Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/550

 494 too. Mr. Stuart Glennie has struck the right line when he suggests, by means of Miss Garnett's admirable collection of folk-lore, that sex in folk-lore is a subject to be noted and taken count of, and it seems to me quite possible that the women of a conquered race, feared as they often were by their conquerors as the devotees of the local deities, might use that fear under some conditions to establish a place of power which has left its mark on the history of marriage. Beyond this it is not at present possible to go. This, I think, is the missing link in Mr. Stuart Glennie's line of argument, and he would do well to consider it. That without this essential link he should yet have chalked out the path of a new line of research is what the critic has to note, and to thank Mr. Glennie for. What we have to guard against and warn others about is the tendency to consider off-hand that this new line leads to vast stretches of undiscovered country, whereas it may only lead to a cul de sac, with the undiscovered country stretching far beyond—in view, but unattainable by this road.

It will not be surprising to those who have followed thus far that I am prepared to pass from marriage institutions to village institutions. In Mr. Wigmore's admirable treatise on the Japanese system of land tenure there is much to show the relationship between the two. The village unit of Japan is, of course, not the small monogamous family, but the group of descendants from a common ancestor under the lordship of the family head—a group produced by the long use of the fact of blood-kinship and m.arriage ties, resulting in the evolution of a political unit. Mr. Wigmore treads upon ground which is made familiar to us now by the writings of such masters as Maine, Seebohm, and others, but it is not certain whether the use of common terms in such investigations does not lead to conclusions not quite in accord with the facts. Feudalism, for instance, is a dangerous term to use outside of Europe, though it is difficult