Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 4 1886.djvu/103

Rh Captain Temple says a timely and forcible word on the importance of studying folk-lore as a science, and the endeavour of the writers in the Folk-Lore Journal to urge and advance this view. The collection of legends which follow this admirable preface illustrates the views therein put forward. Hero legends arising in historical times are boldly tacked on to hero legends of mythical times, and thus the construction of a cycle of legends or folk-tales, so well known to students of European storyology, is seen as it is going on. Such a fact as this ought to lead to some re-examination of western cycles of folk-tales, especially one most interesting of all to English students—the Arthurian cycle. India, in folk-lore, as in other sciences, certainly gives such important help towards the elucidation of western history, mental and social, that these volumes of Captain Temple's appear to us to be of an importance and value which have not jet been fully recognized by English folk-lorists. Captain Temple collects himself, hears the stories told, knows their living form, and has knowledge sufficient to grasp the most salient and important features which such facts give him, and therefore, more than any one else, he, it appears to us, is capable of pointing out the direction to which future study should tend. The stories in the volume before us, and in the first of the series, speak for themselves. They are in some features familiar to all folk-lorists. But Captain Temple can and does point out the manner of their construction in their present form, and it is this part of his labours which ought to be transferred to the long crystallized stories of Western Europe to see if it does not unlock some of the mysteries they contain.

Altogether, we do not know any other folk-lorist, besides Mr. Ralston and Mr. Lang, who has done more for the science than Captain Temple. Both as collector and as investigator he has given us work of the highest order, and if we mistake not it will be to his labours that future progress in the science of folk-lore will be most indebted.

It is certainly useful to have collected into one volume the folk-lore of any definite subject, and in this sense we welcome the volume now before us. It is divided into convenient sections, dealing with moon