Page:A book of folk-lore (1913).djvu/13

10 Through intermarriage there is an importation of the superstitious beliefs of the lower type into the higher. This has been going on for a long time. A dominating race absorbs some of the convictions of the race it has subdued; and we generally find that the former regard the latter with some awe, as possessed of magical and mysterious powers beyond its own range of acquisitions.

We cannot say that a certain bit of folklore is Celtic and not pre-Celtic because picked up where there is fusion of blood, any more than we can say that a piece of granite strewed upon alluvial soil or lying on limestone belongs to that on which it rests.

Mr TylerTylor [sic] and Mr Frazer, the great students in Comparative Folk-lore, have devoted their attention to the development and expansion of certain primitive beliefs and practices, but Mr Gomme, in his epoch-making book, Ethnology in Folk-lore (London, 1892), was the first to my knowledge who pointed out the necessity of classification according to the beds whence the items of folklore came.

In this volume, which does not pretend to be more than a popular introduction to the study of the science, I have confined myself as much as possible to the beliefs of the peoples