Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/319

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THE COLLECTION OF ENGLISH FOLK-LORE.


SO much has of late been said, and done, and projected, in the matter of the systematic study and scientific arrangement of the folk-lore already recorded, that there seems to be some little danger lest an impression should gain ground that the day of collecting folk-lore is over, and the day of counting the gains has come. I speak more particularly of England. Savage folk-lore still comes pouring in from all quarters, but new collections of English folk-lore are comparatively rare. That this is not from lack of material, recent “finds” give sufficient evidence. Within the last three years we have had the discovery of a hitherto unnoticed instrument of sorcery—the Witches’ Ladder—in Somersetshire, of several variants of a curious and obscure rhyming formula collected and published in Longman’s Magazine by our President, and of at least four folk-tales viz.: “Cap o’ Rushes” and “Tom-Tit-Tot”, from Suffolk; “Coat o’ Clay”, a noodle story from Lincolnshire; and “The Golden Ball” (a romantic story, for which Mr. Nutt inquired in the Folk-Lore Journal in 1888, p. 144, and of which I have obtained fragmentary versions from Lancashire, Staffordshire, and Shropshire), appears in a complete form (so I am told) in the Gentleman’s Magazine for January last—as related to the Rev. S. Baring-Gould by some Yorkshire “mill-lasses”.[1] These examples are surely enough to prove that the day of collecting English folk-lore is not yet over.

But the need for more collection would still be urgent even if no absolutely novel items should remain to be

  1. Originally given at end of the first edition of Henderson.