Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/30

 16 assistance and the sympathetic support of all those who feel like us, and appreciate our endeavours to recover the fast-fading past, to set it on a historical plane and upon a scientific basis. In each ballad, in each tale, in each song, in each superstition, and in each charm we find now that, however small and insignificant it maybe, it does not stand by itself, it is part of a whole, and as such it contains all the elements of the greater, the higher, and the more perfect. A drop is a sample of the ocean from which it has been taken, and the handful which we have been able to gather and the bunch we have been able to pluck represent the wide field out of the unlimited expanse.

This is not an exaggerated view which we are taking, in the way that enthusiasts are often given to magnify the importance of their work, or the objects of their investigation. It is not a barren hobby, for our labours have already borne wonderful fruit in every direction. The Folk-Lore Society is the concentration of many forces that have been working long before in a scattered manner, independently of one another; it is focussing the rays of light thrown on the dark surface of the deep, and gathering up the labours of collectors and antiquaries who have been at work for at least a century or more. It is at the same time a concentration of intellectual forces bent on the solution of the problems raised by the materials accumulated during that period. For happily there have existed men in many lands, but notably in England, who have shown a remarkable intuition and a sympathetic understanding of the remnants of the past. Starting from antiquarian studies of the dead, they have become students of the living soul. We have had here many valuable ancient collections, e.g., the Percy collection, the Welsh Mabinogion, and the Irish Red Book. It would be almost an unending task were I to enumerate all those who, merely attracted by the beauty of the subject,