Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/130

102 round a special subject and where the author's or editor's part is confined to notes and introduction. I am thinking of such a book as Anatole Le Braz' Lègende de la Mort en Basse-Bretagne, in which a large body of customs and stories connected with the idea of Death and revenants is brought together, not for the purpose of urging a special theory, but in order to present the whole material to the judgment of the reader. It is the material, not the conclusions, that should occupy our thoughts in contemplating any publication. I even doubt whether the Society ought to make itself responsible for the opinions of any individual member, as it does to a certain extent in publishing under its authority a general treatise.

In recommending the utilization of folklore for filling in the details of the historic culture record, the President not only recalls us to a too-much-forgotten part of our work, but points out the way to enlist the support of many local antiquarianminded people who have little taste for either pre-history or for savage anthropology. Working on the lines she suggests, we can appeal to numbers of such local antiquaries who have hitherto stood aloof, and I sincerely hope that the Council will back up her initiative.

At the same time, one must recognize that in this direction the rôle of folklore study is a subordinate, an auxiliary one. Take the Castleton garland practice, for example. Miss Burne's interpretation is only rendered possible by the fact that not only is the general history of the country at the period well-known, but also the special history of the district. If we did not know about Cryer's tenure of the vicarage, we could not guess it from the practice itself; nor, in the absence of such special knowledge, would acquaintance with the general history of England be sufficient to justify such an interpretation. But, as it is, the three sets of facts work harmoniously together, and produce a given result, and that a vivid realization of the past and a sense of its human-ness which the historic research alone would fail to give.