Page:Transactions of the Second International Folk-Congress.djvu/141

 THE HISTORICAL ASPECT OF FOLK-LORE.

By DAVID MacRITCHIE.

Although what is known as folk-lore, or popular belief, has been regarded from various points of view, from which it has been studied by many very eminent students, the importance of that phase of it which may be described as "traditional history" does not appear to me to have yet received due recognition. For, of course, folk-lore, in one of its aspects, is history; and, conversely, every account professing to be historical, but not written immediately after the occurrence of the events chronicled, is, in a measure, folk-lore. Such accounts as those of the Gaelic "seannachies", which have been transmitted from father to son for many generations, but only recently committed to paper, are both unquestionably folk-lore, and at the same time, though with less certainty, history. And the same may be said of many other professedly historical works.

Now, the important point is. How much of this "traditional history" is reliable? How far does the popular memory go back, with precision? That it may be trusted, within certain limits, is undeniable. For example, there may be men yet living in the neighbourhood of Waterloo who remember the great battle of 1815. Moreover, they may remember this or that detail of the fight that has never yet been placed on record. The right of such men to be regarded as actual historians, so long as they retain their faculties, cannot be disputed. What they relate is equally folk-lore and history. And the story related by them is also history, although it may be re-told by their sons or their grandsons. I have recently read of a Suffolk labourer who died in the year 1853, almost a centenarian, and who was once asked by the clergyman of his parish, "What is the earliest thing you can remember to have heard of?" "When I was a big bor," he answered, "I've heard my grandfather say he could remember the Dutch king comin' over." And, adds the narrator, by the register's