Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 2 1884.djvu/356

348 should be defined as dealing with primitive man without some explanation as to how it so deals. Surely folk-lore deals primarily with the survival of primitive customs and beliefs among civilized races, and is comparable with, not identical with, the living primitive customs and beliefs of savage races. I hope to discuss this view of the case at greater length next month, but take this opportunity of throwing out my suggestion as it is in opposition to that of my friend Mr. Nutt. I strongly urge that Folk-lore is a science by itself, with distinct work of its own to accomplish, but I must protest against its being only another name for anthropology. The sanction at the back of folk-lore is tradition. Thus traditional custom, traditional belief, traditional stories—and no custom or belief originating now, whether in civilized or savage races—can be defined as folk-lore. There can be no modern folk-lore, whereas the psychological phenomena with which anthropology deals exist now, and new facts will present themselves as society progresses.

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NOTES AND QUERIES.

Confirmation Folk-lore.—I cited (p. 89) in Folk Medicine a passage from Mrs. Latham's West Sussex Folk-Lore as to sufferers from disease presenting themselves for repeated confirmation under the impression that the bishop's blessing would cure anything. I find a notice illustrative of this in Mrs. Martin's Memories of Seventy Years. When Gilbert Wakefield was curate at Stockport, in 1778, he relates an anecdote of a woman, old enough to be his grandmother, who was confirmed for the fourth time, "because she found herself strengthened so much by the bishop's hands."—Memories of Seventy Years, by One of a Literary Family. Edited by Mrs. Herbert Martin. 1883. P. 181.

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Glasgow.

St. John's Eve in Norway,—"There were curious aspects of human life too. One night, July 2—St. John's Day by the old reckoning—as we lay at anchor in a gorge, which from the land must have been inaccessible, we saw a large fire blazing and figures leaping through the flame. It was the relic of a custom once wide as the