Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/70

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58
Catalan Folklore.

it is who handle the sacred things pertaining to the Tuitonga. E. E. Collcott.

Wesleyan College, Nukualofa,
Tonga.




Catalan Folklore.

It will be interesting to members of the Society to know that an attempt has lately been made in Catalonia to organize the collection and study of the folklore of that province. Dr. Carreras i Artau, Professor of Ethics at Barcelona, has, in connection with his chair, started a periodical for the purpose "of searching for, collecting and systematizing the phenomena spontaneous and popular, actual or historical, which reveal the moral psychology of the Catalan people in its relations with the other peoples of Spain," and among these phenomena folklore, in its various forms, takes the chief place. He endeavours to attract and concentrate around his chair not merely the students and others within the University, but all students of folklore and other valuable elements of the Catalan people who are interested in the subject. He offers to the associates the right of studying in the library of the organization, the right of being present at its sessions and of receiving its publications. Their questions will be answered in the journal; and generally their studies will be assisted and directed, and communications between those who are interested in any branch of folklore will be facilitated. Finally, the results of original investigation will be published from time to time. His programme is wide and, as he recognizes, only to be realised gradually. It extends to the collection of a library, the establishment of relations with the principal ethnographic centres at home and abroad, periodical meetings, the publication of the materials collected and of treatises upon folklore matters, and finally the formation of a museum of the ethnography and folklore of Catalonia. I miss, however, a statement of the subscription asked for, or any mention of the manner in which the necessary funds are to be raised. This, doubtless, can be learned on enquiry;