Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/52

 42 regarded as one of attack, instead of being one of explanation. But this should not deter; and if in analysing a belief we kill a superstition, this does but show what mortality lay at its core. For error cannot survive dissection. Moreover, as John Morley puts it, "to tamper with veracity is to tamper with the vital force of human progress."

Now, up to the present, we have not faced this question of the larger significance of folklore. We have only "cast a sheep's eye" at it. Our treatment has been allusive; never quite direct. We meet and discuss groups of interesting facts; facts whose humour tickles us, or whose pathos moves us. And, as Omar Khayyám says, we have "talked about it and about." There has been hesitation to approach the ultimate conclusions to which the facts point; partly from the wholesome influence of the scientific spirit which bids us make sure that the fact will bear the weight of the inference; partly, too, from the tremendous power of the taboo which would limit the scope of inquiry by artificial threats to trespassers.

To bring home my meaning, let us look at the general attitude towards a couple of books whose subjects are of momentous import, and which may be bracketed together as complementary to each other. I refer to Mr. Frazer's Golden Bough and Mr. Hartland's Legend of Perseus. I was specially careful to follow the numerous reviews of Mr. Frazer's book, and in none that came under my eye was the far-reaching significance of the materials hinted at. The connection of the Arician custom of killing the priest-god with groups of allied customs was discussed; there was much discursive talk about tree-spirits, separable souls, and taboos, about survivals of tree-worship in "stinking ydols," as old Stubbs calls the May-poles in his Anatomie of Abuses—in fine, a great deal of dancing round them by the