Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/100

74 upon which alone I possess any claim to be listened to by you. But what I sought to exhibit, the archaic warp and woof persisting in the fabric of our national literature, could be, if I mistake not, as readily exemplified in the domain of institutions. Here, too, we might dwell upon the characteristic function of the English race in retaining, modifying, transmitting to the modern world, with the necessary enlargement of scope and significance, so much of the most ancient customary wisdom of the Teutonic-speaking peoples.

Whilst other European nations have mostly discarded all that clashed with the magnificent system of law edified by imperial Rome, England, preserving, elaborating the native customs of one of the component elements of our mixed race, has reared a structure of institutions not unworthy to be set by the side of the Roman, and destined to control the fortunes of even wider realms and more numerous populations. May it be suggested that, just as the Celtic element of our race has supplied so much of value towards the enrichment of our literature, even so Celtic institutions, hitherto of small account as compared with those derived from our Teutonic forefathers, may contribute somewhat towards the completed fabric of our law?

Nor does the parallel stop here. The English student of folk-institutions has, without travelling outside the limits of the empire, as wide and varied a field of inquiry as the student of folk-fancy; it is his to see that the customs in which so many different races have expressed their social ideal are made available for utilisation in modern life as well as for purely scientific inquiry. If it be urged that the rites and practices of barbaric or semi-civilised people cannot, as can their myths and legends, be welded and fused into our higher conception of social life, I would answer that the loftiest civilisation may often learn with advantage from the rudest strivings of mankind after social order and justice, and I would cite the example of the great