Folklore as an Historical Science | Page 7

composed.
The school of comparative mythologists did not, however, entirely
control the early progress of the study of folklore. There was always a
school who believed in the foundation of myth being derived from the
facts of life. Thus Dr. Tylor, in a remarkable study of historical
traditions and myths of observation,[9] long ago noted that many of the
traditions current among mankind were historical in origin. Writing
nearly forty years ago, he had to submit to the influence, then at its
height, of Adalbert Kuhn and Max Müller, and he conceded that there
were many traditions which were fictional myths. I think this
concession must now be much more narrowly scrutinised, and
preparation made for the conclusion that every genuine myth is a myth
of observation, the observation by men in a primitive state of culture, of
a fact which had struck home to their minds. The question is, to what
part of human history does the central fact appertain? Here is
undoubtedly a most difficult problem. What the student has to do is to
admit the difficulty, and to state, if necessary, that the fact preserved by
tradition is not in all cases possible to discover with our present
knowledge. This is a perfectly tenable position. Human imagination
cannot invent anything that is outside of fact. It may, and of course too
frequently does, misinterpret facts. In attempting to explain and
account for such facts with insufficient knowledge, it gets far away
from the truth, but this misinterpretation of fact must not be confused
with the fact itself. In a word, it must be borne in mind by the student
of tradition that every tradition which has assumed the form of saga,
myth, or story contains two perfectly independent elements--the fact
upon which it is founded, and the interpretation of the fact which its
founders have attempted.
There is further than this. The other branch of traditional material,
namely that relating to custom, belief, and rite, rests upon a solid basis
of historic fact; customs which are strange and irrational to this age are
not in consequence to be considered the mere worthless following of
practices which owe their origin to accident or freak; beliefs which do
not belong to the established religion are not in consequence to be

considered as mere superstition; rites which were not established by
authority are not in consequence to be classed as mere specimens of
popular ignorance. But the difficulties in the way of getting all this
accepted by the historian are many, and, again, not a few of them are
the creation of the folklorist himself. Not only has he neglected to
classify and arrange the scattered items of custom, belief, and rite, and
to ascertain the degree of association which the scattered items have
with each other, but he has set about the far more difficult and complex
task of comparative study without having previously prepared his
material.
The historian and the folklorist are thus brought face to face with what
is expected from both, in order that each may work alongside of the
other, using each other's materials and conclusions at the right moment
and in the right places. The folklorist has the most to do to get his
results ready, and to explain and secure his position. He has been
wandering about in a somewhat inconsequential fashion, bent upon
finding a mythos where he should have sought for a persona or a locus,
engaged in an extensive quest after parallels when he should have been
preparing his own material for the process of comparative science,
seeking for origins amidst human error when he should have turned to
human experience. He has to change all this waywardness for
systematic study, and this will lead him in the first place to disengage
from the results hitherto obtained those which may be accepted and
which may form the starting-point for future work. But his greatest task
will be the reconsideration of former results and the rewriting of much
that has been written on the wrong lines, and when this is done we shall
have the historian and folklorist meeting together in the spirit which
Edmund Spenser so finely and truly described three centuries ago in his
treatment of Irish history: "I do herein rely upon those bards or Irish
chronicles ... but unto them besides I add mine own reading and out of
them both together with comparison of times likewise of manners and
customs, affinity of words and manner, properties of natures and uses,
resemblances of rites and ceremonies, monuments of churches and
tombs and many other like circumstances I do gather a likelihood of
truth, not certainly affirming anything, but by conferring of times
language monuments and such like I do hunt out a probability of things

which I leave to