Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/10

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I think that, looked at in this way, it will be generally conceded that last session's papers were all of them highly interesting and important to our science.

Well, we are now entering upon our thirteenth session, and with these papers—typical of the most recent research—as an immediate guide, we may indeed ask ourselves what stage have we reached?

My reply to this will take me into some discursive topics; but I want, if possible, to unify the results of my observation of the year's work so as to bring out some clear issues for the Society's consideration.

At first sight we certainly seem to be divided into two camps—the anthropological and the literary: just those two camps which existed at the beginning of the Society, when Mr. Thoms simply followed the footsteps of John Aubrey, some two hundred years earlier, and considered that what was recorded chronologically earlier must be the parent of that which was recorded later, the record being the central point of importance, not the thing recorded. What I shall venture to say upon this subject to-night will, I hope, emphasise the fact that folk-lore, however and wherever recorded, so long as the record is of itself good, is one of the elements which must be taken into account before the last word has been said on the connection between the prehistoric races and those of history.

I must confess to a feeling of rather acrimonious jealousy when I see how persistently folk-lore is ignored by authorities in reckoning up the factors which contribute towards the history of prehistoric man. Philology for a long time usurped the whole place to herself She attempted to tell us all about our primitive ancestors—the noble Aryans—and in doing so she appropriated a whole