Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/425

 Rh elements derived from culture strata differing greatly in origin and date, and that forgetfulness of this fact accounted for much of the controversy between the different schools. Those elements upon which the researches of Mannhardt and his followers had concentrated attention, elements the significance and import of which had received so much illumination from comparison with the beliefs and rites of contemporary savage peoples, seemed to me to stand outside, nay, almost to ante-date, any racial groupings of which we have historic knowledge, to belong to an archaic stratum of thought and practice through which every people that has reached a certain stage of culture has passed almost forcedly, and to constitute the oldest and most widely-spread of religions. We cannot, I think, use elements of this kind for discriminating Celt from Teuton, or either from the pre-Aryan folk they are assumed to have subjugated, for this ancient religion was, I believe, common, in substance, to all alike. But, where the lore of the folk embodies survivals of economic, social, and political practices known to have been current among the organised communities, Celtic or Teutonic, occupying portions of these islands, it may yield useful clues respecting the distribution and development of such communities, clues all the more useful as they are not infrequently our only source of detailed knowledge. Yet we must recognise that here the part of folklore is that of a subordinate auxiliary of historic record; we require the latter to supply a framework into which we can fit the details furnished by the former. In the absence of such a framework, deductions based upon the lore of the folk alone would be insecure. Could we, for instance, safely infer from it the Scandinavian settlements of the 9th-11th centuries in Britain? The answer must be in the negative; none the less is the testimony precious for filling in many gaps where historic record leaves us in the lurch.

So far I have considered the practical elements of the lore of the folk, whether derived from a pre-racial or a racial stratum. The case is different with the artistic elements; these are, as a rule, the outcome or exponent of the fancy, emotion, humour, and philosophy of a people, i.e. of a grouping constituted, at first at all events, upon a racial basis. The nature of this kind of popular lore is also largely conditioned by language, and language coincides