immediately after its institution in September 1890. Full programmes, drawn up by Mr. Edward Clodd and by the editors of the present volume, were submitted to and discussed by the Organising Committee, and were finally embodied in the subjoined report, printed in Folk-Lore of Jan. 1891:—
"That the work of the Congress be divided over the five working-days, Thursday, Oct. i, to Tuesday, Oct. 6, 1891, thus: On Thursday, Oct. i, the Congress to meet in the afternoon to hear the President's Address, and to elect the officers of the Congress, viz., the Presidents of the Sections, the (European) Folk-lore Council, and a Special Committee on methodology, which shall meet out of Congress hours, but report progress on the last day of Congress.
"The Sub-Committee recommend that the Congress be divided into three major Sections: (i) Folk-tales and Songs; (ii) Myth and Ritual; (iii) Custom and Institution; and they recommend that Mr. E. Sidney Hartland, F.S.A., Prof J. Rhys, and Sir Frederick Pollock, Bart., be requested to preside over these sections respectively, and that Prof. T. F. Crane be asked to preside over the Methodological Committee.
"It seems desirable that each section shall meet on a separate day, at which papers shall be read devoted to questions connected with that section. The Committee recommend that under each section the papers and discussions should be taken, as far as possible, in chronological or logical order, dealing in turn with the relations of the subject—Tales, Myths, or Customs, in their present phases—to those of savage, oriental, classical, and mediaeval times and conditions.
"It is suggested that the papers, so far as practicable, should serve to test a conception now widely held, especially among English folk-lorists and anthropologists—the conception, namely, of the homogeneity of contemporary folk-lore with the earliest manifestations of man's activity
