Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/422

 394 Herder essayed in his Stimmen der Völker to elaborate a racial psychology on the basis of material for the most part of a popular nature. The essay was brilliant but premature, as the material at Herder's disposal was both fragmentary and insufficiently analysed. None the less his influence was wide and stimulating, and he may truly be regarded as one of the founders of our study. After a few more years the brothers Jacob and William Grimm,—but especially Jacob,—by their labours constituted folklore an independent branch of study with aims and methods of its own. Now Jacob Grimm was essentially a historian; he always sought to replace every fact he studied in its historic setting, to determine its historic relations, and to utilise it for a constructive view of historical development. A right and sound decision led him to work thoroughly a definite linguistic or racial area. Inevitably, however, the view of folklore which resulted and which prevailed among his followers was that of something distinctive, specifically characteristic of particular linguistic or racial groups. Inevitably also the significance of the lore of the folk as indicative of racial psychology was enhanced; its essentially archaic, primitive nature invested it with weightier import than those other elements of the more advanced culture, the alien, borrowed nature of which was so evident. Teutondom,—for it was in connection with the Teutonic group that the implications of folklore study first became manifest,—might have taken its religious organisation wholly, its political and juridical organisation largely, and its higher artistic culture to a great extent, from Rome; the lore of its folk was a thing of its very self, blood of its blood and soul of its soul.

This conception must undoubtedly have been speedily modified by the rapid advance of knowledge, and the consequent appreciation of the marked kinship of the lore of the folk throughout the European area, but for the fact that this advance coincided with the development of the studies of comparative philology and mythology, and with the consequent recognition of Aryan or Indo-Germanic unity. The results of the humbler study fell into line with those of the more influential academic sisters; they demonstrated the unity of Aryan speech and myth, and she that of popular fancy and belief. The tendency was fortified by the fact that up to then it was the artistic aspect of the lore