Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 4 1886.djvu/373



Miss Burne has now finished her task, and, looking back at the whole work, we are prepared to say that this is the best collection of English folk-lore that has yet appeared. It is so in a double sense. First, in the matter collected. Miss Jackson, to whom this portion of the work is primarily due, has not only known what to look for but how to look for it. It cannot be too often impressed upon the mind that to obtain the precious relics of the past enshrined in folk-lore the collector must proceed as one of the people. No system of question and answer; no cut and dried formula or method of proceedings is applicable. The people have cherished their beliefs in spite of advanced philosophical thought and advanced political surroundings, and they have surrounded them with a sacredness quite apart from their original signification—a sacredness due, not so much to traditional belief as to class prejudice. This sacredness has to be broken through lovingly and not harshly, and it has to be believed in by the enquirer and collector before it can be thus dealt with. For these and other reasons there is apparent on every page of this valuable collection that Miss Jackson and her fellow-worker have thoroughly entered into the spirit of their work, have become folk-lorists in the truest and best sense of the term. This volume continues from the last the customs and superstitions relating to the seasons, and gives chapters on the harvest, All Saints' and All Souls' days, and Christmas-tide. It then deals with traces of well-worship, wakes, fairs and feasts, morris-dancing and plays, games, ballads, songs, and carols, rhymes and sayings, proverbs and proverbial phrases, and notes on church bells and epitaphs. All these sections are full of examples of great interest and value to comparative science, and any one consulting this work for its collections only will be well rewarded.