begin or end, there are ceremonies or rites to be observed just before or at the beginning of the operations, others may take place during their continuance, more especially in horticulture or agriculture, finally, others occur at their termination. Observances of this kind are usually regarded as being as necessary and practical as the technical operations themselves. Most frequently they are connected with tillage of the soil, but the opening of a fishing or hunting season is often ushered in with analogous observances, and the ripening of wild fruit may be the occasion for rites which we loosely term as magical.
What is so evident in the customs of savage and barbaric peoples must have held good for the ancestors of civilised peoples, and therefore they should be sought for among the lore of the folk. We may anticipate that many suggestive conclusions will be reached when various scattered items of folklore are grouped in chronological order, and it may be found that there is an unexpected connection between various apparently unrelated items of folklore, even in those in which periodicity is not now an essential feature. Our ultimate aim is not merely to reconstruct a ceremony or rite, but to establish it and all that is related to it in a culture complex and thus demonstrate its significance. After I had written this, I find, as so often has been the case, that Sir Laurence Gomme had previously expressed the idea that was in my mind. He says, “In India primitive economics and religion go hand in hand as part of the village life of the people; in England primitive economics and survivals of old religions, which we call folklore, go hand in hand as part of the village life of the people. And it is not in the province of students to separate one from the other when they are considering the question of origin.”[1]
It is not only rites that are seasonal, games and toys may be equally so, as also costumes and other aspects of
- ↑ Folklore as an Historical Science, p. 360.
