WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 1Ith, 1891, 
THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECT OF 
FOLK-LORE. 
BY 
MR. HENRY DAVEY, JUN. 
By folk-lore I understand customs and beliefs of any kinds; it 
_ will be important to remember this definition, for another definition 
might bring quite other conclusions as a result of the reasoning. 
To future ages, if science should be still studied, our own customs 
and beliefs will be also folk-lore. By science I understand not 
the simple accumulation of unrelated facts, but the use of facts 
which can be correlated, co-ordinated, and built into a coherent 
system; of facts which can be shown to have a connection; the 
_ pointing out this connection, and the construction of the system, 
being science. 
Now, what first strikes a student of folk-lore is the identity 
of the folk-legends of different countries. To take a- familar 
i nstance, the story of William Tell’s shooting the apple from off 
his son’s head. An exactly similar story occurs in the legends of 
the Turkish nation, and also of the Samoan Islanders in the South 
Seas. Surely none of these nations can have had the slightest 
communication with the others, and the story must have been 
evolved entirely independently. I might give many other 
instances of the same similarity, the correspondences sometimes 
xtending down to the minutest details. 
The method now most in favour of explaining these singular 
‘eoincidences, which are of very great number, is that of com- 
parative mythology. It is admirably described by Mr. Andrew 
ang in his work “ Custom and Myth.” 
“The method is, when an apparently irrational and 
alous custom is found in any country, to look for a 
co umtry where a similar practice is found, and where the 
practice is no longer irrational and anomalous, but in 
azarmony with the manners and ideas of the people amongst 
whom it prevails. That Greeks should dance about in their 
steries with harmless serpents in their hands looks 
