Page:The International Folk-Lore Congress of the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, July, 1893.djvu/37

Rh it is the demonstrator of the possible and probable in history, the repository of historical truths otherwise lost, the preserver of the literature of the people and the touchstone of many of the sciences. History may lie, tradition never does; literature may claim to have found the new thing under the sun, but comparative Folk-Lore detects the analogies to other creations.

After the categories of modern science had been drawn up, and knowledge was parcelled out among them, savants became aware that a certain wide range of facts would not fit into the official pigeon-holes designed for them, and so, a bright precursor of modern Folk-Lorists, Mr. Thoms, suggested the name, Folk-Lore; the study of Folk-wont, Folk-thought, and Folk-speech, the beginnings of history, of laws of religion, of language, and of song. So apt has the term been found, that it has passed bodily into Spanish, French, Italian, Russian, and other languages, the Traditions Populaires and Volkskunde of European nations being national protests against the English name, Folk-Lore. The range of subjects considered is remarkable. The imaginings of man from all time, about the physical world, its history, origin, and destiny, about the animal, mineral, or vegetable kingdom, the air, fog, mist, fire and water, have a place in this study. His views of the supernatural world, the historical legends of places and things, the study of human life, of birth, of death, and of marriage, of customs and ceremonies, of the habits of men of all trades and callings, are appropriately a part of Folk-lore. Folk-medicine, the comparative study of the literature of the people—the tale, the myth, the legend, the ballad, the song, even the nursery-rhyme, the proverb, the riddle, and the nickname, are to be carefully collected, analyzed, and studied. No scrap of information concerning the habits, thoughts, or customs of man, is to be neglected." "It is an extremely dangerous proceeding to suggest that folklore possesses any worthless items," says highest authority.

To these studies, there are devoted many hundreds of people, organized into societies, which have their headquarters in the cities of Chicago, St. Paul, Memphis, Boston, New-York, Philadelphia, New-Orleans, Montreal, London, Paris, Liege, Antwerp, Helsingfors, Berlin, Vienna,