Folklorist

“ It is, in short, the neglect of this among other historical facts which has led the folklorist into error of a somewhat magnificent kind. He attempts to create out of the myths of a people a mythology which provides gods to be worshipped, faiths to be organised, and beliefs to be the standards of life and conduct. ”

“ Matthews remarks, would at least dispel any lingering belief in the old saying that there are only thirty-eight good stories in existence and that thirty-seven of these cannot be told before ladies; and the Retrospective Section would certainly be the constant resort of any true folklorist. For most of the good stories of our time are really folklore, myth survivals, echoes of the past. ”

“ The philosophy of folklore has taken up almost all the time of our scholars and students, and the contribution it makes to the history of the civilised races has not been made out by folklorists themselves. ”

“ There is no fixed time for the record. It is sometimes quite early, as, for instance, the examples which come to us from historians; it is generally quite late, namely, the great mass of examples which, during the past century or so, have been collected directly from the lips or observances of the people, sometimes by the curious traveller or antiquary, lately by the professed folklorist.
The consideration of the relationship of history and folklore has cleared the ground for definitions and method. ”

“ Meanwhile, whether future folklorists are likely to arise out of present "primitives" or not, the bare notion of such a possibility will serve to illustrate our own position in regard to folklore research. We are ex-savages with customs bearing visible traces of our ancient condition; and, further, being indigenous to the culture-area that we study, we are sympathetically aware how the drift on the surface answers to deep-moving currents in the social life. ”

“ Accordingly, in my reading I have been especially desirous of broadening the field of investigation. Certain works introduce the reader to a new world of narrative interest and to a large number of new motifs. Such have been very valuable for my purpose. And the investigations of other folklorists who from their wide reading have brought together lists of versions of tales have also served to increase the scope of the classification.
Some indication of the works from which the largest number of motifs have been gathered may be of interest:
Folktale and Myth. ”

“ But if the study of folklore has its starting-point in this age, the vestiges of which remain not only in the people but in all classes—just as vestiges of childhood remain during the whole life, both in the adult and in the old man — the study of folk-lore should include that of the people during the whole of its life as well in the actual exercise of its mental faculties, and in its practices and customs of to-day, as in the evidences which it preserves, by its customs and by oral tradition, of its anterior exercise of them, and of its past life. ”

“ Considered scientifically, folklore belongs to science and not to the humanities. When folk and fun are not scienced out of it, it is song and story and in literature is mingled with other ingredients of life and art, as exampled by the folklore in Hamlet and A Midsummer Night's Dream. In "Indian Culture," "Spanish-Mexican Strains," "Backwoods Life and Humor," "Cowboy Songs," "The Bad Man Tradition," "Bears," "Coyotes," "Negro Folk Songs and Tales," and other chapters of this Guide numerous books charged with folklore have been listed. ”

“ Thus, almost everybody is interested in folklore, especially in the animal stories which are part of the tradition of every primitive tribe; but folklore, as commonly written, is not a branch of fiction but of science. Before it can enter the golden door of literature it must find or create some human character who interests us not by his stories but by his humanity ”

“ The term folklore, in fact, was confined to scraps of tradition; and anything like the conception of it we now hold was unknown. The Handbook of Folklore, issued by the Society in 1890, marks a long step in advance; and nine or ten years' subsequent experience has taken us beyond even that. Some people are said to prefer being in a minority. If there are such people, I am not one of them. ”

“ I need not further labour the point of the essential solidarity of folklore, whether of its component elements,—belief, custom, and story,—or of its two great phases, savage and civilized. But I think you will feel with me that it is an important point, because the way we regard the subject must affect our method of studying it. If we regard folklore not as a miscellaneous collection of items to be put together like a jig-saw puzzle, but as a whole to be examined and analysed, we shall approach it differently. ”

“ Thus the student of folklore soon finds that he must enlarge his field, and examine, not only popular European story and practice, but savage ways and ideas, and the myths and usages of the educated classes in civilised races. In this extended sense the term ‘folklore’ will frequently be used in the following essays. The idea of the writer is that mythology cannot fruitfully be studied apart from folklore, while some knowledge of anthropology is required in both sciences. ”

“ Added to these are his pamphlets in the series of Popular Studies in Mythology, Romance and Folk-lore, which are designed to make clear to the "man in the street" the significance of folklore as embodying, in far greater degree than that simple term implies, the serious beliefs of the past, and the rites and customs which are their outward and visible signs. ”

“ Whether the idea of survival necessarily belongs to the conception of folklore used in its widest significance is a question that need not be discussed here; in connection with a community like the British, the more advanced members of which have entirely or almost entirely outgrown the philosophical and artistic ideas embodied in folklore, survival must be regarded as the dominant and characteristic note of the latter. Folklore, then, I treat this evening as a survival of elements of culture. ”

“ In recommending the utilization of folklore for filling in the details of the historic culture record, the President not only recalls us to a too-much-forgotten part of our work, but points out the way to enlist the support of many local antiquarianminded people who have little taste for either pre-history or for savage anthropology. ”

“ Properly speaking, folklore is only concerned with the legends, customs, beliefs, of the Folk, of the people, of the classes which have least been altered by education, which have shared least in progress. But the student of folklore soon finds that these unprogressive classes retain many of the beliefs and ways of savages, just as the Hebridean people used spindle-whorls of stone, and bake clay pots without the aid of the wheel, like modern South Sea Islanders, or like their own prehistoric ancestors. ”

“ Happily the quality of the materials thus brought together has also improved, though we still have only too much cause to harden our hearts, if not to roughen our tongues, against that impertinent person the writer of scraps, the man of scissors and paste, for whom any piece of gossip, or any apocryphal story tricked out with what he may be pleased to call graces of style or local colour, is folklore. ”

“ The choice of more than ninety per cent proved to be either folklore stories, pure and simple, or such tales as contained the folklore element. To be sure, children like other stories, but they respond at once with sparkling eyes and animated voices when the fairy tale is suggested. How unwise, therefore, it is to neglect this powerful stimulus which lies ready at our hands! ”

“ I must at the outset state that the sense which I attach to the term folklore in the present connection is that of elements of culture surviving among the less advanced sections of the community, but discarded by the more advanced. ”

“ It is only here that we can discover the point where we may properly commence the work of comparative folklore. An item of folklore which stands isolated is practically of no use for scientific investigation. It may be, as we have seen, that the myth is in its primary stage as a sacred belief among primitive people, in its secondary or folk-tale stage as a sacred memory of what was once believed, in its final or legendary stage when it does duty in preserving the memory of a hero or a place of abiding interest. ”

“ In proverbs and riddles, and nursery tales and superstitions, we detect the relics of a stage of thought, which is dying out in Europe, but which still exists in many parts of the world. Now, just as the flint arrow-heads are scattered everywhere, in all the continents and isles, and everywhere are much alike, and bear no very definite marks of the special influence of race, so it is with the habits and legends investigated by the student of folklore. ”

“ Before the material of which folklore consists can be considered by the light of method, we must get rid of definitions which are often applied to folklore in its attributed sense. Folk-tales are not fiction or art, were not invented for amusement, are not myth in the sense of being imaginative only. [182] Customs and superstitions are not the result of ignorance [Pg 124] and stupidity. These attributes are true only if folk-tales, customs, and superstitions are compared with the literary productions and with the science and the culture of advanced civilisation ”

“ By such slow aggregation has mythology grown from the first. The very nursery tales of this generation, were the nursery tales of primeval races. They migrate from east to west, and again from to west to east; now expanded into the 'tale divine' of bards, now shrunk into a popular rhyme. This is an approach to that universal language which men have sought in vain. This fond reiteration of the oldest expressions of truth by the latest posterity, content with slightly and religiously re-touching the old material, is the most impressive proof of a common humanity. ”

“ In dealing with the folklore of any country, it is important to note the general bearing of anthropological conditions. The earliest inhabitants, to whom part of the folklore belonged, and the later peoples, to whom part belonged, have both arrived at their ultimate point of settlement in the country where we discover their folklore after being in touch with many points of the world's surface. They are both world-people as well as national people—they belonged to anthropology before they came under the dominion of history. ”

“ The opponents of this school, however, impressed by the fact that the essential characteristics of the folksong—its freshness, spontaneity, naturalness, and unconventionality—are the very qualities which are conspicuously absent from the popular song-music of the past, maintain that folksongs are the products not of the individual, but of a people or community, and that we are indebted to the process of oral tradition not merely for preserving them, but for moulding, developing, and, in a sense, creating them as well. ”

“ The motto of folklore as of fashion in dress is, Never say die!
Does the transvaluation of culture, then, supply the formula we want? I suggest that it will be found adequate. For it certainly conforms to the two criteria already laid down. Firstly, it is dynamic, connoting a process to be examined. Secondly, it has not the unilinear sense of such a term as degeneration, or even, if taken strictly, the "blessed word" evolution, but indicates process without limiting it to a single direction. ”

“ The next stage takes us to a consideration of materials and methods, in order to show the means and definitions which are necessary if folklore research is to be conducted on scientific lines. Not only is it necessary to ascertain the proper position of each item of folklore in the culture area in which it is found, but it is also necessary to ascertain its scientific relationship to other items found in the same area; and I have protested against the too easy attempt to proceed upon the comparative method. Before we can compare we must be certain that we are comparing like quantities. ”

“ Of the value of folk-lore and folk-tale as witnesses in the case of a group of stories based largely upon popular tradition, and in their earlier stages of evolution the property of popular story-tellers, we are only slowly becoming aware. ”

“ With each passing year the need of a comprehensive classification of the materials in all kinds of traditional narrative becomes more apparent. Our great libraries of folklore, enriched by the ceaseless activity of field workers and scholars, grow daily more difficult to explore. Tales, ballads, myths, and traditions have poured in from all parts of the earth, both civilized and uncivilized, so that no man, however great his industry and skill in languages, can read the thousands of volumes in a lifetime. ”

“ No student can attack so immense a subject without the aid of such necessary machinery, and it is because the attempt has been so often made ill-equipped in this respect, that the science of folklore has suffered so much and has remained so long unrecognised. Already, in dealing with the relationship of history and folklore, one or two necessary distinctions in terms have been anticipated. We have discovered that the impersonal folk-tale is distinguished in a fundamental manner from the personal or local legend, and that the growth of mythology is a later process than the growth of myth. ”

“ The differing races which made up the peoples of Europe before the era of political history must have left their distinctive remains in folklore, if folklore is rightly considered as the traditional survivals of the prehistory period. To get at and classify these remains we must be clear as to the problems which surround inquiry into them. The solution of these problems will place us in possession of a mass of survivals in folklore which are naturally associated with each other, and which stand apart from other survivals also naturally associated with each other. ”