Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/155

Rh with the folk-culture and the higher culture of ancient Europe; the general culture of the former differs from that of the latter, chiefly owing to the intrusion of an alien, non-European element, Christianity, which was from the outset and has, persistently, been hostile to the beliefs and conceptions of that culture, but which, as manifestly exhibited by unimpeachable evidence, was compelled to compromise with it in many and far-reaching ways. The ancient European, whether priest or peasant, had certain beliefs manifested in certain rites; the modern European priest has entirely different beliefs and rites, but the modern European peasant has beliefs and rites which are patently affiliated to those of antiquity. Vertical influence I would urge. Again, the ancient European poet and peasant had a common store of mythic and heroic fancies upon which they drew for recreation and edification; the modern European culture-poet seeks, for the most part, other sources of inspiration, or, if he apply to antique legend, he does so in an entirely different spirit from that of antiquity, but the peasant poet still deals in material much of which is manifestly affiliated to that of pre-Christian Europe. Vertical influence I would urge. I assert nothing, the subject does not lend itself to dogmatic assertion, but I hold it at once more consonant with scientific method and with common-sense to look in the first place to development for an explanation of the phenomena of European folk-lore. In this connection I gladly hail Mr. Jacobs’ doctrine of the survival of the fittest in the domain of folkfancy, but it leads me to other conclusions than those to which, apparently, it leads him. Marking the fact that, with the single exception of some of the Jewish chroniclers, all the greatest story-tellers of the world have been men of European birth, I think it as likely that the many tales found chiefly in Europe, and the origin of which is in dispute, should have been evolved in situ, as that they should be imported from the outside. I admit fully that each case (and this applies to the items of custom as well