Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/120

112

O attempt an account of research in any department of Folk-lore during the past year without including the Congress of London must be to omit the most important item. This is especially true of the department of Folk-tales, where the problems yet awaiting solution were re-stated and keenly discussed from almost every point of view. But impressions carried away from a meeting in which scientific questions have been debated, whatever the impulse they may give to further inquiry, are not to be implicitly trusted as records of value; and, until Mr. Jacobs and the Committee over which he presides shall give us the volume containing the official report, no definite estimate can be formed of the work really done.

It is only during the last few months that the official report of the Congress at Paris has appeared. An interesting volume it is, and one likely to call forth many regrets on the part of English students that, from the time of year at which it was held, they were unable to take part in its deliberations. On the subject of folk-tales it contains several papers, the most important of them being a criticism by M. Cosquin of Mr. Andrew Lang's theories so far as they relate to the origin of European stories. This paper, which has been re-issued as a separate pamphlet, is in effect