Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/122

96 I need only mention M. Lichtenberger's work on the Nibelung cycle, M. Bédier's Fabliaux, M. Sudre's Roman de Renart. We turn to M. Pineau's work expecting to find equal fullness of detail and accuracy of method applied to what is, perhaps, the most fascinating section of folk-literature, the ballad. In some respects we are not disappointed. M. Pineau's work is full of interest to all lovers of all popular romance; his genuine enthusiasm and his fine literary gifts enable him to present the Northern ballad literature in a most attractive form; his translations, whilst remarkably close, retain the archaic, barbaric flavour of their originals with admirable skill. He has, moreover, endeavoured to state and solve the problems connected with the origin and spread of the ballad in Northern and Western Europe. This aspect of his work it is with which M. Gaston Paris's notice is chiefly concerned, and to which I propose to confine myself.

Briefly stated, his method is as follows. Selecting a number of incidents which bear upon them the stamp of an archaic or savage stage of culture, he interprets them in the light of a theory of evolution derived, essentially, from Herbert Spencer, with modifications due to the teaching of Professor Tylor and the English anthropological school, and deduces therefrom the prehistoric nature of ballad literature generally. He is inclined to trace the specific Northern ballads back to a period when Celtic-speaking peoples occupied the present Germanic area (Scandinavian as well as Continental), and to regard the ballad, essentially, as a product of Celtic imagination. The reasons assigned are inconsistencies between certain ballad traits and the recorded history of the Germanic races.

M. Pineau's method is in some respects akin to that followed by Mr. Hartland in his Legend of Perseus. The correlation and parallelism of custom and literary incident serve to establish the archaic character of the latter, whether in folk-tale or folk-song. But this method to be successful requires far more critical discrimination in the use of illustrative material than is displayed by M. Pineau; he quotes largely at second hand and often leaves the most essential feature of his scheme unbuttressed by supporting facts. The real objection, however, to his method lies deeper. The folk-tale is fluid and adaptable—to show that it is a kaleidoscope of incidents the nature and form of which are explained by their reference to parallel traits in custom is more than legitimate, it