Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/61

 Rh stone monuments, similar in design and construction as they largely are, have given rise to similar beliefs and practices.

It is purposely that I have mentioned this particular set of beliefs and practices. A little while back I said that the earlier students who essayed to distinguish varying elements in British folklore referred them either to a Teutonic or a Celtic source. The point of view has changed. We now seek not for the Aryan-Teutonic or Aryan-Celtic, but for the Aryan and the non-Aryan, and the very instances I have cited would be urged in support of the contention that Aryan and non-Aryan can be separated. The rude stone monuments are, it is argued, non-Aryan, and so are the beliefs and rites connected with them. These latter have persisted, partly because the non-Aryan element in the general European population is far more considerable than was at one time supposed, partly because there was little to prevent the Aryans themselves appropriating the ideas of the peoples they subjugated. The wide spread alike of monuments and beliefs indicates a common non-Aryan substratum underlying the Aryan topdressing. Here is, it is said, a telling instance of the truth that folklore does contain specifically differentiated racial elements.

I shall return to this point later on. For the present I will confine myself to the historically known, i.e. to the Aryan-speaking peoples that have inhabited Britain.

Up to now I have restricted myself to the philosophical side of folklore, to that which has definite objects in view, the attainment of food, the gratification of desire. And my conclusion is agnostic. This or that feature may be due to a specific Scandinavian or Low-German modification of the common stock, But in the main it is impossible to say that our folklore on this side is specifically Celtic or Low-Teutonic or Scandinavian-Teutonic; nor does it really