Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/44

 32 before the rising generation of intellectual men, and will convince them of its utility in the promotion of other branches of learning. The same object is now being attained by the establishment of Anthropological Societies at Oxford and Cambridge under the charge of Mr. Marett and Professor Haddon. We are prepared to admit on very favourable terms members of these societies as associates in the Folk-Lore Society, an offer which will, we trust, be widely accepted. When much of the literature of our day is forgotten, the philosophical historian of the thirtieth or fortieth century will seek in the novels of George Eliot or Thomas Hardy, the poems of William Barnes, the sketches of Richard Jefferies, and last, but not least, in our publications, for a living picture of rural thought and life in our times. We may reasonably hope that some of the enthusiasm with which the wild life of the countryside is now being studied will in time be directed to the not less interesting traditional lore of our peasant classes. The study of folk-music, folk-dances, folk-games, when they come to form a part of our system of popular education, will do much to restore that gaiety of life which Merry England once enjoyed, and will prove a remedy for that pessimism, with its accompanying taste for sensational amusements, which is one of the evils of the present time.

To us who have drunk from the fountain, folklore appeals more on the artistic and imaginative side. It has opened to us a new world of romance and beauty. Like the voice of the nightingale, it

We may say of it,—to use the words which one of the friends whose untimely loss I have commemorated prefixed to his last and greatest book,—"In good sooth, my masters, this is no door. Yet it is a little window, that looketh upon a great world."