Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/161

 Rh folklore research without proper safeguards. The unmeaning custom or belief of the peasantry of the western world of civilisation has been taken into the domains of savagery or barbarism for an explanation, without any thought as to what this action really signifies to the history of the custom or belief in question. No doubt the explanation thus afforded is correct in most cases; but I question whether such an explanation will be admitted as an important element in the history of European peoples, until it has been proved to be scientifically justified. For it must be obvious that the effective comparison of a traditional peasant custom or belief with a savage custom or belief is only a very short cut indeed to the true process that has been accomplished. This process includes the comparison of an isolated custom or belief, belonging, perhaps secretly, to a particular place, a particular class of persons, or perhaps a particular family or person, with a custom or belief which is part of a whole system belonging to a savage race or tribe; of a custom or belief whose only sanction is tradition, the conservative instinct to do what has been done by one's ancestors, with a custom or belief whose sanction is the professed and established polity or religion of a people; of a custom or belief which is embedded in a civilisation of which it is not a part and to which it is antagonistic, with a custom or belief which helps to make up the civilisation of which it is part. In carrying out such a comparison, therefore, a very long journey back into the past of the civilised race has been performed. For unless it be admitted that civilised people consciously borrow from savages and barbaric peoples, or constantly revert to a savage original type of mental and social condition, the effect of such a comparison as we have taken for an example is to take back the custom or belief of the modern peasant to a date when a people of savage or barbaric culture occupied the country now occupied by their descendants, the peasants in question, and to compare