Materials and Methods

Chapter II

The materials of folklore consist of traditional tales (so called) and traditional customs and superstitions (so called), the feature of both groups being that at the time of first being recorded and reduced to writing they existed only by the force of tradition. 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. 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. Customs and superstitions are not the result of ignorance 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; and this comparison is exactly that which should never be undertaken, though unfortunately it is that which is most generally adopted. The folk-tale may be lent on occasion to the artist—to Mr. Lang, to Mr. Jacobs, and their many copyists; and these artists may rejoice at the wonderful results of the unconscious art that resides in these products of tradition, but the folk-tale must not be wholly surrendered. It does not belong to them. It does not belong to art at all, but to science. That it is artistic in form is an addition to its characteristics, but has nothing whatever to do with its fundamental features. Similarly with legend. It may be lent to Malory, to Tennyson, to Longfellow, to the literary bards of the romance period, for the purpose of weaving together their story of the wonderful; but it must not be surrendered to the romancist, and, above all things, the romances must never be allowed to enter the domain of folklore. Romances may be stripped of their legends so that the source of legendary material may be fully utilised, but the romances themselves belong to literature, and must remain within their own portals. And so with customs. They may be pleasing and reveal some of the beauties of the older joyousness of life which has passed away, it is to be regretted, from modern civilisation; they may be revived in May-day celebrations, in pageants, in providing our schools with games which tell of the romance of living. But they do not belong to the lover of the beautiful or to the revivalists. Equally with the folk-tale they belong to science. And so also with superstitions. The Psychical Research Society, the spiritualists, the professional successors of the mediæval witch and wizard, may turn their attention to traditional superstitions; but the folklorist refuses to hand them over, and claims them for science.

This use of traditional material for modern purposes is not the only danger to proper definitions. There is also its appearance in the earlier stages of literature. The traditional narrative, the myth, the folk-tale or the legend, is not dependent upon the text in which it appears for the first time. That text, as we have it, was not written down by contemporary or nearly contemporary authority. Before it had become a written document it had lived long as oral tradition. In some cases the written document is itself centuries old, the record of some early chronicler or some early writer who did not make the record for tradition's sake. In other cases the written document is quite modern, the record of a professed lover of tradition. This unequal method of recording tradition is the main source of the difficulty in the way of those who cannot accept tradition as a record of fact. In all cases the test of its value and the interpretation of its testimony are matters which need special study and examination before the exact value of each tradition is capable of being determined. The date when and the circumstances in which a tradition is first reduced to literary form are important factors in the evidence as to the credibility of the particular form in which the tradition is preserved; but they are not all the factors, nor do they of themselves afford better evidence when they are comparatively ancient than forms of much later date and of circumstances far different. It cannot be too often impressed upon the student of tradition that the tradition itself affords the chief if not the only sure evidence of its age, its origin, and its meaning; for the preservation of tradition is due to such varied influences that the mere fact of preservation, or the particular method or date of preservation, cannot be relied upon to give the necessary authority for the authenticity of the tradition. Tradition can never assume the position of written history, because it does not owe its origin, but only its preservation, to writing.

Documentary material is examined as to its palæographical features, as to the testimony afforded by its author or assumed author, as to its credibility in dealing with contemporary events or persons, as to its date, and in other ways according to the nature of the document. Traditional material has nothing to do with all this. It has no palæography; it has no author, and if a personal author is assigned to any given fragment or element it is generally safe to ignore the tradition as the product of a later age; it does not deal with persons nor, as a rule, with specific events; it has no date. It has therefore to undergo a process of its own before it can be accepted as historical evidence, and this process, if somewhat tedious, is all the more necessary because of the tender material of which tradition is composed. This will be made clearer if we understand exactly what the different classes of tradition are and how they stand to each other.

Considering the materials of folklore in their true sense and not their attributed sense then, we may proceed to say something as to methods. Definitions and rules are needed. 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. These distinctions need, however, to be systematised and brought into relationship with other necessary distinctions. The myth and the folk-tale are near relations, but they are not identical, and it is clear that we need to know something more about myth. Because mythic tradition has been found to include many traditions, which of late years have been claimed to belong to a definitely historical race of people, it must not be identified with history. This claim is based upon two facts, the presence of myth in the shape of the folk-tale and the preservation of much mythic tradition beyond the stage of thought to which it properly belongs by becoming attached to an historical event, or series of events, or to an historical personage, and in this way carrying on its life into historic periods and among historic peoples. The first position has resulted in a wholesale appropriation of the folk-tale to the cause of the mythologists; the second position has hitherto resulted either in a disastrous appropriation of the entire tradition to mythology, or in a still more disastrous rejection both of the tradition and the historical event round which it clusters. Historians doubting the myth doubt too the history; mythologists doubting the history reject the myth from all consideration, and in this way much is lost to history which properly belongs to it, and something is lost to myth.

If, therefore, I have hitherto laid undue stress upon the foundation of tradition in the actual facts of life, and upon the close association of tradition with historic fact, it is because this side of the question has been so generally neglected. Everything has been turned on to the mythic side. Folk-tales have been claimed as the exclusive property of the mythologists, and those who have urged their foundation on the facts of real life have scarcely been listened to. There is, however, no ground for the converse process to be advocated. If tradition is not entirely mythology it is certainly not all founded on sociology, and the mythic tradition in the possession of a people advanced in culture has to be considered and accounted for. It is myth in contact with history, and the contact compels consideration of the result.