Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 4 1886.djvu/224

216 lore, therefore, knowledge of which gives knowledge of Folk-life. But if we thus define Folk-lore, our starting-point in endeavouring to work out a scientific, or natural classification of it, should be evident. If Folk-lore is the lore of the Folk about their own Folk-life, a Scientific Classification of Folk-lore can surely be founded only on a psychological analysis of Folk-life? The natural Classification of Plants is derived from the results of a study of the Organology of Plants. And, similarly, the natural Classification of Folk-lore will be derived from the results of the study of the Psychology of Folk-life.

What, then, are the results of a study of the Psychology of Folk-life, with a view to the classification of the contents of Folk-lore? These results may be thus summarily stated. The larger data of the Consciousness of the Folk, as of Human Consciousness generally, are:

(1) An External World; (2) Other Beings; and (3) An Ancestral World. Their greater Faculties of Ideation are: (1) Imagination; (2) Affection; and (3) Memory. And their summarised Modes of Expression are: (1) Action; (2) Speech; and (3) Fiction. It is not for me here to dilate on, or to defend, this psychological analysis of Folk-life. It may very possibly not be the best that could be given. That is for us, however, at present a comparatively secondary matter. The matter now of first importance, and what I am at present anxious to have admitted, is, that it is from a Psychological Analysis of Folk-life that a natural Classification of Folk-lore must be derived.

But accepting, at least provisionally, this Analysis of Folk-life, the following is the Classification of Folk-lore to which it seems to lead. In the first place, just as in our Analysis we distinguish Faculties of Ideation from Modes of Expression, we shall distinguish, in our Classification, the Subjects of Folk-lore from the Records of Folk-lore. Then, as to the Classification of the Subjects of Folk-lore, as our Analysis of Folk-life gave us Imagination, Affection, and Memory as the Faculties of Ideation; our Classification of Folk-lore will be into (1) Folk-beliefs; (2) Folk-passions; and (3) Folk-traditions. And corresponding to the Modes of Expression of Ideation—namely, Action, Speech, and Fiction—the Records of Folk-lore will be classed as (1) Customs; (2) Sayings; and (3) Poesies.