Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/54

 46 pare the different elements of folk-lore or of culture together.

Thus there are two elements in the comparative study of custom and belief—namely, the comparison of like elements in two distinct areas, and the comparison of unlike elements in the same area. The first of these two elements of comparison has been studied very thoroughly, and to some purpose, by the most distinguished philosophers, anthropologists, and folk-lorists, and we are beginning to see some results. The second of these two elements has scarcely been studied at all. In my little book on Ethnology in Folk-lore, I touched the fringe of this subject, and for a long time I flattered myself that I was the first student who had noted the importance of unlike classes of belief existing side by side. But I must now confess that I fall a victim to the inexorable dictum of the Hebrew king, which forms the opening words of this address. So long ago as 1886, the phenomenon of unlike classes of belief was noted in a paper read before the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. I did not know of this when I wrote my book, and, in fact, it has remained a dead-letter in folk-lore studies until now. But the words of Professor Duns add a weight to the idea, that anything I have said cannot pretend to give, and I therefore gladly record them as a contribution to our study of first principles. Hitherto, he says, the argument in favour of the doctrine of the unity of the human race has had chiefly in view the existence of similar habits and observances in nations widely different and remote. But the same argument, from the diversities of customs, domestic, social, or superstitious, among families closely connected, both as tribes and geographically, yet remains to be worked out.

How important these words are, let me illustrate by the force of contrast. It is, of course, well known to us all here that parallel customs of a remarkable nature do occur in places very distant from each other. In my collection of parallels to British custom, I know none quite so close