Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/11

Rh section of folk-lore—namely, folk-tales—and coolly put an interpretation upon them which folk-lorists could never find in the tales themselves. But Philology has now to retire almost into the background, while Archaeology and Craniology attempt to settle the matter. It is a gain to science that it has at last been recognised that we cannot penetrate far back into man's history without appealing to more than one element in that history. Some day it will be recognised that we must appeal to all elements in that history. In the meantime, the conjunction of philology, archæology, and craniology has brought about a revolution in scientific thought as to the prehistoric races in Europe; and my belief is, before anything like good order is again restored after this revolution, folk-lore must be taken into account. I do not suppose we can any more restore order in the "Aryan household"; but at least we may discover something definite about the relationship between Teuton, Celt, and their non-Aryan-speaking contemporaries.

What, for instance, have Philology and Archaeology to say to Mr. Frazer's folk-lore researches into agricultural customs and rites? It is declared now that the primitive Aryan knew nothing about agriculture—knew of only one grain, and cultivated, if at all, on that sporadic system of burning a piece of forest land as occasion required, cultivating it for a year or two, and then going elsewhere, which is characteristic of many barbarous tribes in India. But Mr. Frazer proves that the agriculturists of Europe possessed a ritual and ceremonial attached to their occupation which, savage as it is in conception, is also part of a system of no recent or sudden growth. Such an accumulation of evidence must have a place allotted to it. I myself am not inclined, as Mr. Frazer seems to be, to allot it to the culture history of the primitive Aryans—agriculturœ non student was the classical summing-up of the historical Aryan, and it is the scientific summing-up of the prehistoric Aryan. Studying agriculture from its institutional side, I have concluded that it is of non-Aryan origin and of primitive development