Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 2 1884.djvu/324

 316 As an instance of the necessity for some decision as to what folklore really aims at, I would refer to the following letter in the Library Journal of August 1884: —

"The Place of Folk-Lore in a Classification.—A Problem, by C. A. Cutter.—I have a division Legends, under Literature, and I had put in a division Folk-lore under Religions. It would be by no means easy to say of some books whether they should go in the one or the other. But I have long been dissatisfied with this classing, though I find others have adopted the same. Mr. Dewey, for instance, in his index, refers from Folk-lore to Comparative mythology, Greek and Roman mythology, Norse mythology; Mr. Perkins refers to Mythology in general. Oriental, Classical, Scandinavian, German, blank; Mr. Smith, to Belles-lettres, division Fiction, sub-division Folk-lore, fairy tales, nursery rhymes, &c., adding a reference to Comparative mythology. But there is much in folk-lore that is not religion or literature. There is much medicine and natural history, and a good deal that illustrates manners and customs and sports. Folk-fore is the philosophy, the religion, the science, and the literature of the people; of the uninstructed, the untrained, the blundering, the confused. It is unphilosophical philosophy, superstitious religion, unscientific science, and unwritten literature Why should its science be put under religion, or its religion and science under literature, or its natural history under philosophy? Why should it be put in any class? Why should it not be a class by itself? And, if it is allowed an independent standing, it should come, since like Lord Bacon it takes all knowledge to be its province, not in any of the six great divisions, but in what I have called Generals and Preliminaries, where the Encyclopaedias and books of "universal erudition" are to go. If it were to be put under one of the main classes, I might present the claims of Primitive culture as a division of Anthropology, itself a division of the compound class Zoology, or of Antiquities, and Manners and Customs, one of the side historical sciences. I think I have given a sufficient variety of choice; but perhaps the reader can add some other place."

This, it appears to me, sets forth the practical inconvenience of the present uncertainty.

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