Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/313



IN the last number of were given three tales, collected, along with some others, during my residence in the northern districts of Lincolnshire; when I also described, so far as possible, the country and surroundings in which dwell the people amongst whom these legends have originated. It is not easy, in so short a notice, to present vividly the curious mixture of rusticity and savagery, of superstition and indifference, of ignorance and shrewdness, which is found in these peasants, and it would require greater powers than I possess to do justice to them in a more finished study. During the comparatively short time I spent amongst them, close observance of their ways of life and thought assured me that the old and simple heathendom still lay untouched, though hidden, below successive varnishes of superstition, religion, and civilisation.

Perhaps some other time I may be permitted to show how this betrays itself, even in the vulgar speech and common life, and amongst those, moreover, whom one would have thought to be above the reach of it; but the leaven of the ancient paganism has spread itself throughout the mass,