Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 4 1886.djvu/226

218 for a ring rather than anything more important." What this last remark, however, may mean, I cannot guess. But if it does, as affirmed, "take ordinary minds some time to grasp" my use of the term Poesy, one has only to turn to Richardson's Dictionary to find that it is in perfect accord with the usage of the best modern writers, who all consider making, creating, inventing, i.e. invention, not verse-making, as the characteristic of poetry. Poesy," says Ben Jonson, "is the Poet's skill or craft of making, the very fiction itself, the reason or form of the work." "Poesy feigns," says Bacon, in a long passage which I need not here quote. "The names given to Poets both in Greek and Latin," says Sir W. Temple, "express the same opinion of them in those nations: the Greek signifying makers or creators, such as raise admirable frames and fabrics out of nothing, which strike with wonder and with pleasure the eyes and imaginations of those who behold them. And if I used the less common, though perfectly good, English word poesy, instead of poetry, it was just because poetry is vulgarly, though incorrectly, held to mean verse-making: and I hoped that the more general, and at the same time the more correct, meaning would be more easily attached to the less usual word. As to using Tradition rather than Poesy as the Class-name including Stories, Songs, and Sagas, in what respect are these more entitled to such a distinctive Class-name than Prescriptions, Proverbs, Jests, Riddles, and Forecasts, or even than Customs? Not Stories, Songs, and Sagas only, but the whole contents of Folk-lore are Traditional. This is, in fact, the chief characteristic of Folk-lore as distinguished from Culture-lore, which only began when men began to write, and which, therefore, is not traditional, but graphical.

But I have perhaps noticed these objections at too great length. My Classification of Folk-lore is derived from a psychological Analysis of Folk-life. Any serious objection to such a Classification must, therefore, be of one or more of these three kinds. First, it may be objected that a natural Classification of Folk-lore is not to be derived from a psychological Analysis of Folk-life. This objection, however, will hardly, I believe, be taken by any one acquainted with