Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 4 1886.djvu/202

194 is founded on a superstition; while Songs and Catches, Proverbs and Sayings, are only interesting so far as they embody Folk-lore. History, Natural History, and Ethnography, are also Folk-lore, so far as they preserve Legends; Language, again, includes much, in the matter of derivation especially, that is purely Folk-lore: while Antiquities are almost inseparable from Legends. Folk-lore, in fact, is present in almost every subject connected with the study of mankind, and with many it is so mixed up with sober fact as to be practically inextricable. Careful as I have been to try and keep the Folk-lore notes in Panjâb Notes and Queries separate from the remaining subjects, I have found it quite impossible to do so altogether, and in some cases it has been so hard to say whether a certain scrap of information was about Religion or Folk-lore, that it has seemed to be of no consequence under which heading it was classed: it belonged equally to both.

What, then, is this Folk-lore that we find pervading everything human? It seems to me that the answer is to be found in the term itself. As a specimen of the general conception of the meaning of the term, the last edition of Webster, quoting the late Archbishop Trench as its authority, says that it means "rural tales, legends, or superstitions." I think every one here will admit that this definition does not go nearly far enough. If we take "folk" to mean the general community, we get "folk-lore" to be the "lore" of the people. "Lore" means and has meant learning in general, but, putting aside derivations and past meanings—a proceeding to which each generation in all parts of the world has always asserted its right—I think it is fair to say that "lore" nowadays, and at any rate in this connection, is learning of the kind that is opposed to science, meaning by "science" ascertained knowledge. Folk-lore, then, is, in the first place, popular learning, the embodiment, that is, of the popular ideas on all matters connected with man and his surroundings. Unascertained knowledge is, of course, apt to be very wrong, and so much is this the case that we may take it, that where the popular interpretation of a fact is quite incorrect, the statement is pretty certain to be capable of classification under Folk-lore. A superstition, as being an unreasonable and excessive belief, is a fact of Folk-lore: