by devils, or lakes formed by floods are so connected. And the same remark applies to a great many bogy-stories and ghost-stories, in which the locality is not the leading feature. Of course, cross-references would be necessary, both here and in numberless other cases.
Group II. Traditional Customs.—Mr. Gomme's remarks on this group are most interesting and valuable. In advertising phrase, "they supply a want long felt." I am particularly pleased to see the place he assigns to Games, as a species of Custom, and a very important and difficult species too.
Group III. Superstition and Belief.—In this group Class c (Superstitious Practices and Fancies) seems to me too extensive. It would overbalance all the others. I see Mr. Gomme includes "practices and fancies " connected with fairies, &c., under this head, and of course rightly; but has he considered that this would open the door to a vast number of stories[1] for which I can find no good place in Group I.? You can hardly call a story containing only a single incident, such as tat of the pixy who would not work when he had new clothes, a "folk-tale," and place it with, for instance, the history of the girl who had three impossible tasks to perform. Nor are such anecdotes exactly place-legends, in the same way as the stories which tell of the origin of lakes, or mountains, or ruined castles. These are legends of the past, of what happened "in 'ears back," as the Shropshire folk say. Now the fairy and bogy stories tell of the doings of beings superstitiously believed in, either by the tale-tellers or their fathers, as creatures having a contemporary existence with themselves, and thus they properly come under the head of Superstition and Belief.
I should re-name and re-arrange the group thus:
Group II. (not III.) Superstitious Belief and Practice.
- Class a. Goblindom;
- Class b. Witchcraft;
- Class c. Astrology;
- Class d. Superstitions connected with material things.
Some will object to the combination of belief and practice (= folk--
- ↑ Just as "witchcraft" would contain anecdotes of witches.
