Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/21

Rh not propose to touch upon these enticing subjects. I must, however, just point out that the Society is entitled to congratulate itself upon a veritable capture it has achieved during the present year. Professor Haddon went out to the Torres Straits on an expedition on behalf of natural science; he returned an ardent folk-lorist, and immediately joined us. As a scientific man, he knows the value of precision in recording facts, and I do not know a more perfect model of genuine story-collecting than his. He is now pursuing his folk-lore work in Ireland, and I, for one, expect great things from him.

I must now pass on to what I want to say about the methods of classifying, docketing, and analysing the materials of folk-lore. I will suggest that the only way of studying folk-lore is by syncretic analysis, if the expression is not almost paradoxical. The Society is helping towards this object by its forms of analysis and tabulation which have been adopted for folk-tales, and custom and belief. And it is only fair to point out to members that several ladies are now busy upon the tabulation of folk-tales, one group of which—the Cinderella group—will be analysed and examined by Miss Roalfe Cox, and the results placed before the members. The tabulations are the first step, not the final one, in the study of folk-tales. Having got all folk-tales grouped together, either in story-types or in geographical order, the next step is analysis.

It would be premature to speculate as to the result of this analysis, but, as an example of its value to the anthropological method of interpretation, let us take Grimm's collection of folk-tales. They have been already largely tabulated upon the Society's plan, and if we proceed to analyse the first twelve of them, say, what is the result?

Dividing each tale so as to bring out the features which mark—