Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/142

114 but the universality and strength of tradition, while the other implies arbitrary and lawless modes of influence the essential insignificance of which is not more flagrant than their crass unlikelihood.

By way of conclusion let me show how these principles which have guided me ever since I took up the study of folklore over thirty years ago have been strengthened by research in other fields of historical investigation during that period, both in their general bearing upon folklore studies and in their special bearing upon the problems of the Grail.

It is unfortunate that the researches of historians, archaeologists, philologists, and folklorists are often pursued along lines, parallel indeed, but separated by lofty and impenetrable barriers. Otherwise the import of the results achieved by the studies of pre- and proto-historic archaeology and of proto-history in the narrower sense, for folklore problems could hardly have been overlooked. Briefly put, the great antiquity, the high level, and the relatively independent development of Central and North-western European culture have been clearly demonstrated. The richness and variety of the material culture disclosed alike in Scandinavia, Britain, and the plains and valleys of Central Europe vouch for a corresponding level of psychical culture. To assert, as some scholars still persist in asserting, that the conceptions and fancies only known to us in Celtic or Teutonic monuments which did not assume their final shape until the Middle Ages, were beyond the reach of the Celto-Teutons of 1000-100 is mere kicking against the pricks. The men of the Bronze Age, whether on the plains of Meath, around the lakes of Sweden, or on the Hungarian steppes, were certainly superior in material equipment and in social advance to the Maori when the latter first came in contact with the European. Yet implicitly or explicitly certain scholars have treated them as if their mental and moral horizon barely surpassed that of Australian blackfellows or Terra del Fuegians. The whole trend of recent proto-archaeological and proto-historical studies has been to demonstrate the age, variety, and persistence of European culture.

The effect of another branch of study has been equally far-reaching as regards our science. All folklore problems ultimately