Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/42

30 life may have produced a new view of the divine world and a new type of cultus,—this is all that we can at present safely predicate.

If the beliefs of the prehistoric age must remain vague and uncertain, when we reach the historical period our indebtedness to Celtic tradition is supported by ample evidence. In what has been called the "Celtic fringe," (where, by the way, the bulk of the population is of Iberian, not Celtic origin), the spirit of imagination and romance has produced a wealth of tradition and folk-tale, a vivid realisation of a life beyond the grave, a more intimate association of man with the spirit world, than exists among the English people. How far this is due to race or religious and political influences we are unable to say. But, in any case, the work done under the auspices of this Society in the Celtic and Arthurian field by the late Mr. Nutt and by workers still among us, like Sir J. Rhys, Miss Hull, and Miss Weston, is a branch of our studies which we can regard with satisfaction.

This leads us to the controversy which for some years enlivened our Proceedings,—that between the Traditionalists and the Casualists, the advocates of the vertical as opposed to the lateral transmission of tales and beliefs. Recently the question has assumed another form, which is lucidly described by Dr. Rivers in his address at the last meeting of the British Association. He tells us how he, a believer in the evolutionary theory of the British school, was, by his studies in Melanesia, converted to the German doctrine of the monogenetic origin of culture, and how he finds that even the conception of mana was introduced by a higher race into those islands. As regards folk-tales, most of us are now prepared to admit that incidents, particularly those of an abnormal or savage type, are survivals from a primitive stage. But when we find a definite seriation of