Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/169

 Ethnological Data in Folklore. 141

are these then ? They are opposite in principle, opposite in conception, opposite in practice, and find no place within the tribal group. Are these Aryan fire-customs then ? They cannot be. And it is a scientific conclusion when we place them on one side as the relics of a pre-Aryan people.

But there is something further still. After the work of classification and comparison is completed for any one cus- tom, there are further conditions before the first results of comparison can be properly and finally accepted. One of these conditions imposes the necessity for proving that the one custom which has by the application of the comparative method been identified with the customs of any given race of people shall, upon examination, be found to be asso- ciated with other customs which, upon classification and comparison, can be identified with the same race. This work is, of course, a matter of time and further research; and I prepared a diagram to show how this part of the investigation may be most readily proved. I first of all mark on a map of Britain the places where the given cus- tom obtains. I then join these places together by a straight line, and, withdrawing from this result all reference to the map which formed the basis of it, a figure of a certain shape in outline and a certain shape in internal detail is obtained. This figure is of great importance. It represents of course the geographical distribution of the custom which it describes. We may call it, for prac- tical use, " the geographical test-figure." Upon working out other groups of customs the process would be to see how far the same figure is reproduced, and how far one figure of a series differs from other figures, whether in simply being incomplete or whether in radical form. I have not been able in the time at my disposal to bring forward another cus- tom of Aryan origin to equate with the fire-custom, but from some provisional studies I am satisfied that the test-figure produced by the fire-customs will be produced by other customs similarly dealt with. In the meantime there is the