Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/319

 THE COLLECTION OF ENGLISH FOLK-LORE.

O much has of late been said, and done, and projected, in the matter of the systematic study and scientific arrangement of the folk-lore already recorded, that there seems to be some little danger lest an impression should gain ground that the day of collecting folk-lore is over, and the day of counting the gains has come. I speak more particularly of England. Savage folk-lore still comes pouring in from all quarters, but new collections of English folk-lore are comparatively rare. That this is not from lack of material, recent “finds” give sufficient evidence. Within the last three years we have had the discovery of a hitherto unnoticed instrument of sorcery—the Witches’ Ladder—in Somersetshire, of several variants of a curious and obscure rhyming formula collected and published in Longman’s Magazine by our President, and of at least four folk-tales viz.: “Cap o’ Rushes” and “Tom-Tit-Tot”, from Suffolk; “Coat o’ Clay”, a noodle story from Lincolnshire; and “The Golden Ball” (a romantic story, for which Mr. Nutt inquired in the Folk-Lore Journal in 1888, p. 144, and of which I have obtained fragmentary versions from Lancashire, Staffordshire, and Shropshire), appears in a complete form (so I am told) in the Gentleman’s Magazine for January last—as related to the Rev. S. Baring-Gould by some Yorkshire “mill-lasses”. These examples are surely enough to prove that the day of collecting English folk-lore is not yet over.

But the need for more collection would still be urgent even if no absolutely novel items should remain to be