courage to attempt this almost impossible task; and in this important book we find—what he has taught us to expect from him—literary grace, erudition, and wealth of illustrative matter.
When I had the pleasure of joining this Society about the end of 1889, English folklorists were interested in the general problems of folklore, and also, as they always are, in its details. This interest in general problems gave rise to repeated discussions, which after a time ran their course and have not been resuscitated by folklorists, though the theories then discussed have in recent years occupied the attention of students in other departments of ethnology. I propose to dwell for a short time on these discussions, as they illustrate an episode in the history of science that is constantly recurring. In the following account I give as fairly and succinctly as I can the views of certain well-known students; whether they represent the views subsequently held by them does not concern us, as we are now dealing with a definite historical phase.
Ten years previously Sir Laurence Gomme stated that “The Folk-Lore survivals of civilisation, and the Folk-Lore status of savage tribes, both belong to the primitive history of mankind.”[1]His main work, from our point of view, was the historical, sociological, and ethnological interpretation of folklore, and especially did he recognise the great importance of method, and he did his best to raise folklore to a scientific status. At the time at which we are now concerned he told us, “It is a gain to science that it has at last been recognised that we cannot penetrate far back into man’s history without appealing to more than one element in that history. Some day it will be recognised that we must appeal to all elements in that history.”[2] Thirty years later he wrote, “Not only is it necessary to ascertain the proper position of each item of folklore in the
- ↑ “First Ann. Rep.” 1879, p. 4, Folk-Lore Record, ii. 1879.
- ↑ Folk- Lore, ii. 1891, p. 3.
