Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/147

 Rh method of controversy which should not be generally adopted, and I hasten at once to add that I feel sure that Mr. Lang would not have adopted it if he had understood my expression.

I return, however, to the introductory portion, which is now so frequently tacked on to the pure Cinderella. This, as I have said before, not only traces back its origin to primitive times, or, at least, primitive conceptions, but it must have been tacked on, I contend, when those conceptions had become conventional; nor does it at all follow that this part was tacked on to Cinderella in the place where that convention had originally grown up. For conventions may be transmitted as well as handed down, and therefore I say, that, where we find these conventions, we have no surety that the conceptions once existed out of which the convention has grown. Hence I still remain of my heresy, at which Mr. Nutt was so surprised, the archæological value of such traits is much reduced—and not enhanced—by such conventions.

Permit me to develop this position a little further, for it points to a fatal flaw in the anthropological method of folklore; it applies not alone to fairy tales, but to almost all branches of the subject. In saying this I do not speak as an opponent of that method, for, as a matter of fact, I have approached the whole subject from the anthropological side. I contributed to the Journal of the Anthropological Institute before ever I joined the Folk-lore Society. My contributions to the Journal were much more solid and elaborate in character than any I can ever hope to make to the pages of. But when I came to the study of folk-lore, under the guidance of our past and present Presidents, I found, underlying all their work, an assumption which did not seem to be justified by the evidence they adduced or at our disposal. The doctrine of “survivals” implies that they survive from a period of culture akin to that of the savage of to-day; but it seems to be implied that what has survived is not alone the