Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 3 1885.djvu/17

 Christian ceremonies certain ceremonies of their own, which had once been performed at various times during the pagan year. Thus we find at all the great festivals of the Church, Christmas, Easter, Whitsuntide, and so on, there are customs performed—sometimes by the Church, sometimes with the sanction of the Church, sometimes merely at the same time as the Church—which are purely and incontestably traditional in their origin and significance. Putting wholly on one side the question as to the connection between Church custom and folk-lore—and it is a question which well deserves working out—it is the duty of the folk-lorist to gather up that enormous mass of popular custom which has gradually clustered around Church festivals. Mr. Dyer has done a great deal towards this in his book on British Popular Customs. It will be found that at certain seasons of the year—take for instance Christmas—a number of popular customs have long been practised as essential features of the joyous festival. In some places the self-extinction of the yule-log at Christmas is portentous of evil, and this same idea is represented in the Church in connection with the candles instead of the yule-log. But folk-lore proper takes no note of the connection with Church custom. The yule-log ceremonies and its many significant lessons exist quite independently of Christmas; and when we come to consider that identical customs are performed at various places at different seasons of the year it will be self-evident that, although the folk-lorist has to use the Christian festivals as a means of finding out items of folk-lore, he has to eliminate them from their accidental or extraneous association with the custom they have doubtless helped to preserve.

Ceremonial customs appertain to the great events of life—birth, marriage, and death; to the social institutions which surround us—the house and home, agriculture, &c.

3. Superstitions and Beliefs. The third radical group of folk-lore consists of that vast body of superstition which at all times and in all places has been made the subject of observation. The headings into