Page:Journal of American Folklore vol. 31.djvu/11

 THE JOURNAL OF

Vol. 31 —JANUARY-MARCH, 1918.— No. 119.

CANADIAN-ENGLISH FOLK-LORE.

It is generally assumed by the casual observer that folk-lore is wanting among the Canadian people. Modern conditions and in- dustrialism are supposed to have shattered most of the intellectual vestiges of the past. To a few specialists, however, such an assumption is preposterous. It seems that the instinct of preservation and conservatism, far from having been lost altogether, is still deep-rooted, and that a large mass of popular or oral tradition is being handed down from the past. There is, indeed, positive evidence that if the collection of folk-songs, ballads, folk-tales, popular rhymes and sayings, proverbs, beliefs, games, or folk-remedies were now undertaken in earnest, a bountiful harvest would result. Many are the grandmothers, the country-folk, the cowboys and shanty-men, who to this day find much entertainment in the old-fashioned rehearsal of songs, formulas, or tales of the past. The following first-hand contributions to the folk-lore of Ontario, although quite restricted in scope, will make it clear that modern communities are not by any means so barren of traditions as one might suspect; and it may be pointed out, moreover, that even the extensive collections here presented by Mr. F. W. Waugh and Mr. W. J. Wintemberg have not been made under particularly favorable circumstances; that is, they are the result, not of systematic, subsidized investigation in a well-selected field, but merely of assiduity, chance, and perspicacity. When a regular investigation was recently undertaken in a few Quebec localities, it proved overwhelmingly successful, as, in the course of a few brief periods of field-research, over one thousand variants of folk-songs and two hundred and forty folk- tales were recorded. There is no doubt that a similar yield should be expected from very many Canadian communities, especially in the older sections of the country. Mr. J. A. Teit of Spences Bridge, B.C., whose first contribution on VOL. XXXI.—NO. 119.—I I