Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 5 1887.djvu/71

 Rh of interest, and that things already recorded are yet worth noting when a definite, and possibly a hitherto-unnoticed, locale can be assigned to them.

Perhaps it might help to remove the evident uncertainty as to what is wanted if particular points on which further information is desirable were from time to time specified by authority in the Journal, and members were requested to state the custom or belief of their own neighbourhood as to the matter in question in the next Quarterly Part. This would be something definite, and would undoubtedly meet with a certain amount of response.

Another thing that strikes one every day is the extraordinary ignorance of even otherwise well-educated people, first, of the nature of folk-lore, and secondly, of the existence of the Folk-Lore Society. For myself, I think I have only met with one person who had heard of the latter before I mentioned it, and he thought its object was the study of dialects! This general ignorance will have to be removed before any really substantial progress can be made in collecting. For there is one noteworthy point about the study of folk-lore, in which it differs from all other branches of learning except the study of dialects, viz. that it cannot be pursued by the savants without the aid of the comparatively unlearned—those who mingle familiarly with the folk, who go in and out among them, know their ways, their ideas, and their modes of thought; nay, who in many cases have themselves been brought up in an atmosphere of old-world manners and customs, very far removed from that of modern English life. These are the people who must be enlisted in the cause and incited to bring grist to the mills of the scientific folk-lorists: the point to be considered is, how best to get hold of them.

In the first place, the admirable prospectus of the Society should be widely distributed, by which I do not mean that it should be sent to all-and-sundry in a halfpenny wrapper, to meet with immediate "happy despatch" in the waste-paper basket; but that every individual member should exert himself or herself to put two or three copies of it into the hands of intelligent friends.

In the second place we ought to gain the attention of the newspapers. What the Psychical Society can do, surely the Folk-Lore