Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/176

 148 Ethnological Data in Folklore.

and interest of Mr. Gomme's work in this field, it were uncandid to conceal my doubts as to the validity of some of his assumptions, and as to the security of certain results which he claims to have reached. An ingenious combi- nation of classification and analysis enables him to posit the individual item of folklore in its original culture-stage, and to exhibit it as part of a coherent and orderly whole. There emerges in the case of fire-worship items the picture of a community organised upon definite tribal lines. A valuable and interesting result. The community thus postulated is asserted to be Aryan — an assertion with which I have no quarrel, as the historic record is clear enough to show its soundness. But the course of investi- gation reveals other items which fall into their place as part of a cultus alleged to be different from — nay, antago- nistic to— ^that of the fire-worshipping tribal Aryans, and the inference is drawn that it must belong to a non-tribal, a pre-Aryan race. It is this inference to which I demur. I pass by the question whether the two sets of customs are really incompatible, whether, to use Mr. Gomme's own words, " water-superstitions correlate a set of ideas incon- sistent with tribal organisation." Granted for the sake of argument that it is so, does it necessarily follow that the alleged inconsistency is due to different racial origin? May it not be accounted for in other ways?

Does not Mr. Gomme overlook the possibility that a homogeneous race, inhabiting a comparatively limited area, may yet develop marked contemporaneous sectional and local differences of custom, and the still greater possibility that a race, untouched by alien influences, may in the course of ages and under the operation of changing social and economic conditions develop varied and apparently contradictory customs? In the history of classic, mediaeval, and modern Europe I note instances of the most extra- ordinary variation in the form and spirit of institutions, instances that cannot be laid to the account of any mixture