Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/157

 TRANSACTIONS OF THE FOLK-LORE SOCIETY.

ETHNOLOGICAL DATA IN FOLKLORE:

A Criticism of the President's Address in January, 1898.

BY G. LAURENCE GOMME, F.S.A.

(Read at Meeting of 10th November, 1898.)

President in his annual address claims to have stated "the principles which should govern the inquiry [into 'racial elements in the folklore of the British Isles'], the lines along which it should move" (Folk-Lore, vol. ix., P. 52).

I venture to make the observation that the address, able and valuable as it is, does not accomplish, or nearly accomplish, its object. In the first place, I cannot ascertain, possibly through faults of my own, what principle governed Mr. Nutt's inquiry. He appears to have first stated the historical evidence as to different races occupying these islands (p. 34); and because there is no historical evidence for any race prior to the Celts, he uses language which implies that, in his opinion at all events, there was no such race. And upon this statement of the racial elements he founds conclusions as to the impossibility of using folklore for the discrimination of race-elements.

I wish in the first place to protest against this method. Folklore should not be used to confirm already known facts derived from history. It is an independent science with