PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS.
Method of Investigation and Folklore Origins.
We meet this evening saddened by the loss of a great personality, a scholar, a man of letters, a past President of this Society, a constant and valued contributor to our proceedings, Mr. Andrew Lang. So much has been said in the pages of Folk-Lore and elsewhere regarding his contributions to the literature of Anthropology and Folk-lore, that it is needless to discuss them in detail. Perhaps his most notable achievement was his criticism of the mythological school and his advocacy of anthropological methods in the investigation of popular belief and usage. Though his mind was of the critical rather than of the constructive type, he might have given to science a great book on the social aspects of folk belief and custom if, in the autumn of his life, he had been spared to concentrate his attention upon it. But this was not to be. By his premature death the world of science and literature has lost a scholar and this Society a friend, whose vacant seat at our council board will remind us of the vast knowledge stored within that busy brain, and of the critical powers and delicacy of style with which it was communicated. Mr. E. W. B. Nicholson, Bodley's Librarian, in spite of his devotion to other branches of learning, was able to prove, by his delightful book, Golspie: Contributions to its Folklore, how the services of school children can be utilised in the
