[wood] footnotes to CANADIAN FOLKSONGS 79 



tellers ; she listened for them by deiith-beds. by cradles, at the dance and 

 in the tavern, with inexhaustible patience." '' Another successful col- 

 lector is the Rev. Elias Owen, who turned his position of inspector of 

 schools to admirable account. " At the close of his examination he asked 

 the tirst class, ' IS'ow, children, can j'ou tell me of any place where there 

 is a bug'gan to be seen, or of any one who has ever seen one ? ' Instantly 

 every hand in the class was stretched out, and every child had a story to 

 tell. He then asked, ' Which of you can tell me of a cui-e for warts ? ' 

 With like results, greatly to the discomfiture of his friend, the clergy- 

 man, who had fondly imagined that there was no superstition in his 

 parish ! The elerg}- are ver}' liable to this illusion, because the people 

 are apt to keep superstition out of their way, Avhich in itself is a not 

 uninstructive folklore item." ^ But, perhaps, the best of all collectors 

 was old Wilhelm Mannhardt. ■' It is on record that he was once taken 

 for a gnome by a peasant he had been questioning. His personal appear- 

 ance may have helped the illusion ; he was small and irregularly made ; 

 and was then only just emerging from a sickly childhood spent beside the 

 Baltic in dreaming over the creations of po])ular fancy. Then, too, he 

 wore a little red cap, which was doubtless fraught with supernatural 

 suggestions. But, above all, the story proves that Mannhardt had solved 

 the difficulty of dealing with primitive folk ; that instead of being looked 

 upon as a profane and prying layman, he was regarded as one who was 

 more than initiated into the mysteries — as one who was a mystery him- 

 self." ^ 



•The student's edition may or may not come ; if it should, we shall 

 then be able to review and revise with a fuller knowledge of the bearings 

 of the whole subject ; but, in the mean time, I have thought it might not 

 be without an interest of its own to take the works of Mr. Clagnon and 

 Dr. Larue as they stand and note down some of the more salient featui"es 

 they present to a lover of folksong. I do not pretend to deal exhaus- 

 tively with my texts, nor. in the present paper, to go a step beyond 

 them ; and so I would beg my readers not to look upon this as in any 

 way an attempt at a freatise, but simply as footnotes to those two collec- 

 tions which have long been accessible to the general public. 



II. 



^ NoN-POPuLAR Songs. 



Before coming to the folksongs proper, it would be as well to consider 

 shortly some intruders, which, though occasionally naturalized among 

 them, are none the less intruders still. 



The Lyric is so obviously non-j^opular that the merest mention is 

 sufficient to put it out of court ; still, no hard-and-fast line can be drawn 

 even between the lyric and the folksong, so insensibly does each some- 



