Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/314

 286 Three Lives of Saints :

The fact that Pepys was one of the founders of the Royal Society adds piquancy to the story.

We might take as another example the department of Medical Science. " Here again," to quote Miss Burne's words, " the folklore remedy of the present day was the property of the learned in times past, and the medium by which it was disseminated was obviously an intrusive culture, namely the ecclesiastical culture of the Middle Ages."^

Even if we could entirely overcome this difficulty about drawing a clear distinction between the science of the day and its converse, we should still have a second obstacle to overcome. It is most difficult to come in contact with the Folk of the fourteenth century.

The Folk themselves were naturally inarticulate, then as always. There was no one to record their Lore. So the greater the distance of time that separates us from them the more difficult it is to trace their views and beliefs. Chaucer and the author of Piers Plowman do indeed give us some vivid sketches of the people, though such passages are quite exceptional. But we shall be able to gather scattered items from the writings of the period, from the Sermons of Wycliffe and other religious treatises of the day, from the works of Chaucer, and his predecessors and contemporaries ; and by classifying these and by taking note of negative evidence, we may reasonably hope that a survey of the material at our disposal will lead to satis- factory results.

Students of Folklore have already dealt with those works which have as their province Myth and Legend ; and old Customs and Institutions too have been investigated from various standpoints. But in another direction there still remains ground to be explored.

Folklore, we read in the Hand Book of Folklore (p. i), is " the expression of the psychology of early man," and, though the knowledge of lay and story which was the

^ Folk-Lore, vol. xxii, p. 28.