The Folk-Lore Journal/Volume 4/Classification of Folk-Lore
CLASSIFICATION OF FOLK-LORE.
I AM glad to see that the subject of the Classification of Folk-lore is not to be allowed to drop. It is one in which, as a collector myself, I cannot but be deeply interested; and a little fearful withal, lest, among so many "great scholars," the needs of the humble fraternity of collectors should be somewhat overlooked.
I see with pleasure that Mr. J. S. Stuart-Glennie perceives with me that the word Folk-lore has lately been very inconveniently made to do double duty: to signify both a science and a subject of scientific study. But I must join issue with him when he applies the word to the science and not to the subject, and takes Folk-lore to be the learning of the cultured about the folk, and not the learning of the folk themselves. He says that the folk have no learning properly so-called, that they do not learn, but imbibe knowledge; apparently restricting the term learning to lessons given of set purpose by a teacher and consciously acquired by the pupil. But this is surely an entirely arbitrary and unauthorised use of the word learning. One may learn insensibly, learn from experience, learn by example, and So forth. We must not begin by wresting the English language to suit our theories. Moreover, supposing Mr. Stuart-Glennie to be right in his restricted use of the words learn and learning, yet he is mistaken in saying that the folk have no learning of the kind he means. People taught their children what they knew themselves long before books and national schools were invented. Magic rites, songs, tunes, dances, plays, are transmitted from generation to generation by direct oral teaching of the young to bear their part in the time-honoured practices or ceremonies. Every peasant-mother who teaches her child (as some English mothers do even now) to say,—
"Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
Bless the bed that I lie on," etc.
instructs it in the simple learning of the folk. In the very number of the Journal which contains Mr. Stuart-Glennie's paper we have Mr. C. Staniland Wake arguing (p. 65) that the great majority of Folk-tales were composed for educational purposes by sages who knew the power of "truth embodied in a tale." And, again, at p. 96, we find the reviewer of the Rev. J. H. Knowles's Dictionary of Kashmiri Proverbs saying that the missionary "applied to the people [= folk] to teach him their lore." What did he learn from them? Their lore; the Folk-lore of Cashmere. It did not become the Folk-lore of Cashmere after he had learnt it, or because he had learnt it.
Curiously enough, other words compounded with folk are not subject to the same ambiguity of meaning. No one doubts that Folk-tales, Folk-songs, Folk-wit, Folk-medicine, Folk-custom, and the like, are the tales, songs, wit, medicine, and customs, of and belonging to the folk, not such as are made by others about them; and, as a matter of fact. Folk-lore has, till recently, been used in a similar and corresponding sense. I do not think the present confusion could ever have arisen if the English language had possessed or preserved the idiom by which one of two nouns conjoined is put in the possessive case.[1] Nobody supposes that a volkslied or a volksmärhrchen is a song or a tale about the people; it is plain from the construction that it is a song or a tale of the people themselves.
It is somewhat startling to a collector of Folk-lore to be told that what he has toiled to collect is not itself Folk-lore, though his knowledge of it is. He is tempted to ask, "What then have I been collecting?" "Folk-lore" is surely the only possible answer.
Mr. Stuart Glennie's proposition, that we can only know what the people believe by what they do, or say, or relate, appears incontrovertible, and is worth bearing in mind, especially when one is inclined to theorize. Upon it he constructs a symmetrical system of classification in Triads, under the three chief heads of Customs, Sayings, and Poesy.
It is rather an effort to believe that there can be nine kinds of customs, so distinct from each other, that an ordinary mortal can distinguish between them without constant mistakes; but to let that pass. I believe a collection of Folk-lore might be arranged on this system, by dint of thought and pains, but it would be a great deal more trouble than the fourfold plan. "That vast body of superstition, which at all times and in all places has been made the subject of observation," would have to be divided between Customs and Sayings. In arranging the Folk-lore of some district of the British Isles, for instance, the endless statements that "it is unlucky" to do so-and-so, must go into Sayings; and those of them which follow up the belief by practice, (as when little boys, believing it unlucky to take birds' eggs into the house, hang strings of them over the doorways of outbuildings,) must be placed among Customs. It could be done, I repeat, but it would be difficult, particularly in the case of Folkmedicine, put into the shape of Medical Recipes, and I doubt whether the result would be satisfactory. Imagine, for example, Turner's Samoa, with all the islanders' ideas and beliefs about their gods, placed in the category of Sayings! (The stories about them, of course, would be entered in the third group.)
The truth is, it seems to me, that this division rests on a forced and unnatural—or, at least, an unusual—interpretation of the word Sayings. It is made to include everything to which the phrase On dit could be prefixed. Whereas, to an ordinary mind, a saying implies a form of words; an idea expressed in certain prescribed words; a formula rather than a thought. And it seems to me that (besides the inconvenience to the poor collector of having to begin by learning special meanings to common words) it is a practical mistake to confound formulated and non-formulated ideas in the same category, The forms of Folk-loric ideas deserve attention, as well as the substance of them. And to set down Folk-thoughts which are expressed in Folk-loric formulas promiscuously with those which may be, and are, expressed in the words of the "cultured" collector, seems to me a very unscientific confus19n of two distinct sets of ideas, those which are definite and crystallized (and frequently fossilized), with those which are vague and floating, and consequently variable, though sometimes for that very reason living and powerful, because capable of changing from age to age.
The name of the third group—Folk-poesy, consisting of stories, songs, and sagas—is open to very similar objections. First, it would take ordinary minds some time to grasp the idea that they should place prose-matter under the head of poetry, or "poesy," a word which suggests a motto for a ring rather than anything more important. Secondly, to call Folk-tales "poesy," is not only using the word in a somewhat unusual sense, but it begs the question of their origin and true significance, which is certainly not settled yet, and perhaps never will be. Whereas "tradition" describes the contents of the division equally well, and yet asserts nothing at out them but the one incontrovertible fact that they are traditional.
Mr. Stuart-Glennie draws, as no one else has done, the needful distinction between the classification of the record of Folk-lore (as he aptly calls it), made by the collector, and the classification of the results of the investigation to be made by the philosopher. The result he looks for is psychological only, viz., the thorough comprehension of Folk-beliefs, Folk-passions, and Folk-traditions. But surely he makes a mistake when he states the result he looks for first, and then frames the classification of the record upon that foundation, which is rather like giving the verdict first and hearing the evidence afterwards.[2] Had he not done so, but had looked at the materials of the record first, and classified them on their own merits, surely he must have seen that Folk-lore has more to tell us than he supposes. Consider the weighty words of Senor Antonio Machado y Alvarez (Journal, vol. iii. p. 107): "Every branch of knowledge that we call scientific has been Folk-loric in its origin;" words which, in my poor opinion, give us in a nutshell both the reason of the value of the study, and the true test of what is and what is not within its range, by showing that Folk-lore is the parent of science, but not of art or handicraft. In like manner Mr. Nutt, (though he includes handicrafts,) seeks to learn from the study of Folk-lore the beginnings of philosophy, of worship, of law, of medical science, of history, of wit and humour, of poetry, and romance, of [music and] the drama.[3] A grand classification of results, though impossible, as it seems to me, as a classification of records.
However, the classification of results, and the whole question of the harvest which we may hope to reap from the study of Folk-lore, are matter for others. What concerns me, is to plead that the principles of classification laid down for the collector may be made as clear and simple as possible, and may not involve the use of peculiar technical words, or of words used in a sense other than the ordinary and accepted one. A Folk-lore collector is not likely in the nature of things to be a person of very high intellectual ability or much literary skill. The chief qualifications of a good collector are observation, curiosity, quick sympathy, the gift of winning confidence, the habit of simple friendly intercourse with the uneducated folk among whom his lot may be cast: things not always to be found combined with student-tastes or remarkable mental powers. Now, it requires some consideration before an average mind can decide whether any given item is a religious ceremony or a religious usage, whether another should be classed as an omen or an augury, before he can discover that asking the rider of a piebald horse to prescribe for the whooping-cough is a "medical recipe" (or can it be a "social usage"?), and can resolve to set down a ghost-story or a local-historical tradition under the head of Poesy. Whereas any one knows what a proverb is, or a ballad, or a game, a narrative, a "superstition," or a "cure"; things not easily defined—some of them—but easily recognisable; and any intelligent person can arrange such items in their proper places if the pigeon-holes are prepared to fit the matter that is to fill them, and are labelled in a tongue "understanded of the people." It seems to be an admitted fact that more collectors are the need of the moment, so it would be a great pity if people who could do useful work should be scared away by finding themselves confronted by technical difficulties at the outset. If the first broad outline of classification is made clear and simple, expressed in ordinary English words used in their natural sense, study and experience will presently show the worker the need for a fuller nomenclature, and he will welcome the technical words—life-casket, husk-myth, cumulative tale, and so forth—as he becomes acquainted with the ideas or the things they have been formed to describe. But otherwise, I am afraid, the would-be neophyte will be inclined to think that the Folk-lorists have taken a hint from their Folk-tales, and enchanted a charming prince into the guise of a repulsive monster!
- ↑ The Shropshire people do use this idiom as far as place-names are concerned, and say Montford's Bridge, Norton's Camp, Wenlock's Edge, and so forth. In the next county, Hereford Fair becomes Hereford's Fair.
- ↑ Shropshire and Cheshire folk would say he had "ploughed the adlants afore the butts"; that is, the headlands, or spaces left for the plough to turn at the end of the field, before the long furrows: equivalent to "putting the cart before the horse," or beginning a thing at the wrong end. When Miss Jackson first heard the proverb used it was applied to the case of a suitor who had made his offer to the father before the daughter.
- ↑ In connection with folk-music the following is not without interest:—"It is here observed, as a rather curious fact, that exceptional musical talent is by no means confined to the children of better parentage; the boy of lowest birth will often enough be the best musician."—"A Workhouse Farm," Standard, 10th March, 1886.