Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 3 1885.djvu/11

 Rh under the head of folk-lore." Nothing could be more erroneous than this. Folk-lore can never be said to be running into mythology; though, on the contrary, mythology may be said to be perpetually running into folk-lore. It is only when mythology, displaced as a form of religion, becomes perpetuated as popular beliefs that it can be classed as folk-lore and placed side by side in that long category of manners and customs, superstitions and beliefs, old sayings and proverbs, legends and traditions, hero-tales and god-tales, which constitute the lore of the people. Unfortunately Sir George Cox is upheld to some extent by Professor Sayce. In the Introduction to the Science of Language we read:—"Myth, folk-lore, fable, allegory—all these are related terms, but terms to be carefully kept apart. A myth is the misinterpreted answer given by the young mind of man to the questions the world about him seemed to put The term folk-lore is of vaguer meaning. It embraces all those popular stories of which the fairy-tales of our nursery are a good illustration, but from which the religious element of mythology is absent .... Though the figures of mythology may move in the folk-lore of a people they have changed their form and fashion; the divinity that once clothed them is departed; they are become vulgar flesh and blood. It is true that it is often difficult to draw the line between folk-lore and mythology, to define exactly where the one ends and the other begins, and there are many instances in which the two terms overlap one another; but this is the case in all departments of research, and the broad outlines of the two types of popular legend stand clearly distinct. It is a mere misuse of the term to include myths, as is sometimes done, under the general head ' folk-lore.' The precise relation of mythology and folk-lore is still a disputed question. There is much folk-lore which can be traced back with certainty to faded myths." Nothing could be clearer than this passage in its definition and conception of mythology, and it recognises too the absence of mythological motif in folk-lore. This is of course a distinct advance in the matter of definition; it is really the commencing chapter in the best studies of our science. But when it leaves the domain of simple definition and touches upon the broader