Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 2 1884.djvu/349

 Rh proportion as peoples escape from the dominion of imagination and emotion, and become guided by knowledge and the trained reason, they cease to be the subjects of folk-lore. This distinction is, I think, better expressed by "uncivilised" than "primitive."

It is most convenient next to define our terms: we shall then be in a position to classify the subjects of our study. It is perfectly true that we have not equivalents for all the German expressions cited by Mr. Nutt. But, let me ask, are all these technical words necessary? Doubtless they are highly convenient; but, unhappily, our tongue has lost the power of combination retained by the purer Teutonic spoken by the fellow-countrymen of Kuhn and Benfey; and unless these terms be absolutely necessary we must be content to do without them, as luxuries beyond our reach. If they are not luxuries we shall have to invent compound words of a more or less clumsy character to express them, or import foreign words. But let us see.

The word sage is ordinarily used as the correlative of märchen. The latter is a story the scene of which is laid at some undefined place and time; it is not believed as a fact by the teller, nor perhaps by the hearers, and it agrees in other respects with the definition of Von Hahn, quoted by Mr. Nutt. The former, on the other hand, is generally localised in the neighbourhood where it is told; and frequently consists of an adventure, or series of adventures, attributed to some well-known personage. One or the other condition it always fulfils; and, moreover, it is believed in as a fact by the teller, or related by him as something which he has heard from his elders who did believe it. May I add that a märchen is clearly mythical, a sage not invariably so? Now it is perfectly true that we have no native words to express these two distinct classes of folk-tales. Nursery-tale is the nearest approach we can make to Märchen, and we can only indicate a Sage under the general term Tradition. The word Saga, the Norse equivalent of Sage, has, however, been made so familiar to us by Longfellow, and other writers, that it has practically been adopted into the language, and there really seems no reason why it should not be used in the sense above indicated of Sage. Its previous literary use in a somewhat looser way need not prevent our adopting it, and giving it a more strictly defined scientific meaning.