Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 14, 1903.djvu/182

 1 66 Obituary.

Chevreau " {Roinafiia, vol. i.), " Jean Renaud " {Romania, vol. xi.), in his elaborate reviews of Nigra's Canti popolari del Piemonte {Journal des Savants, 18S9), and of d'Ancona's Poemetti popolari italiani {Romania, vol. xviii.), and in numerous shorter notes and notices, he made contributions to the study of European ballad poetry second only in importance to those of F. J. Child.

To many folklorists he is perhaps best known as the author of ^^ Le petit Poiicet and la Grande Ourse" (1875), written in the heyday of the influence exercised by the " Nature-mythological " school. I do not think he held in after years to the results of this brilliant and ingenious bit of work. For he must, on the whole, be ranked among the adherents of the " literary influence," " borrowing theory," school of students of popular tradition. He was too sane, too acute, too broad-minded, to adopt the theory in the narrow, cramping aspect under which it has been presented by other scholars ; his sympathy with the essential, the hidden well-springs of poetry was too great to allow him to overlook the mythical, archaic, " folk " elements of tradition ; but still if he had had to take sides he would have been with Benfey rather than with Grimm. In especial, invaluable as are his researches in ballad literature, I doubt if the hypothesis suggested, rather than definitely worked out and championed, by him, will prevail. I think he overrated the influence of Northern France. In the strife respecting the " Matiere de Bretagne," on the other hand, he divined more truly than any other scholar the nature and import of the Celtic element, and the effect of all later research has been emphatically to vindicate the position he took up.

The scientific and methodical reconstruction and interpretation of mediaeval culture has been on6 of the chief tasks of the second half of the nineteenth century. Of that culture France was the most brilliant exponent. It is fitting then that the most brilliant master of mediaeval research shotild have been a true son of France ; in nothing more true than in this, that he placed above everything else the claims of truth, won by unflinching and devoted labour.

Alfred Nutt.