Tales, Boggart Ho' Clough under Goblindom, Moot Hill under Local Customs, and so on. Then other writers who might wish to make an exhaustive treatise on Boggarts or on Customs would find all they wanted in one place, instead of having to hunt through lists of names to see if there might chance to be anything there suited to their purpose. In the same way, many popular rhymes would have to be inserted in previous sections—as the common magpie rhyme under Superstitions (concerning Birds).
If it is wished to keep up the symmetrical division of four classes in each group, I would let Group IV. Folk-sayings,[1] stand as follows (placing the Jingles first, as the last class was that of Games, including Singing Games):—
- Class a, Jingles, Nursery Rhymes, Riddles, &c.
- Class b, Proverbs;
- Class c, Old Saws, rhymed and unrhymed;[2]
- Class d, Nicknames, Place-Rhymes and Sayings, Folk-Etymology.
This last class would replace Mr. Gomme's "Popular Nomenclature." I think name-stories (folk-etymology) would come in better here than with Place-legends, because it is as a branch of word-lore,—for the name, not the j}lace that they are interesting. And any one who chooses may imagine the "folk," when engaged in their festival customs, as playing traditional games, bandying proverbs, riddles, and old stories; and so may lead round again to the beginning, and to the folk-tales and ballads which would most surely be heard at any "folk-mote" wheresoever assembled. The study of folk-lore is not an "exact science," and cannot be divided and kept apart by hard and fast lines. Every subject with which it deals grows out of some other subject, and runs into something else. What we should aim at is to range all these different subjects in proper order, so as to bring out their true relation to each other, and to present our new science to the world as a harmonious and homogeneous
- ↑ Folk-wit is a delightful compound, but I think too indefinite for the name of a group. Wit enters into the composition of so many things—songs, games, tales, &c.
- ↑ Viz., popular sayings not, strictly speaking, proverbs; such as traditional agricultural maxims, weather-sayings based on experience, not on superstitious fancy, &c. Folk-wisdom in short!
