Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/177

 Ethnological Data in Folktore. 149

or conflict of races. There has been no new racial infusion in the England of the last five centuries, yet within that period our institutions, alike civil and ecclesiastical, have suffered vital changes, changes the survivals of which jostle each other surlily in our laws and our ritual.

Again, I repeat, I do not deny that Mr. Gomme's con- clusions may be correct ; I merely urge that, failing historic record, the evidence upon which he relies is insufficient to demonstrate their correctness.

I have my doubts, too, concerning the validity of another method of proof employed by Mr. Gomme in his ethno- logical test-map. Noting the habitat of this or that group of customs he constructs a figure corresponding, in his esti- mation, to an original racial area. Should it not be our first step, as I suggested in my address, to verify these hypo- thetical areas by the historic record concerning racial dis- tribution within the period which it covers ? If we find custom test-maps corresponding to the known facts of the Scandinavian settlements in England or the Gaelic settle- ments in Scotland we may be emboldened to push further. Until thus verified, can the result yielded by Mr. Gomme's method, however useful as a hypothetical starting point, be regarded as in any sense a certain one ? I should, for my part, regard with suspicion any results obtained by this method applied to a single country. Application to another or to several other countries might conceivably show results and methods alike to be quite illusory.

One fact, and one of no small interest, concerning English racial psychology is, I think, yielded by this discus- sion. Differ as we may, and I have in nowise attempted to minimise the importance or the extent of our difference, Mr. Gomme and I can continue to work harmoniously in the same society. We feel no impulse to start rival bodies or to excommunicate each other, and are content to leave it to time and the progress of research to decide which, if either, of us be in the right.