Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 4 1886.djvu/83

Rh group "referring to the demon's struggles with mankind, in which he is ultimately worsted, being either destroyed, or at least robbed, kicked, or otherwise humiliated." In the tales of "The Giant with Three Golden Hairs," "Thumbling," and the "puzzling myth" of the "Golden Goose," the moral lesson is no less observable, and thus we may find in all Grimm's stories, except those of the comic class, a "motive," which must be regarded as the central truth, and which may form a link of connection between tales, the want of similarity in the setting of which gives them the appearance of being essentially different.

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THE PRINCIPLES OF THE CLASSIFICATION OF FOLK-LORE.

IN endeavouring to state the Principles of the Classification of Folk-lore, the questions that first arise are: What is Folk-lore? and what are its relations as a Science to the other Sciences? The answer to these questions must be the first Principle of the Classification of Folk-lore. And it may, perhaps, be approximately formulated in the following terms:—

I. Folk-lore is knowledge of Folk-life, or the life of the Uncultured Classes, as distinguished from Culture-lore, knowledge of Individualised Life, or the Life of the Cultured Classes; and the generalisations arising from these two knowledges, or the Sciences of Folk-life and of Culture-life, are complementary and mutually corrective divisions of the same Mental and Moral Sciences—the Historical Sciences, namely, of Mental Development and of Civil Progress.

I am glad to find in the Folk-Lore Journal for April 1885 two definitions of Folk-lore implying a conception of it similar to that