Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/76

 52 historic times is especially needed, as the process of shifting folklore from one language to another often affords valuable hints as to its true nature. Areas of ascertained and definitely dated admixture of population deserve especial attention. In this respect the country lying between Humber and Clyde, or the West-Midland district will probably repay the inquirer's labour best.

Such, all too briefly sketched, are the principles which should govern the inquiry, the lines along which it should move. This Society has already initiated such an inquiry by its scheme of collecting, in County Folk-Lore, the scattered references to the subject in printed sources, grouped according to areas which are so largely determined by racial and sociological factors as are our counties. As a rule these references are taken from sources, county histories, the elder antiquaries and the like, compiled before those vast industrial and economic changes which within the last hundred years have utterly transformed so many districts, have rooted up and carried away, as might a devastating torrent, vast masses of belief and custom and fancy which had come down substantially unaltered from a very early period. If the series were complete, instead of comprising, as it does, only three counties, it would be easy to verify many of the suggestions I have thrown out this evening. I am not without hopes that I may be able to work out during the ensuing year some special section of the general problem which I have stated this evening. In any case, I trust that students who are engaged in studying the question of racial elements in British folklore may find my survey not unhelpful.