Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/112

 86 respect, and that we should aid the accomplishment of the task I have indicated by all means in our power. Let us recollect that whilst, as Britons, we have no right to allow the beliefs and fancies of the Celtic half of our race to die away to the irreparable injury of science and of after-generations, they yield us as folklorists perhaps the most fruitful field still open to the student of archaic Europe.

If it be true that, by their position, their history, their mixture of blood and speech, their social and economic conditions now and in the past, their possession of the archaic literature in which are preserved the beliefs, legends, and practices of one of the constituent elements of modern Europe and its culture, the British Isles have a special import for all the inquiries grouped together as the study of folklore—that our land has taken a preponderant part in the formation and discrimination of folklore material which has influenced the whole trend of European culture—if it be also true that the results of our study may and should influence, and influence for the good, our attitude towards imperial and world-wide problems, we are, I think, entitled to claim that our Society has a work and prerogatives of ts own, prerogatives which are honourable and legitimate, work which it alone and no other body can perform.

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