I must at the outset state that the sense which I attach to the term folklore in the present connection is that of elements of culture surviving among the less advanced sections of the community, but discarded by the more advanced. Whether the idea of survival necessarily belongs to the conception of folklore used in its widest significance is a question that need not be discussed here; in connection with a community like the British, the more advanced members of which have entirely or almost entirely outgrown the philosophical and artistic ideas embodied in folklore, survival must be regarded as the dominant and characteristic note of the latter. Folklore, then, I treat this evening as a survival of elements of culture. These elements may, it is evident, be of different nature and intent, and may also survive from strata of culture different either sociologically or historically. As far as the difference of these elements in nature and intent is concerned, I have already indicated the two classes into which I divide them: philosophical and artistic. As far as their origin in varying sociological and historical strata of culture is concerned, racial considerations may or may not be involved. The same race may conceivably pass through such sociological changes, be affected by such varying historical conditions, as to bring about the difference between the conceptions and ideals of various sections of the race resulting in folklore. On the other hand, admixture of races is on a priori grounds an extremely likely factor in the production of folklore. It nearly always implies dominance of one, and the conceptions and ideals of the dominating supersede and oust those of the dominated race, but rarely to such an extent as to prevent their survival as folklore. Do the known facts of British history, using the term in its widest sense, justify the hypothesis of varying racial elements as a dominant factor in the production of existing British folklore, and is that hypothesis further justified by a searching and unbiassed examination of our folklore itself?
