Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/154

146 folk-moot. The corroboree and the mumming-play have grown into the dramas of Æschylus and of Shakespeare; the nursery-rhyme and the folk-song have developed into the lyrics of Sappho and of Shelley; the folk-tale and the droll have given rise to Walter Scott and Charles Dickens. The early stages of these processes in the evolution of man are no less part of anthropology, they are more part of folk-lore, than the study of the evolution of the folk-moot into the County Council, or of the totem-clan into the State.

[Apart from secondary questions, there are but two main points of difference between Mr. Jacobs and myself, one general and one special. The general one involves the question of, to use Mr. Jacobs’ very happy phrase, lateral versus vertical influence in the transmission and diffusion of folk-lore. I do not think the difference is very great, but difference there is. I am inclined to lay more stress upon vertical influence, although I do not in the slightest degree deny the fact of lateral influence. It is upon the latter that Mr. Jacobs lays most stress, indeed, one might gather from his words that he minimises vertical influence more than I believe he really does—it is the misfortune of polemical exposition that it commonly leads to over-accentuation of particular aspects of truth. But I try and justify my belief in the importance of vertical influence by an appeal to the only available evidence, that of history, a proceeding which, to my wonder, excites the merriment of the philosophic student of history Mr. Jacobs’ friends know him to be. Where can a criterion be found? he despairingly cries; and when I humbly try to furnish one he would fain laugh it out of court.

Doubtless some imperfection in the presentment of my argument obscured its real import for him. Let me briefly restate it. The folk-culture of modern Europe is, so far as I can read the facts of history, uninterruptedly connected