ESSAY 1

Borrowing or Plagiarism?

Proceeding from my remarks made about Massey in another essay, I now have to take him to task over a more serious matter; that is, the extent of his borrowing. By this I mean the source material introduced into his works from other sources unaccredited. This should not be confused with the material he discusses where there is no reference given, but rather the references given which have been derived from elsewhere.

To make myself clear on this point, after consulting a small selection of some the works he quotes from, I found that most of his quotations have been lifted from these works. Like music artists accused of sampling music without due acknowledgement from other sources, Massey samples texts from other works, usually wholesale quotations, and introduces them into his text as if he has consulted the work himself, whereas in reality he has relied on another scholar to provide it for him. It then looks as if he has consulted more material than he actually had access to. That is how his impressive list of references grew to such a prodigious extent. This is nothing peculiar to Massey alone; everyone does it. Only difference is, Massey does it to an unacceptable level.

Some would call this outright plagiarism.

Plagiarism is a contentious issue, particularly in the field of writing where copyright terms and laws become increasingly convoluted. The plagiarist per se conforms to the standard model of lazy, talentless, unoriginal. Anyone can do it. It is simply a matter of finding the suitable text, appropriating it, then publishing it under one's own name. Or, if you're feeling in the slightest bit creative, try rearranging it, and writing it up in its new form, then passing it off as being from one's own pen. It in itself becomes also something of an art form. In postmodernist terms; Anti-art - the individualism of the original work is stripped of its inner value as a personal commodity. The oft-quoted maxim of Lautreamont - 'Plagiarism is necessary. It is implied in the idea of progress' - is more particularly relevant today as fewer new ideas come into circulation, the majority of works being largely rewrites of previous ones. This leads to the cynical conclusion that there is nothing else to say, everything is imitative, and the market is dictated purely by a need: after all, anything that sells justifies its reason for existing. In the end most of us are plagiarists.

However, is the term applicable to Massey? Yes and no. Massey displays all the characteristics of the standard model in that his poor referencing demonstrates laziness; he simply couldn't be bothered to cite properly. And this is evident through his whole attitude to his work: laziness pervades his books, also demonstrable in the arrangement of his points, the divisions of his chapters - entirely arbitrary in most cases since he discusses the same points in different chapters showing no sign of logical progression, illustrations taken from other works without acknowledgement, Latin and Greek quotes not translated - not so inexcusable for his time since even Thomas Taylor writing over fifty years prior to Massey always translates his foreign quotes for his readers, etc. although his talent as a perceptive thinker is undeniable and his originality in the field of typology is without doubt. But it is a very easy process to simply copy straight from the book in front of you and not bother to mention the source; then that, I am afraid, constitutes plagiarism. If, however, he stated the source, that would be an entirely different matter. But as it is, his laziness does not absolve him from the charge of plagiarism in toto.

I prefer the more lenient term of borrowing as it does not smack of out-and-out plundering. Since he was poverty stricken most of his life there are good reasons for this method: he did not have the resources to build up a significant library of his own, and struggling to make ends meet he would not have had as much time as he wished to use the books held in the British Library. We do know, however, that he made extensive use of the reading room in the British Library as he often had to get his ticket renewed.¹  Instead he had what I will here call primary and secondary material. This arbitrary division can be classified as follows; those works that were closest to hand provided him with his primary source, and through them gave him access to the secondary material. The primary works can be listed in no particular order as follows:

1. Brand's Popular Antiquities.

2. Dyer's British Popular Customs.

3. Sale's The Koran.

4. RP and RPNS.

5. Muller's Chips From A German Workshop.

6. Davies' Mythology of the British Druids.

7. Skene's Four Ancient Books of Wales.

8. Tylor's Primitive Culture & Researches into the Early History of Mankind.

9. Lubbock's Origins of Civilisation.

This is only a preliminary list, there being no doubt others, but these works provided him for most of the material he quotes from, not just the borrowed material, but also acknowledged references.

How do we know he borrowed material? Simple: by reading the books he read. You will then find most of the quotes he uses and no doubt be staggered, as I was, by how much material is really not of his own making. The nine works listed above provided him with enough information to, say, fill out one volume of NG. When put into perspective with the list of titles to be found in the Bibliography, this is a surprising revelation. To put it succinctly, the folkloric and customs material is gathered from 1 and 2; these gave him substantial material to flesh out his ideas essentially in BB 1. Items 8 and 9 gave him material for the customs, rituals and beliefs of foreign cultures as both draw substantially from the travelogues of writers abroad, from the mid 16th century up to Massey's own era. But it would be unfair to dismiss BB 1, for example, as being a compilation derived from Brand and Dyer - although a quick glance at the Bibliography and the Bibliographical Index will show how reliant he was on both these works for his source material. What I am particularly concerned about is his use of this material. Through Brand he had access to hundreds of obscure works that would indeed be difficult to locate, many of them being extremely scarce and luckily held conveniently for Brand in the British Library. Brand had done all the work for Massey by meticulously researching the material himself to give him an insight into the peculiar customs and traditions, the beliefs and rituals, of an England long past that was only retrievable through these works. And Massey put it amply to use to back up his own theories. The same can be said for Tylor, who was a true scholar in that every single quote is religiously referenced.

To understand Massey's approach to his source material and his method of lifting from it, I will here give a good example. And the best way to examine it is to deconstruct his text.

In NG 1:117 there are four listed references in the footnotes, yet all of them are borrowed - that is, he neglects to mention the two primary sources from whence they are derived, i.e. Tylor and Lubbock. I here give the page in its entirety. 

"...a mere relation of parentage, affection, and duty, but that their very bodies are joined by a physical bond; so that what is done to the one acts directly on the other." If so, surely some of the parent's sufferings attending the ceremony were calculated to kill any number of children; and this fact is fatal to the reason assigned for the one part of the performance which was intended to insure the safety and well-being of the child.

Bachofen suggested that the custom of couvade originated as a ceremony that was typical of a transfer in the line of descent from the motherhood to the individualised fatherhood, as if the male parent were performing an act symbolical of his superseding the female parentage. But with the Macusis of Guiana, amongst others, the father and mother both lie in, and there is no transfer from the mother to the father. So with the Arawacs. The act did not transfer the child to the father; ¹ they continued to trace the line of descent from the mother.

The custom shows that the parent identifies himself with the infant child. He takes no more nourishment than would keep a mere child alive, and this is limited at times to the most infantile food. If the child dies, it is because of some sin of omission or commission with which the father is chargeable. He has "neglected to shave off his long eyebrows," ² or he has handled metal, or injured his nails. For the Macusis of Guiana might not scratch themselves with their own nails (a type of pubescence), and a rib of the palm-leaf was hung up for use instead. An Abipone resisted the luxury of a pinch of snuff for fear it should make him sneeze and the sneeze bring some danger upon the child.³

When the child is born the father exhibits the offspring as his. He receives the congratulations of friends instead of the mother. The father not only takes the mother's place in bed with the child. He makes a typical transformation into the character of a child. He becomes as a little child in his habits and diet before the child is born.

Among the Coroados as soon as the woman was known to be pregnant the strict regimen began and the man lived chiefly on fish and fruits; his infantile diet. The men of the Caribi and Acawoid nations abstained from certain kinds of meat lest the expected child might be injured in some mysterious manner by the father's eating of them.⁴

Thus the father represents or impersonates the child before birth and religiously abstains from everything that could hurt an infant. He did also take the place of the mother, but the still more arresting phenomenon is found in his becoming as the child.

¹ Spix and Martius, Travels in Brazil, vol. ii. 247.
² Dobrizhoffer on the Abipones.
³ Dobrizhoffer.
⁴ Brett, Indian Tribes of Guiana, p. 355.

If we were to break down this page into numbered segments we would be able to see clearly how he uses his material. (I have highlighted similarities between references.) 

1. "...a mere relation of parentage, affection, and duty, but that their very bodies are joined by a physical bond; so that what is done to the one acts directly on the other."/ [Quote not referenced by Massey. From Tylor's Researches, p.296.]

2. If so, surely some of the parent's sufferings attending the ceremony were calculated to kill any number of children; and this fact is fatal to the reason assigned for the one part of the performance which was intended to insure the safety and well-being of the child. [Massey's own words.]

3. Bachofen suggested that the custom of couvade originated as a ceremony that was typical of a transfer in the line of descent from the motherhood to the individualised fatherhood, as if the male parent were performing an act symbolical of his superseding the female parentage./ [From Tylor's Researches, p. 297;—'An attempt to account for the couvade has been made by Bachofen, in his remarkable treatise on that early stage of society when the rule of kinship on the mother's side prevailed, which in the course of ages has been generally superseded by the opposite rule of kinship on the father's side. The couvade, in his view, belonged to the period of great social change, being a symbolical act performed by the father for the purpose of taking on himself the parental relation to the child which had been previously held by the mother.'—Bachofen, The Abipones, pp. 17, 255, etc.]

4. But with the Macusis of Guiana, amongst others, the father and mother both lie in,/[Ibid, p. 298;— 'Among the Macusis of Guiana, who may stand as the example, the father after the birth of the child hangs up his hammock beside the mother's, and keeps with her the weeks of seclusion.']

5. and there is no transfer from the mother to the father./[Ibid, p. 298;—'... these Macusis, so far from reckoning the parentage as having been transferred to the father by the couvade, are actually among the tribes who do not reckon kinship on the father's side, the child belonging to the mother's clan.'] 

6. So with the Arawacs./[Ibid, p. 298;—'So among the Arawacs, though the father performs the couvade, this does not interfere with the rule that kinship goes by the mother.']

7. The act did not transfer the child to the father; ¹/[This reference is misplaced. See 16 below.] 

8. they continued to trace the line of descent from the mother. [Massey's own words.]

9. The custom shows that the parent identifies himself with the infant child. He takes no more nourishment than would keep a mere child alive, and this is limited at times to the most infantile food. If the child dies, it is because of some sin of omission or commission with which the father is chargeable./[Massey's own words, the information deriving in part from Tylor and Lubbock.]

10. He has "neglected to shave off his long eyebrows," ²/[Tylor, ibid, p. 295;—'he had neglected to shave off his long eyebrows;' -- Dobrizhoffer, The Abipones, 2:231.]

11. or he has handled metal, or injured his nails./[Unable to trace.]

12. For the Macusis of Guiana might not scratch themselves with their own nails (a type of pubescence), and a rib of the palm-leaf was hung up for use instead./[Tylor, ibid, p. 298;—'During this time, neither husband nor wife do any work; he may not bathe nor take his weapons in hand; both may quench their thirst with lukewarm water and eat cassava-porridge; they are even forbidden to scratch themselves with their nails, a bit of palm-leaf being hung up to use instead.']

13. An Abipone resisted the luxury of a pinch of snuff for fear it should make him sneeze and the sneeze bring some danger upon the child.³ /[Tylor, ibid, p. 295;—'As I stood by, Barreda offered the Cacique a pinch of Spanish snuff, but seeing the savage refuse it contrary to custom, he thought he must be out of his mind, for he knew him at other times to be greedy of this nasal delicacy; so he asked me aside to inquire the cause of this abstinence. I asked him in the Abiponian tongue...why he refused his snuff to-day? "Don't you know?" he answered, "that my wife has just been confined? Must I therefore not abstain from stimulating my nostrils? What a danger my sneezing would bring upon my child!" No more, but he went back to his hut to lie down again directly, lest the tender little infant should take some harm if he stayed any longer with us in the open air.'—Dobrizhoffer, The Abipones, 2:231.]

14. When the child is born the father exhibits the offspring as his. He receives the congratulations of friends instead of the mother./[Tylor, ibid, p. 300;—'"In one tribe it is the custom for the father of a new-born child, as soon as its mother has become strong enough to leave her couch, to get into bed himself, and there receive the congratulations of his acquaintances, as he exhibits his offspring."'—Lockhart, TES, 1861, p. 181. Also Lubbock, Origins of Civilisation, p. 16, 4th edition, 1882;—'"On the birth of a child, the ancient Indian etiquette requires the father to take to his hammock, where he remains some days as if he were sick, and receives the congratulations and condolence of his friends."'—Brett, The Indian Tribes of Guiana, p. 101.]

15. The father not only takes the mother's place in bed with the child. He makes a typical transformation into the character of a child. He becomes as a little child in his habits and diet before the child is born. [Massey's own words.]

16. Among the Coroados as soon as the woman was known to be pregnant the strict regimen began and the man lived chiefly on fish and fruits; his infantile diet./[Lubbock, ibid, p. 16;—'In Brazil, among the Coroados, Martius tells us that "as soon as the woman is evidently pregnant, or has been delivered, the man withdraws. A strict regimen is observed before the birth; the man and the woman refrain for a time from the flesh of certain animals, and live chiefly on fish and fruits."'—Spix and Martius, Travels in Brazil, 2:247. Note: This is the misplaced reference Massey has attributed to footnote 1. See 7 above.]

17. The men of the Caribi and Acawoid [sic] nations abstained from certain kinds of meat lest the expected child might be injured in some mysterious manner by the father's eating of them.⁴ [Ibid, p. 16;—'Further north, in Guiana, Mr. Brett observes that "some of the men of the Acawoio and Caribi nations, when they have reason to expect an increase of their families, consider themselves bound to abstain from certain kinds of meat, lest the expected child should, in some mysterious way, be injured by their partaking of it...'—Brett, 154.a, p. 355.]

18. Thus the father represents or impersonates the child before birth and religiously abstains from everything that could hurt an infant. He did also take the place of the mother, but the still more arresting phenomenon is found in his becoming as the child. [Massey's own words.]

¹ Spix and Martius, Travels in Brazil, vol. ii. 247. [From Tylor.]
² Dobrizhoffer on the Abipones. [From Tylor.]
³ Dobrizhoffer. [From Tylor.]
⁴ Brett, Indian Tribes of Guiana, p. 355. [From Lubbock.]

Massey's lifting is best exemplified in segment 12. Note that there are no quotation marks, yet it is in fact a quote lifted straight out of Tylor, but reads as if Massey had written it himself. Being taken verbatim from Tylor, perhaps this one instance justifies the label of plagiarism. Segment 17 is also tantamount to plagiarism. It is quoted by Lubbock from Brett; here it is without quotes and woven into the text using Brett's own words with a slight variation. This example begs the question why he simply didn't quote Brett directly. Possibly because it gives the impression Massey was more knowledgeable in anthropology and reads as if he was speaking from experience, only for this notion to be counteracted by the reference to footnote 4. We know he is using Brett's text (through Lubbock) but the implication is twofold; it is a direct quote—albeit slightly modified—and it comes from another source, i.e. Lubbock's book. It is outright borrowing. The same is applicable to 12, 13, 14 and 16. Segment 3 is a summary of Tylor's views of Bachofen. This has radical implications in that one would have thought Massey would have consulted Bachofen's treatise directly as it is paramount to the Masseian theory as a whole. Bachofen believed that the earliest politico-social unit was based on that of the mother, that kinship passed down through the female line only to be superseded by the male line once the fatherhood was established. This he termed the Matriarchate and is central to Massey's thinking. 'It is a method of tracing genealogy, more convenient in polygamous societies, and more natural in primitive times, when the close connection of mother and child during the early days of infancy emphasise the relation.'²  'The system was explained by Bachofen as due to the supremacy of women...'³ although the view was later tempered by Westermarck in his History of Human Marriage (1891) as being overly exaggerated by Bachofen. However, the same idea was taken up by Briffault in his work, The Mothers, that the Mother-Goddess was first, therefore her natural representatives on earth would stand at the head of the hierarchy. It is difficult to conceive how deeply Massey understood what Bachofen was saying if he was wholly reliant on Tylor's summary in Early Researches. One can only gather that his view of Bachofen's Matriarchal theory was somewhat limited.

In this brief analysis of one page—and it was chosen as the most obvious example of borrowing—out of a total of eighteen segments only five are in Massey's own words—although this is a moot point—the rest being borrowed indiscriminately from Lubbock and Tylor. Further, one name of a tribe is misspelt; it is clearly ACAWOIO in Lubbock, but Massey has ACAWOID, an easy mistake to make. But this is not the only time he has erred in this way. I will cite a couple of other instances.

Massey cites Merolla in BB 2:636. This is borrowed from Lubbock. The reference is to the 'supreme pontiff of Congo as the ganga CHILERNE.' The last word is misspelt. In Lubbock, p. 358 of the 4th edition, the word is given as CHITORNE—a slight error that would suggest Massey did not have Lubbock's book in front of him when he was writing; instead he was referring to his own handwritten notes, the l easily being mistaken for a t, the e for an o. This likewise occurs in his citation of Lane, Modern Egyptians, in BB 2:335, where he has GHABEYRA when it is in actual fact GHUBERYA. In neither of these instances does the misspelling affect his point, but it at least suggests a carelessness on his part in not checking the references properly during the transcription and later on when the proofs were returned for his inspection. This may seem a minor detail, yet it underlines the point I have made elsewhere that there are errors in his works which need to be eradicated.

The deconstruction of the text above also demonstrates how imperative it is to bring out an entirely corrected edition with all the references listed and where they have been borrowed from. It is only one out of the many examples I could have chosen from, of a single page that contains only three or four original inputs from Massey himself, the rest appropriated and disguised as if from his own pen, particularly the instances where the wording is not enclosed in quotation marks, but lifted straight out of Tylor and Lubbock. Anyone approaching his work for the first time would believe these were Massey's words, when they are in fact the words of others, hence the analogy of sampling.

The list of borrowed references is inexhaustible. It could be continued indefinitely. So far I have only scratched the surface, but it goes back to my original point that there are two types of sources: one, the primary; two, the secondary, and I believe, based on only a preliminary enquiry, that the primary constitutes two-fifths of the Masseian corpus as a whole, and that the rest is the secondary material derived from the primary—that is, three-fifths of the material quoted, cited, referenced and transcribed by Massey comes from primary sources. And what is surprising is that most of the information in the travelogues provided by early missionaries and explorers, who were essentially the first ethnologists and anthropologists, is purely secondary material. In other words, he never read any of the travel books quoted, not even the ones written by his close acquaintance Richard Burton. In the Bibliography, all the travel books by Burton (not including the Lusiads of Camoens) are through Lubbock and Tylor, although I have not marked them as borrowed sources for the time being. I realise that some writers do lift material from the writings of others: Lubbock, who later switched his pen-name to Lord Avebury, in his revised seventh edition of 1912 even lifts material from Tylor's works. One could almost suspect a symbiotic relationship taking place between these two if the case was also vice versa. However, with Massey, the full grand scale of theft—and I use that term reluctantly—is beyond belief. It is also inexcusable, especially as regards the information conveyed as if from his own pen.

In another essay I stated I had always been curious how a man like Massey would have had the time to write so much and still have the time to consult so many texts. The answer is: he didn't need to. All he needed was the primary material at hand, which gave him access to the secondary. This inevitably leads to the conclusion that his wide range of reading was not as extensive as that suggested by the long list of books in the Bibliography.

NOTES

1. See Shaw's biography, p. 152.
2. Crawley's Mystical Rose, 2:230.
3. Ibid., but see also NG 1:456.

This page last updated: 28/11/2007