Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/222

196 totem in cicatrices, tattooing, or paint; fantastic marks in sacred ceremonies; and in the pictorial symbols whereby abstract conceptions and concrete ideas are alike denoted. In this last named Professor Haddon follows the sure-footed Count Goblet d'Alviella, whose Migration of Symbols is one of the few sane books on a subject that has flooded the world with drivel.

publishers might take a leaf out of the enterprising Belgian publisher's book. In his Bibliothèque Beige des Connaissances Modernes, which he is publishing at one franc per volume, he has already included Professor Monseur's Le Folklore Wallon; and the volume now before us is the first of a series on Flemish folklore. M. Teirlinck, the author, begins in a scientific manner by defining the term Folklore. Quoting M. Monseur's comprehensive definition of folklore as an object of study, he passes to M. Gittée's definition of the science as that which "has for its aim to collect, examine, and explain everything which relates to the life and civilisation of the the popular classes." This definition he accepts, and divides the work of the student of folklore into two parts, namely, first, the collection and classification of the materials, which he calls systematic folklore, and secondly, the study and explanation of the materials thus collected, which he calls scientific folklore. His own intention is to give an outline of the principal materials in logical arrangement. He divides them into four groups:—

1. Popular Belief, or Mythological Folklore;

2. Popular Fancy, containing oral literature or tales;

3. Popular Life;

4. Popular Science and Art.

Without discussing here the details of the classification set forth at length in M. Teirlinck's introductory pages, it may be observed that when the Handbook of Folklore comes to be revised for a new edition, the Council of the Folk-lore Society will do well to take them into consideration.