Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/81

 Rh and intellectual life, and given "the promise and the potency" of an indefinite improvement in the condition of mankind, such as we understand by the word civilisation. This is especially true of the science of folklore, wherein lies a power, unsuspected by those who have not faced its possibilities, for the liberation of the mind from the shackles imposed by natural phenomena, and by inveterate modes of thought, which is the most imperious condition of advance.

In the difficult and important task she has undertaken Miss Cox has won a large measure of success. She begins at the beginning, and reasoning from the state of savagery now fully established as the universally early, if not original, state of humanity, she points out with admirable clearness the relation of antique manners, customs and beliefs, still surviving in the highest culture, to the material remains of what we call primitive man. Her bright and lively style, and the skill with which her examples are marshalled, carry the reader on with unflagging interest to the very last page, and leave him wishing for more.

It is not to be expected that so much ground could be covered by anybody, however well equipped, without some slips, or what the hard-hearted censor may choose to regard as slips. We regret that Mr. Thoms' definition of folklore was adopted as sufficient and complete at the present day. It is half a century since his definition was framed; and during that period our outlook has been widened, until folklore is no longer to be confined to a "department of the study of antiquities and archaeology" dealing with "the common people" of our own and adjacent countries. When the Folk-Lore Society places on its sessional programme and publishes in its Transactions papers on Leprosy Stones from Fiji, on the customs and superstitions of Syria, Ceylon, Korea, on Obeah-worship, on tales from New Guinea, Melanesia, and Beloochistan, equally with papers on funeral masks in Europe, fairy tales from mediæval manuscripts, and the Celtic doctrine of rebirth, it is evident that a wider definition is required, and that we must not merely regard the modern savage as supplying the key to the meaning of our remains of ancient observances, customs, and beliefs, but we must take the whole subject of tradition and boldly claim it as our own. Moreover, we must so interpret tradition as to open our doors to the organisation of savage and barbaric society, no less than to the telling of tales and the curing of warts.