Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 29, 1918.djvu/294

 284 Folklore and History in Ireland.

lore supplies footnotes to history it, in turn, enables the student to make a true digest of folklore. If scientific rather than sentimental treatment were accorded Ireland we would be facing a very different set of problems in that island. The Americans have recently discovered that much of the misunderstanding and prejudice that existed in the United States as regards Great Britain was due to the faulty teaching of history, and the one-sided and frequently erroneous text-books employed in the education of the young. If this is true about America it is a thousand times more so in the case of Ireland. Unfortunately not history but confirmative argument on the side of each disputant has been too much the desideratum, let the politics be what blend soever of red, yellow, or blue, and so careful a student as Lecky will be disregarded in favour of a more prejudiced and infinitely more ignorant writer who wears the coloured label they themselves affect. One party is fed with tales of terror rooted in the misgovernment of England ; another is fired with horrific details of the misdoings of rebellious Ireland. And a vivid imagination is the gift of the land. It is true that History provides but little more than an articulated skeleton at best ; Literature tricks it out with raiment ; but it is to Anthropology that the student of the future will look for provision of flesh and blood to complete the picture. For folklore reflects history. It is the record of the life of the people. It is affected by contemporary events, even by the fluctuating politics of the day, in just so great or so little degree as the folk themselves are affected. Where politics have a dominating influence on life, as unhappily has been — and is — the case in Ireland, politics mould, mar or make folklore. The lore may be entirely diverse from the political event that gave it inception. As a contemporary instance may I remind you of the sale of primroses in Dublin on April 19th to which I referred in my last paper. The orange lilies of the Twelfth of July do not come into quite the same category ; they have