Page:The International Folk-Lore Congress of the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, July, 1893.djvu/409

 VENEZUELAN FOLK-LORE.

BY DR. TEOFILO RODRIGUEZ.

Members of the International Folk-Lore Congress:

grateful for the distinction with which I have spontaneously been the object, on the part of the honorable associates who have planned and organized this wise assembly, I have not hesitated to attempt to respond, as well as the brief time and my lack of skill permit, to the honor which has been bestowed upon me. But far be it from me. Gentlemen, to wish to offer in this work, whose execution requires conciseness and brevity, a complete collection of those beliefs which, now original in the land, now imported from others in remote or recent epochs, constitute Venezuelan Folk-Lore. This vast undertaking would require, as you so well comprehend, greater efforts and still greater time. I must limit myself, then, to citing the principal works which have been published in Venezuela upon this branch of literature, so much cultivated and so far advanced now in the old Continent; and keeping in mind the motto of this Congress, "Men, not things," to enumerate the writers who, now moved by especial inclination, now incited by the stimulus of their erudition, have contributed to give an idea of the legendary tales, superstitions, and traditions which prevail among our people, which, according to the technology of modern science, constitutes Folk-lore.

"The "Tradiciones Populares-coleccion de cronicas y legendas narrandas por varios escritorios nacionales" was published in Carácas in the year 1885, by Dr. Teofilo Rodriguez, a member of the National Academy of History and of various foreign scientific bodies. The said collection forms a large volume of 353 pages, in royal 8vo, and is divided into two parts, of which the first consists of the Introduction,

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