Portal:The Folk-Lore Society

“ Science is not an inscription on a tombstone. To collect the remnants of the past in order to enshrine them in some beautifully adorned cases would be to miss entirely the aim and object of true study and scientific investigation. The real aim, on the contrary, must be to make the past a stepping-stone to the future, a mirror which is held up to us in which to see the virtues and the vices, the greatness and the smallness, the attempts and the failures, so as to shun the one and follow the other. The science of Folklore does not fall short of this expectation. ”

“ It is the privilege of English literature to enshrine utterances of countless races of men which otherwise must wholly perish, to make them part of the world's thought and fancy. This privilege is, I think, most likely to be realised by the folklorist, who, if he have really penetrated to the inmost sanctum of our study, will have learned to grasp the manifold links that bind us to the remotest past, to sympathise with the rudest and most infantile manifestations of human energy, and to recognise in the formless germ the source of what may be mightiest and most beautiful in human effort. ”

“ Bunting is bunting, but the flag is a nation's pride and hope. But associations are of slow growth. The symbols of a people cannot be replaced suddenly, any more than stately trees can be replaced by saplings. Indeed, wholesale deforestation may be the prelude to utter ruin of the land. Thus in the garden of literature it is well to deal tenderly with venerable timber, though it stand, not in tidy rows, but wherever nature planted it. Even so, then, let us be tender with the old themes embodied in our national folklore. ”

“ I believe that the fairy creed, this ancient source of inspiration, of symbolic interpretation of man's relation to nature, is not yet dried up, and that English literature, with its mixed strain of Teutonic and Celtic blood, with its share in the mythologies of both these races, and in especial with its claim to the sole body of mythology and romance, the Celtic, which grew up wholly unaffected by classic culture, is destined to drink deeply of it in the future as in the past, and to find in it the material for new creations of undying beauty. ”

“ There can be no doubt that much of the popular literature of to-day—in the widest sense of the word—was the literature of the upper classes of the preceding centuries, remodelled by the people in accordance with the innate instincts and dispositions of each nation. The elements surging up from the depth of antiquity meet newer elements coming down from above, and so shape and mould popular taste and popular feeling. They are the food for the hungry soul of the masses, eager to raise itself from the lower level of ignorance to a higher poetical contemplation. ”

“ Is it too much to say that the coal, which is nothing but a kind of temporary transformation of the forests of old, has retained under its black cover all the beauty of the forests, of their flowers and of their bloom, and now, when it has passed through the fire retort, and has been condensed in the black tar, the colours of ancient times come again to light? This is absolutely typical of Folklore and of our Society. ”

“ And when the wolf saw them rushing into each other's impious embraces he blazed forth with fury, his eyes reddening, and the hair on his neck standing up, and he began to make as though he would attack them, but was held back by the chain by which he was fastened. And when he saw they had no intention of desisting from the iniquity on which they had embarked, he gnashed his teeth, and dug up the ground with his paws, and venting his rage over all his body, with awful howls he stretched the chain with such violence that it snapped in two. ”

“ Men creep up the staircase, carrying trumpets and conch-shells, and when all are ready blow a mighty blast in unison. Others bang the doors and rattle its massive chains, shouting to the god to bestir himself. But, at best, this is an unsatisfactory way of bringing the god to life, as distasteful to the victim as to his worshippers. The god dislikes having his privacy disturbed by an unseemly din outside his chamber; he prefers to wake as the pure snow strikes his face, cold and rude though the awakening be. ”

“ This order of characteristics is, I make little doubt, what would occur to most well-read Englishmen, and denotes what impressed the fancy of Shakespeare's contemporaries and of the afterworld. The fairy community with its quaintly fantastic parody of human circumstance; the minute size and extreme swiftness of the fairies, which insensibly assimilate them in our mind to the winged insect world—these traits would strike us at first blush; only on second thoughts should we note their share in the life of nature, should we recall their sway over its benign and malign manifestations. ”

“ Hast thou created me to die of hunger?" Jochanan said: "God has not created thee to die through hunger, for his mercies extend to all his creatures. Take one of these loaves which I have, and eat." It did so, and said: "May God deliver thee from all manner of troubles which are about to befall thee. May he grant me, that I be able to reward thee as a return for the food which I eat, as a return for this kindness which thou hast done to me." Jochanan went further, and came upon an immense raven, the like of which he had never seen. ”

“ The poor mother began to tremble at hearing these words. "My son," she cried, "who has put this extravagant idea into your head? Your father never stirred from his home, and he has been the glory of his race. Where will you find a yard like the one you have? Where will you find a more magnificent dunghill, more nourishing and abundant food, a more sheltered hen-yard to walk about in, or a family that would love you more?"
"Nego" said Medio-pollito in Latin, for he plumed himself on his learning, "my brothers and cousins are ignorant bumpkins." ”

“ Only the study of the facts of human history can reveal how far material prosperity and righteousness go together; and these facts do not on the face of them tell a plain tale. It was no less a historian than Gibbon who returned the dubious verdict: "Every age of the world has increased, and still increases, the real wealth, the happiness, the knowledge, and perhaps the virtue, of the human race." ”

“ Yet if we turn back to the poet of the Midsummer Night's Dream we can detect in his picture all the essentials of the fairy creed as it has appealed, and still appeals, to the faith and fancy of generations more countless than ever acknowledged the sway of any of the great world-religions, we can recover from it the elements of a conception of life and nature older than the most ancient recorded utterance of earth's most ancient races. ”

“ The lad, then entering before the king, made obeisance to him, and said: "Long live the king! behold I am a young man in years, while all thy wise men are old; but God has given me knowledge and understanding to tell the king what he has buried in his heart; but it is not from me, but from God, who has revealed his secret to his servant. Now, my lord, O king, thou hast promised to give thy daughter and one half of thy kingdom to him who shall be able to tell thee, and all thy kingdom after thou hast departed this life." ”

“ We first meet the mediaeval fairy in works of the Arthur cycle; as ladies of the lake and fountain, as dwellers in the far-off island paradise of Avalon, as mistresses of or captives in mysterious castles, the enchantments of which may be raised by the dauntless knight whose guerdon is their love and never-ending bliss, these fantastic beings play a most important part in the world of dream and magic haze peopled by Arthur and his knights and their lady loves. If an instance be needed how vital is the connection between Arthur and Faery, it is furnished by the romance of Huon of Bordeaux. ”

“ The nation can afford to recapture something of its primitive innocence. Two-thirds of education, it is said, are completed in the nursery. So let a nursery of the mind be created for the people out of the aesthetic tradition of the folk, which can be so readapted that all, whether hand-workers or brain-workers, may find nurture therein, as children are taught by playing.
Now our educational experts tell us that more science is the need of the time. It may be so; but more science must not mean less literature. Physical science by itself would but make us the slaves of a world-machine. ”

“ However far we pursue it, the steadfast illusion keeps its distance, while shifting sands are about our feet as before. There never was a time, in short, when the interplay of old and new did not go on, exactly as it does now—when survival and revival, degeneration and regeneration, were not pulsating together in the rhythm of the social life. It is at least as necessary to read the present into the past as the past into the present. Let it, then, be an article of our creed to recognize the immanence of folklore. ”

“ Individuals or whole layers of society represent often at the same time a higher and a lower, a more refined and a more primitive stage of development. We are thus made aware of the strange complexity of human life, of the many strands that are woven into one cord, and of the many cords that cross and recross in our composite being, and still above it all there is, as it were, one and the same spiritual power moulding it all together and setting in motion aims and aspirations which tend in the same direction and create harmony out of discordant elements. ”

“ Whoso is familiar with Arthurian romance detects at once an underlying similarity of conception, plot, and incident. In both, specially, does the woman of the immortal race stand before us in clearer outline and more vivid colouring than the man. Nor is the reason far to seek: the mortal hero is the centre of attraction; the love of the fairy maiden who comes from her wonderland of eternal joys lured by his fame is the most striking token and the highest guerdon of his prowess. ”

“ We are collecting these tales and superstitions, these customs and habits, entombed in the minds of the vast masses, and, considered as black coal, we subject them to the fiery process of scientific investigation, and we are crystallising out of that mass again the primary elements of those poetical flowers and of that ancient knowledge which has permeated the world, and the fragrance of which is keeping the human soul fresh whenever it is wafted upon it. ”

“ Men will come out of this struggle for liberty either less equal or more equal than before. If the cause of equality succeed—if the philosophy, or rather the religion, of the future be that men, though undoubtedly unequal on a mechanical and functional view of society, are nevertheless equal in a spiritual and vital sense—then we may expect the gradual correction of that disparity of social level that hitherto has confined the folk within a narrow world of their own. ”

“ Poisoning and healing have no element in common: neither have magic and religion. The intention and the spirit make the difference, the world of difference, between them—a difference as patent to the most primitive of peoples as it is to us. That the drug is obtained and administered in much the same way by poisoner and physician does not diminish the fundamental difference—the difference of purpose and intention—between the two. Between the murderer and the physician there is a difference. ”

“ Now, I wish to take a woman to wife, for the law of the kingdom forbids a king to remain unmarried and without children. Therefore go and bring this very woman to whom this hair, which a raven brought to me, belongs; for I know that this hair belongs to a woman. Her I desire." Jochanan replied: "There is not a king, prince, governor, or ruler, who has ever made such a request as thou hast made, to seek a woman to whom the hair which thou hast in thy hand belongs." ”

“ In the north-west alone, in these islands that is, were they able to maintain and develop their institutions, their speech, and their literature, free, or almost free, from the all-dominating influence of Rome.
The very fact that they could advance no further, that before them lay the boundless, trackless sea, that they were compelled to halt, and, as it were, to stereotype their culture, whatever lowering influence it may be held to have had upon the vital energy of the race, had at least this advantage, to preserve for us stages of custom and fancy which otherwise would have passed away. ”

“ These legends and customs may have been invented only in one place, but they have been disseminated throughout the world. The equality in mental disposition made it easy for other nations to appreciate the new-comers, and to adopt and adapt them, and then so to transform them that they become bone of their bone, flesh of their flesh.
Happily for mankind the spirit knows no boundaries. It recognises no barriers to its flight, and has no specific home of its own. It lives in the heart and mind of man. The spiritual achievements of one nation soon become the spiritual property of another nation. ”

“ Now in the true ideal of imperialism, the only one which the scholar and the honest man would care to strive for, there are elements which can be apprehended rightly and vindicated by the folklorist alone. We claim already for our study that it enables us to reconstitute the early babblings of humanity; is it belittling it to point out that by its aid we may discern the true and permanent value of phases of thought, fancy, and character which are essential to the full development of humanity, but to which the study of civilised man alone may render us blind or indifferent? ”