Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/105

 Rh recognise the full importance of the factor, and that I am anxious for the correct solution of the problem which may, I believe, be essayed with better chances of success in our own than in other lands. Even here, how insufficient are the data, how obscure and complicated the whole subject. Yet compare the British Isles and their four historically known groups of population, two belonging to the Celtic races, Gaels and Brythons, two to the Teutonic, Low-Germans and Scandinavians, with any other European land presenting a similar mixture of blood, speech, and culture, and note how infinitely more favourable are the conditions for the student desirous of verifying the hypothesis of Celtic or Teutonic influence on folklore. In Germany, for instance, whilst the medium in which the folklore is preserved is almost wholly Teutonic, large portions of present Germany are known to have been occupied within historic time by Celtic or Slavonic populations, and the influence which may thus have been exercised upon the present stock of inhabitants and their traditions has formed the subject of much inquiry. For the most part this has not progressed beyond the stage of more or less plausible hypothesis, because the definite historical records, the literary and linguistic documents present in England, are lacking in Germany. In France again, history tells us of a powerful Celtic state, but its culture melted away when it came into contact with that of Rome, and has almost wholly disappeared; history tells us also of Germanic and later Scandinavian invasions contemporaneous with those of these islands, and possibly not greatly inferior in extent and duration, but practically the historic record alone remains, the speech, the customary wisdom, the treasure of myth and legend have disappeared and left scarce a visible trace upon French culture. To surmise in how far French folklore may have been affected is, it will be conceded, a matter of extreme delicacy.

If British folklore thus compares favourably with that