Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/457

 NOTES FROM ARMENIA, In Illustration of The Golden Bough.

BY J. RENDEL HARRIS, LL.D.

The following Notes are the result of inquiries recently- prosecuted by myself during a journey in Asia Minor. The matter which they contain is not necessarily new, and is necessarily slight, owing to my own inexperience as an explorer and folklorist, but a cairn is often built by the stones thrown by successive passers-by ; and although the Golden Bough is itself a large cairn, and might be thought not to need augmenting, I venture to throw my little con- tribution on that already monumental "Heap of Witness." In reading Mr. Frazer's volumes, it is a temptation some- times to think that the evidence is unduly in detail, and that the artistic presentation of the argument suffers from the defect of over-elaboration; but a closer knowledge of the matters discussed convinces one that while there is some- thing to be said in favour of such a grouping and restrict- ing of the evidence as would avoid unnecessary or mis- leading repetitions, it remains of the first importance that every kind of testimony should be collected even at the risk of repetition, for one never knows where the missing link in the evolution of a belief or of a custom may turn up amongst a series of apparently similar statements. Students of folklore know this so much better than I, that they will easily be able to tolerate my saying from a fresh point of view things which Mr. Frazer has already said from almost every coign of vantage in the whole outspread landscape of human history. And I will do my best to arrange the matters which I have to report so as to place