Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/97

 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS.

BRITAIN AND FOLKLORE.

on former occasions I had the honour of addressing you, my thoughts turned to what has always for me formed the chief interest of the study of folklore, the investigation of the problems which it presents, and of the lines of inquiry which it opens up, in so far as they concern the mass of traditional fancy and custom preserved by the inhabitants of these islands. The folklorist truly deserving the name cannot confine himself exclusively to a limited section of the study; he must bring with him principles based upon world-wide inquiries; he must ever be prepared to test the evidence yielded, say by Berkshire or Devon, in the light of material gathered it may be in Greenland or Polynesia, vouched for by the oldest known records of humanity, or by the latest Antipodean newspaper. But without a guiding clue our study may too easily become a mere bazaar instead of an orderly and well-arranged museum exhibiting the true correlation of phenomena. Such a clue I have essayed to find in the relation of Britain to folklore, whether it be the witness that folklore bears to the evolution of our race and its culture, or the consideration of the many still doubtful problems of folklore in the light of specific British evidence. It seems appropriate that in my last Presidential Address to the English Folk-Lore Society I should essay to indicate some of the considerations which have determined my own line of research, and which in my opinion constitute the