Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 2 1884.djvu/320

 312 nothing of our store of knowledge has been acquired either empirically or traditionally; on the contrary, the whole tendency of our education has been to replace in our minds the impressions derived from our senses and the facts gathered from folk-tradition, by conceptions due to the deliberate and trained exercise of reason. We are "civilised men"; the vast majority of our fellows are in this sense not civilised. Using the word very roughly, the Murri, the Maori, the Aztec, the Dorsetshire hind, may all be said to be in a "primitive " stage, and the study of man in such a stage is folk-lore.

If this is so, folk-lore must, if the study is to be rendered practicable, be split up into different branches, each of which will correspond to a section of anthropology dealing with civilised man. I would suggest some such division as follows:—

(1) Folk-belief, corresponding. to the study of religion and philosophy, and embracing every form and manifestation of popular faith.

(2) Folk-wont, corresponding to the study of law and institutions.

(3) Folk-leechdom, corresponding to the study of medicine.

(4) Folk-tradition, corresponding to the study of history.

(5) Folk-fancy, the study of the folk-tale, the folk-song, the folkplay.

(6) Folk-wit, the study of proverbs, riddles, jests, local sayings, and quips.

These last two classes may be grouped together in one, and called Folk-literature.

(7) Folk-craft, corresponding to the study of art and industry.

(8) Folk-speech, corresponding to the study of philology, grammar, rhetoric, and metre.

I should prefer another term for No. 4, folk-tradition, but can think of no other.

It will be seen that I give a very much wider scope to the word folk-lore than is usual, and that I look upon as legitimately belonging to it subjects with which the Society has never dealt. I feel some doubt about my class 8. If the study of speech be really, as many philologists hold, a physiological rather than a psychological science, it should be excluded on the same ground upon which I have already excluded biology. In any case it may be practically excluded, as its