Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/51

 Presidential Adeii'css. 39

been practised. ^^ It is only by the intensive study of modern savage life that we shall be assisted to interpret the beliefs of the prehistoric people. Folklore must pass through the stage of the surveyor before its followers can presume to be architect.s.

There still remains the aesthetic side of folklore, which, through our absorption in its scientific aspects, we have hitherto neglected, with the result that we have, to some extent, failed in securing our main object, its popularisation. It is, of course, most important that we should seek behind the current version of the tale of Cinderella the earlier type, as it appears in the Scottish version, where the girl's mother is a sheep, and we are thus able to infer that the nucleus of the story goes back to a period of totemism or theriolatry. It is well for us to collect, as has recently been done,^- the incidents which lie behind the Decameron of Boccaccio. But a survey like this helps us little to realise the beauty of the setting, the fugitives from the plague grouped in a delightful meadow, the delicacy and grace with which the tales are constructed out of the current folklore. Amid graver studies, I suggest that we may occasionally find time to discuss the contrast between the old folk-tale and its modern imitations, among which perhaps only two, Meredith's SJiaving of Shagpat and Southey's Three Bears, conform to the folk-tale convention. We may examine that law of association which groups the old familiar inci- dents round some heroic figure of history or myth, — Alexander the Great, Virgil in mediaeval tradition, or Charlemagne, just as the after-dinner story is attributed to Tarleton, Swift, Sheridan, Sydney Smith, Whately, or Jowett. We may consider how the masters of literature, like Homer or Shakespeare, work up the traditions of their time into epic or drama, and how their magical touch

pp. 380 et set/.
 * iR. R. Marett, " In a Prehistoric Sanctuary," The /Jibbert Journal, 1912,


 * ^ A. C. Lee, 7Vie Decameron: its Sources and Analogues.