Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/149

Rh with the same heresy applied to folk-custom, and I cannot therefore agree with Mr. Nutt, that either the survivals found in folk-tales or those found in custom can be used as evidence of the former existence of the beliefs on which those survivals are founded in the actual place where either tale or custom is now to be met with. Man has struggled upward from savagery, but by the struggle for existence among the survivals of savagery many of them have disappeared, to be replaced by others from alien sources: who shall say at this time of day which are native, which alien?

At this stage of the argument Mr. Nutt would “fain for the moment glance at universal history from the sole standpoint of our studies”. However interesting this may be, I fear I cannot follow him in his excursus. Mr. Nutt has a passion for tracing things back to what the Germans call the “Cosmic Gas”, the primeval chaos out of which the Universe has sprung. I admire his courage, but will not attempt to imitate it. I know that “Cosmic Gas” well: he comes from Berlin, and somewhat bores me. I prefer to keep with my foot on the solid ground of facts which I can control. Mr. Nutt illustrates this fundamental difference between our methods by a very pertinent example. In dealing with the existence of the legend of the “Pied Piper” in the Isle of Wight, as found in the work of Abraham Elder, written in 1870, Mr. Nutt complains that I do not go back further than Abraham Elder himself, or Verstigan, the source which he quotes. I do not go back further, because I have nothing further to go back upon. Mr. Nutt desires to see a little further through the brick wall, and he indulges in a number of hypotheses of why Abraham Elder quoted Verstegan, and whether he would have done so if he had not some germ of legend actually before him in oral tradition in the Isle of Wight. I prefer to stick to my Verstegan until we know something more about some traces of the tradition in the Isle of Wight itself. The proper scientific course would be to make