Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 8, 1897.djvu/162



I must first briefly express the pleasure it gives me to address a few words to you, a society of experts in the subject I am deeply interested in—Fetish, and my gratitude for the honour you have done me in requesting me to do so. I am quite aware that the Folk-Lore Society has specialised in the direction of the folklore of the British Islands and their correlative folklores. I freely confess, from being acquainted, through the publications of the society and the independent ones of some of its leading members, with the exceeding beauty and poetic charm, particularly of the Celtic folklore, that I do not wonder that the society has followed this line of investigation, even apart from the greater interest to the general public that things concerning the beliefs and customs of their fatherland must have. Still, I most sincerely wish that this society could form a special committee for the consideration of African folklore, for I am certain it would do good work for the British Empire. When I had the pleasure of hearing the Presidential Address the other evening here, Mr. Nutt, if I remember right, stated that all poets should join the Folk-Lore Society. If it had an African committee I should have no hesitation in saying that all members of Parliament and officials at the Foreign and Colonial Offices should be compelled to join the Folk-Lore Society; for I am sure that the work it would do in the careful and unprejudiced study of African beliefs and customs would lead to a true knowledge of the Africans, whom we have now to deal with in thousands, and whom we shall soon have to deal with in hundreds of thousands; and there might be hope that by this true knowledge, hundreds of lives, both black and white, would be saved and a sound base established, from which the African could advance to an improved culture-condition.