Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/59

 f* residential Address. 27

of Roman and later influences, Gomine thought that he could resolve the village-community into a dual system due to the settlement of Aryan conquerors amid a pre- Aryan population that was thereby reduced to serfdom. The grounds on which the theory was made to rest were primarily sociological. The Aryan overlords were credited with a tribal system that has left \'arious survivals in the way of institutional custom or belief; whereas the abori- gines were supposed to have already possessed a village- organization which continued to exist in a modified form.-* When we are provided with so perfect a specimen of a theory of culture-contact, I need not labour the point that Gomme's favourite method was no less ethnological than it was sociological and historical in its purpose. Indeed I have said enough — or perhaps more than enough, seeing that I am speaking to those who knew him well — to justify the assertion that, just as we think naturally of Tylor in connexion with the evolutionary method, so the historical method ought to be for all time associated with the name of Gomme, who, while others groped, lit a lamp, and so lighted himself and the rest of us along a sure way.

I have nov/ accomplished the main object of these remarks, which was to endeavour to do honour to the memory of Sir Edward Tylor and of Sir Laurence Gomme, by examining their work — very hastily and imperfect!}' I am afraid — from the limited but crucial standpoint of method. It remains to consider how we, who are left to carry on that work, may develop those pioneer methods of theirs in a way worthy of their approval, were they still here. There are active among us to-day eager advocates

-^ Gomme has frequently expounded the theory in question. See, for instance, The l'il!aq-e CoiiiDiunity (London, 1S90), 137 ; Etluiohv^y in Folk- lore (London, 1892), 70; Folklore as a Historical Science (London, 1908), 357 ; and Sociological Keviexv (1909), 323.