaps also a little and a big mid-summer month, the Thlinkits a month before, and a month when, everything hatches, the Indians in De la Potherie a first and a second moon in which the bear brings forth her young, the Kiowa a little bud-moon and a bud-moon, the latter sometimes with ‘big’ added, the Creek Indians a little and a big ripening moon, a little and a big chestnut moon, a big and a little winter, the latter also called ‘little brother of big winter’ (note the inverted order in this case), a little and a big spring. The Seminole have four pairs of months, in three the first is distinguished as the little, e. g. little and big mulberry moon, but on the other hand the big winter precedes the little; the Zuñi have a little and a big wind-month. Somewhat similar are the pairs of months of the Pima, ‘leaves’ and ‘flowers’ of the cottonwood and mesquite respectively. The Nandi of British East Africa have two pairs, ‘sacrifice’ and ‘second sacrifice’, ‘strong wind’ and ‘second strong wind’. Compare also the two Basuto months phupjoane, ‘to begin to swell’, from phuphu, and phuphu, ‘to swell’. The two series of months from Timor shew more pairs. In the Polynesian series pairs of months are equally frequent. In Tonga there are two pairs, including a first and a second rainy month, on the Society Islands there is a first and a second palolo month, and so also in Samoa, in Tahiti a first and a last hunger. How the pair so frequently occurring among the Siberian peoples, little and big month, is to be explained is uncertain (cp. among the Thlinkits ‘moon-child’ or young month, and big month). It may be that something is to be understood, or perhaps they are simply two months without names, which are distinguished by the aid of the common epithets.

Such pairs of months exist where greater seasons are involved in the determining of the moons, and they are in fact convenient, since their use obviates the unfortunate circumstance which has been a source of great confusion to primitive peoples, viz. that a natural phase from which it is the custom to name a month may fall on the border-line between two moons. So long as the description of the months remains quite fluctuating and occasional, this and similar inconveniences do not make themselves felt, but a very natural development leads to a conventionalising of the series of months. In common speech a selection among the various names of months unconsciously takes place, so that those prevail which relate to more important occupations and natural phases. Thus arises a fixed, or tolerably well fixed, series of months, such as appears in most of the reports handed down to us.