Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/24

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Story radicals.

Story accidentals.

Added features.

Modern gloss.

I. Savage elements. .

Going [causing to go] away of sons so that the inheritance should fall to the daughter.

Change of brothers into ravens.

Life dependent on an outside object.

Forest life.

2. Rank and splendour

Kingly state.

Moral characteristics..

{{c|{{sc|{{sc|xi.— Brother and Sister.}}}}

1. Savage elements. .

Story radicals.

Transformation of hero into roebuck after drinking at stream.

Story accidentals.

Added features.

Modern gloss.

There is no time to do more than to give these few examples of story analysis, but they are sufficient, I think to show the value and interest of it. It brings out the statistical side of folk-lore methods, and in folk-lore we need statistics, if we would be exact and scientific.

I pass from analysis of tales to that of custom and belief. Nothing of this has, so far as I am aware, yet been done. Some five years or so ago I began the task of compiling a dictionary of the folk-lore of the British Isles, and when, about a year ago, I began to arrange my collections, the need of a proper analytical system at once occurred to me. The plan for analysing custom and belief prepared for the Society was the result of my experience of what was necessary, and I have been working upon it ever since.

We have no right to discuss custom and belief in {{hws|folk|folk-lore}}