The principal questions which engage our attention are necessarily: in how far has this or any such letter contributed to enrich the stock of popular knowledge and belief? and inversely, how much in it is due to such belief? When we are asked to look upon every item found among the unlettered as a remnant of an old state of mind, independent of, and in some points contrary to, the modern state of the church and of what we call civilisation, it behoves us to make it perfectly clear that no other influences have been at work, and that it cannot be traced to more recent sources of tradition, either by word of mouth or by written literature (which last merely facilitates the spread of the elements of knowledge). One of the greatest delusions, to my mind, is the belief that any nation, nay, any hamlet, has ever lived in absolute isolation from the rest of the world. No such thing has existed, at least in Europe; and I am inclined to extend the possibilities of intercommunication also to other nations and countries. Each kingdom in the East has had a period of great culture and of powerful intercourse between one part of it and another. Whoever has studied, even cursorily, the wayfaring life of the Middle Ages, and the manifold means of carrying tales and news from one place to the other, will not, and in fact cannot, entertain for one moment the theory of isolation. And where is the influence of the Church? and of the Christian apocryphal literature, which is so full of legendary and miraculous matter, and so well fitted to win the heart of the hearer? All these sources of popular inspiration must first be laid bare, their influence examined, their changes followed up, and their multifarious combinations described, ere we are in a position to pronounce any specified element in folklore to be an old tradition derived from pre-scientific times, a "relic of an unrecorded past." In this process of sifting, time and patience are required, and however slow the process may be, it is, at any rate, sure and safe. How much can we not learn from studying our own life, our daily experience, especially
