Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 5 1887.djvu/147

Rh a myth-drama, there are, I think, no exceptions. The tradition is always downward, from the higher class to the lower, from the older to the younger, from the more advanced race to the less advanced. Add to this that the transmission is by way of mouth and ear, not by way of hand and eye, and it is obvious that the deposits having the greatest literary value will be of the period in which the greatest amount of intellect and art have sought an oral outlet. Our child-songs and dramas present side by side the superstitions of pre-Christian savagery, the working of mediæval fancy and institutions, the naive, touching, open-air world of balladry, and the makeshifts of our fighting, Old Testament-reading backwoodsmen a century or two ago; but beyond doubt the balladists have the best of the comparison. Nevertheless the other elements are well worthy of more study than any one has thought of giving them. As a Swiss lake-bed holds the history of all Swiss peoples since the first days of "the strange lake-men of the floating raft," even so the existing games of American children hold the history of the English-speaking peoples of the world from a very early day until now. Not that the record is complete in either case, but the anthropologist can no more afford to neglect the one than the other.

FOLK-LORE OF ABORIGINAL FORMOSA.

MONG the aborigines of Formosa will be found individuals who plume themselves on their success as story-tellers. When the weary hunters, after satisfying appetites whetted by an arduous chase, stretch their limbs under the shadow of the trees, on the borders of some grassy glade, some member of the party is sure to seize the opportunity to draw on an inexhaustible repertory; while even those who at other times might consider story-telling an infliction become now pleased listeners,