Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/36

 24 Presidential Address.

more solemn of surviving measures ; for after all our peasants themselves have nearly lost that, and at most take seasonal festivals a little more heartily and seriously than the rest of us, while perhaps occasionally they likewise dimly imagine that a due observance of them makes for luck. But at any rate the later stages of transformism to which such folk-customs are inherently subject may become tolerably manifest to the practising folklorist. He will perceive, for instance, how readily a change in the aesthetic motive may supervene with instant all-pervading effect on the traditional features, grave passing into gay, simple into complex, coarse into refined, with consequent losses and gains to the total experience. Or he will learn how the individual artist is apt to carry the chorus with him down devious paths, and how the gift of improvisation will not be denied. He will have experience, again, of the power of form to discard or renew its matter, a good tune, for example, or a telling dramatic situation, having the power to persist in conjunction with words that are either nonsensical or else newfangled. Once more, he may note how a village celebration strengthens social solidarity, — how, for instance, it may provide an occasion for the settlement of outstanding quarrels, or serve the purpose of a popular demonstration in favour of some ancient franchise such as a right of way. All this, then, and much else of great psychological interest is to be brought to light by the student of British folklore, more especially if, as I have suggested, he be at the same time versed in the actual practice of that which he submits to analysis.

Once the folklorist has learned amongst familiar con- ditions to lay his finger on the living pulse of the simple life, he may venture further afield. Thus, if he has the good fortune, as some of us, thanks to Professor Baldwin Spencer's kinematograph, have recently had, of witnessing the strange ceremonies of Australian savages, will he not be able by the aid of a home-grown sympathy to perceive