Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/129

 Rh '''54. Folk-Lore, Vol. XV.''' E. York Powell: Presidential Address. Eleanor Hull: The Story of Deirdre. Arthur and Gorlagon, translated by F. A. Milne, with Notes by A. Nutt. R. Marett: From Spell to Prayer. A. B. Cook: The European Sky-God. J. Rendel Harris: Notes from America, pp. 528, xvi.

Transactions of the Second International Folk-Lore Congress, 1891. Edit, by J. Jacobs and A. Nutt. pp. xxix, 472.

I am heartily in agreement with the President in the desire to make the collection of British (including Scottish and Irish) folklore assume a more prominent place in the work of the Folk-Lore Society. If this is not our sole object of existence, it is, at least, our prime and chief duty, and the one that lies to our hand. It is, too, I feel sure, the direction in which foreign workers would naturally look to us for help.

Personally I should be inclined, until our work at home is done, or being done, to exclude even European folklore, and to become for a time rigidly insular and local, centralizing all our efforts on the collection and arrangement of our own material. (This, of course, applies only to separate volumes; I should be sorry if any matter whatever that comes rightly under the head of folklore were excluded from our meetings or from publication in Folk-Lore.) When we have issued a complete series of county and provincial collections, we can then, and then only, afford to expend our energies on foreign work, which it rightly belongs to other countries to carry out.

I am also of opinion that general studies on the wider aspects of folklore, however valuable they may be in themselves, are not the sort of publications suitable for issue by our Society. Neither do I think that translations or re-publications come within our scope. I think that we should husband our resources for the publication of new material. But I should not exclude, but rather welcome, material gathered in our own islands that is grouped