Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/218

 EVALD TANG KRISTENSEN, A DANISH FOLK-LORIST.

BY W. A. CRAIGIE, M.A.

student of folklore is well aware of the fact that the materials for his study must first be collected by some one from those who have been their unconscious custodians and preservers. But while almost any one can collect to a certain extent, it is comparatively rare to find one who can do it with perfect thoroughness and with really great results. Extensive and profitable collecting requires not only a combination of unusual qualities in the collector, but implies a field that is naturally capable of yielding a good return; and in these days this is not so easy to find. In fact, we may safely say that it does not exist in the English-speaking parts of our islands, and in the Celtic portions attention has been largely confined to two or three branches of the subject—as ballads, fairy tales, and charms. There is much to be done in other departments before our material can be regarded as satisfactory. The ideal collector would have an eye and an ear for everything, and would be able to carry off not only what people were willing to give him, but what they scarcely knew they possessed, or considered too trivial to mention.

It is just because the good collector and the productive field are so rare that I have thought it worth while to give some account of the work done in Denmark by a single man: work which not only reveals the wealth of folklore still existing in that country, but also presents us with an example of dogged perseverance and all-round interest in the subject that cannot be too highly commended. While the results of his labours as yet only lie before us in the rough state, they contain a mass of facts which are of the highest value, and the only matter for regret is that the language in which they