Even more curious are the vestiges of Totemism, or primitive animal worship, common to all branches of the Aryan race, as well as to the North American Indians, the Australian black fellows, and many other savages.

Totemism consists in the belief that each family is literally descended from a particular plant or animal, whose name it bears; and members of the family generally refuse to pluck the plant or kill the animal after which they are named.

Of these beliefs we find apparently several traces in Anglo-Saxon life.

The genealogies of the kings include such names as those of the horse, the mare, the ash, and the whale.

In the very early Anglo-Saxon poem of Beowulf, two of the characters bear the names of Wulf and Eofer (boar).