Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 22, 1911.djvu/29

 Rh Society of Antiquaries. Mr. Brand continued to accumulate materials for the enrichment of the work, but at his death in 1806 these were still in Ms. They came eventually into the hands of Sir Henry Ellis, who added considerably to them, rewrote and rearranged them on a new plan, and published them in two quarto volumes in 1813. He then further enlarged and published them in 1841 in the three-volume edition familiar as Ellis s Brand. Several crimes have since then been committed in the name of Brand, but Sir Henry Ellis's still remains the standard edition, and the standard work on the folklore of Great Britain. Much water has, however, flowed under London Bridge since 1841 and 1848, the date of his last recension, and the time seems ripe for a new and fuller edition of the historic work. The Council propose for the present to confine themselves to the Calendar Customs. These, it is suggested, should be collated with certain notes by Brand and Ellis left still in Ms., with Hone's Every Day Book and Table Book, with Chambers' Book of Days, the old volumes known as Time's Telescope, the publications of our own Society, Notes and Queries, the collections of the late Canon Benham contributed to the Church Times, and with local works of all sorts. Further, the information should be brought up to date, and customs now extinct be distinguished from those still existing.

Mr. Henry B. Wheatley, a member of the Council, who has been a member of the Society from very early days, and whose special qualifications for the work need no explanation or recommendation from me, has kindly consented to act as Honorary Editor, with the assistance of a competent staff of sub-editors. But a whole army of readers, collectors, and correspondents will be needed for some years to come, if the work is to be done in a manner worthy of the Society and the subject. It will mean a long pull, and a strong pull, and a pull all together, and no member should be deterred by diffidence from offering to