Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/29

 Rh Primitive Culture and the Early History of Mankind to set our faces in the right direction, our feet in the right path. But Custom and Myth did not appear till 1884, Myth, Ritual, and Religion till 1887, the Golden Bough only in 1890, the Science of Fairy Tales in the same year, and the Legend of Perseus not till 1895. There was all the charm of the discoverer about those early days, twenty and thirty years ago, and perhaps we who groped our way through them need not altogether envy the highly-trained and carefully-instructed young students of the present.

Discussions in the Folk-Lore Journal 1885-87 led to the delimitation of the scope of the study of folklore. The boundary was drawn in accordance with Mr. Thoms's original coinage of the word, to include all branches of "folk's learning,"— all that concerns the intellectual and social life of the folk,— and to exclude arts and crafts,—"technology," as they now begin to be called. In 1890 the Handbook of Folklore set forth a simple and practical scheme of work and study, framed on this principle, and the next year, 1891, saw the gathering of a Congress of Folklorists in London. This not only brought the FolkLore Society into closer touch with students in America and on the Continent of Europe, but also, as I must believe, brought home to the minds of English scholars in general the fact that here was a definite subject of study, hitherto neglected, and worthy of their serious attention.

One very practical outcome of the Congress was to establish, beyond dispute, the importance and interest of children's games, a bit of woman's work on which I may be permitted for a moment to dwell. A young woman from the specially musical parish of Madeley, in Shropshire, went to live as nurse in the family of my sister in Derbyshire. She had a large repertory of singing-games, some of which she taught to her charges. My sister, who was continually under the necessity of organising parish festivities, caused the maid to teach her games to some of