Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 4 1886.djvu/203

Rh so is a legend as unfounded history, or a popular derivation as plausible but unwarranted etymology. I do not mean by this that every mistake in historical books is to be classed as a Folk-lore fact. It is essential that the error should be of the people, popular: that it should enter into the general belief in a popular sense. We may prove that the Princes were never murdered in the Tower, but the usual historical statement that they were would still stand as a misstatement, not as a folk-legend. We may prove to a moral certainty that Amy Robsart was never murdered, that Leicester never ill-treated her, that he publicly married her, that she was by no means a girl when she died, that Sir Richard Varley was in reality a most worthy country gentleman, and that the whole story as given by Scott is a fiction taken from a vindictive pamphlet issued by Leicester's enemies; and yet, though no part of it is accurate history, the story is not a folk-tale. At the same time, if the story of Queen Elizabeth and Raleigh's cloak can be shown to be the common property of the human race, it is worth investigation as a folk-tale.

"The embodiment of the popular ideas on all matters connected with man and his surroundings," the preliminary definition above arrived at from a dissection of the term "Folk-lore," is perhaps a little too wide. It is at any rate too long-winded, and I put forward the primary definition, the popular explanation of observed facts, as fairly satisfying all requirements and permitting us to differentiate between what is and what is not Folk-lore better than any other. I do not, however, think it possible to keep the boundary always quite distinct: a fact that need not distress us, for we are here in no greater difficulty than are the votaries of any other science. Who can tell precisely in every case where animal life ends and plant life begins? And who will under every circumstance distinguish between reason and instinct, or between the animate and inanimate world?

The fons et origo of all Folk-lore is apparently the instinct of man to account for the facts that he observes round about him, and hence the particular form in which I have cast the initial definition of the term. Man observes a fact, and he at once sets about to explain it. This he does by instinct; but the nature of his explanation depends upon his mental condition, and in arriving at it he is bound by