Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/421

 CORRESPONDENCE.

How far can we use the lore of the folk for ethnological and racial analysis?

It is only in comparatively recent times that the question has arisen explicitly. Effective folklore studies started from the survey of local, regional, or, at widest, assumed racial groupings of mankind. The first glimmerings of folklore as a separate field of study go back to the sixteenth century, to the period when, as a result of the long and complex processes styled Renaissance and Reform, the lore of the folk really became differentiated from that of the cultured classes, a differentiation which has increased ever more and more until the present day, when in so many countries the folk has largely lost its old traditional lore without acquiring the culture of advanced civilisation. The definite organisation of folklore study is due to the Grimms in the early years of the nineteenth century. During the first portion of the intervening period, the most important and valuable collection of folklore material was made by the Danish antiquaries of the 16th-17th centuries, who published the ballads, i.e. the narrative poetry, partly dramatic and partly lyrical in form and spirit, still current in the Danish area; this popular poetry was regarded as being essentially a product of the Danish people, the exponent of its emotions and feelings, a reflex of the historic conditions through which it had passed. Toward the close of the period, the alleged Celtic traditional poetry made known by Macpherson was universally hailed as a genuine revelation of the Celtic race, as an interpretation of its inmost individuality. But a short while later