Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 4 1886.djvu/168

 160 It is rather an effort to believe that there can be nine kinds of customs, so distinct from each other, that an ordinary mortal can distinguish between them without constant mistakes; but to let that pass. I believe a collection of Folk-lore might be arranged on this system, by dint of thought and pains, but it would be a great deal more trouble than the fourfold plan. "That vast body of superstition, which at all times and in all places has been made the subject of observation," would have to be divided between Customs and Sayings. In arranging the Folk-lore of some district of the British Isles, for instance, the endless statements that "it is unlucky" to do so-and-so, must go into Sayings; and those of them which follow up the belief by practice, (as when little boys, believing it unlucky to take birds' eggs into the house, hang strings of them over the doorways of outbuildings,) must be placed among Customs. It could be done, I repeat, but it would be difficult, particularly in the case of Folkmedicine, put into the shape of Medical Recipes, and I doubt whether the result would be satisfactory. Imagine, for example, Turner's Samoa, with all the islanders' ideas and beliefs about their gods, placed in the category of Sayings! (The stories about them, of course, would be entered in the third group.)

The truth is, it seems to me, that this division rests on a forced and unnatural—or, at least, an unusual—interpretation of the word Sayings. It is made to include everything to which the phrase On dit could be prefixed. Whereas, to an ordinary mind, a saying implies a form of words; an idea expressed in certain prescribed words; a formula rather than a thought. And it seems to me that (besides the inconvenience to the poor collector of having to begin by learning special meanings to common words) it is a practical mistake to confound formulated and non-formulated ideas in the same category, The forms of Folk-loric ideas deserve attention, as well as the substance of them. And to set down Folk-thoughts which are expressed in Folk-loric formulas promiscuously with those which may be, and are, expressed in the words of the "cultured" collector, seems to me a very unscientific confus19n of two distinct sets of ideas, those which are definite and crystallized (and frequently fossilized), with those which are vague and floating, and consequently variable, though