Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 3 1885.djvu/21

was unattainable from any other study. We are only just beginning to study folk-lore scientifically, and hence have not obtained many important results from it. In claiming for folk-lore the position and functions of a science we pass at once from a study of fragmentary scraps of curious facts and fictions to a definite and distinct study, which has problems of its own to work out and conclusions of its own to demonstrate. This is, of course, the difference between a mere literary or antiquarian curiosity and a historical science. So long as folk-lore has been considered as a mere collection of curious items of popular customs and traditions there have been no attempts to draw from it any conclusions to illustrate the life of man. Some of its items have occasionally been used by the anthropologist, by the philologist, the comparative mythologist, and the historian. Mr. E. B. Tylor has in many instances proved how folk-lore lends its aid to working out some of the problems in the early history of man. Both Professor Max Müller and Professor Sayce have invaded the territories of folk-lore and captured some important treasures therefrom for the elucidation of some of the problems of comparative mythology and philology. Dr. Hearn, in his researches into the Aryan Household, appeals again and again to folk-lore for facts that he cannot obtain from history, from philosophy, or from any material source. Even geology, under the able guidance of Mr. Boyd Dawkins, claims the assistance of folk-lore in working out the history of Early Man in Britain; and lastly Mr. Elton, in tracing out the origins of English history, has stepped occasionally into the domains of folk-lore and worked out interesting and valuable problems by its aid. These are some out of many examples of the accidental uses to which folk-lore has been put. History, mythology and anthropology have used fragmentary portions of it for the elucidation of their own problems; and the result, as in the case of mythology, which we have already shown, is far from satisfactory. Folk-lore, considered as an accidental appendage to other sciences, can never be anything more than a kind of haphazard study: every conclusion drawn from its facts will be biassed by the science to which for the nonce it is attached; every deduction will lead in different directions; and, instead of getting a group of facts capable of contributing new phases of knowledge, we