FOLK-LORE SOCIETY 



3229 



FOLK-SONG 



imagination. In practice this is 

 not so. Apart from the constant 

 occurrence at the head of such 

 lists of eponymous heroes whose 

 former existence is a mere postu- 

 late to account for the name of a 

 tribe or clan, a single example of 

 the untrustworthiness of genealo- 

 gies may be taken from the pedi- 

 grees of* the chiefs of various sec- 

 tions of the great Thonga tribe in 

 South Africa. It by no means 

 follows that the names given in 

 these pedigrees represent succes- 

 sive steps iri the genealogy. 



A step may be omitted because in 

 the native mind for this purpose 

 the distinction between a son and 

 a grandson is immaterial. Steps 

 may be duplicated, because a 

 brother may have succeeded a 

 brothe- in the chieftainship. Or a 

 longer gap may intervene between 

 two names represented as those of 

 father and son. All these errors 

 and others occur in the pedigrees 

 in question, and the native deposi- 

 tories of tradition do not agree 

 among themselves on the subject. 

 The lists do not affect to contain 

 the names of more than eight or 

 ten generations, going back at the 

 most from 200 to 250 years. Yet 

 a Portuguese document dated in 

 1554 : already mentions several of 

 the names, some of which were 

 then probably the names of clans 

 rather than of persons, and two of 

 them are in the document ex- 

 pressly stated to be the names of 

 rivers (Junod, Life of a South 

 African Tribe, i, 24-26). 

 A Typical Legend 



A legend very widespread in Eng- 

 land and other parts of the W. of 

 Europe concerns the position of a 

 church. It asserts that the church, 

 generally a parish church, was in- 

 tended to be built elsewhere than 

 on its actual site, but that the 

 materials and the building so far 

 as erected were nightly removed 

 by invisible powers, and that the 

 builders were ultimately compelled 

 to accept the site thus supernatur- 

 ally chosen. 



Two examples, both taken from 

 Gloucestershire, will show how tra- 

 nJition may disguise, and in one case 

 entirely reverse, the facts. The 

 story of Bisley church is that it 

 was to have been built in a certain 

 spot definitely pointed out, but the 

 stones were removed at night by 

 the devil to its present site. Actu- 

 ally, the place pointed out as the 

 intended site was the site of a 

 Roman villa, from the ruins of 

 which the materials for the church, 

 or some of them, were obtained. 

 When the church was restored in 

 the 19th century, portions of the 

 villa, including an altar of the 

 Penates, were found embedded in 



the walls (Gloucestershire N. & Q., 

 i, 390). Of Churchdown church, a 

 few miles away, on the top of an 

 isolated hill, the tradition re- 

 corded is that it was begun " on a 

 more convenient and accessible 

 spot of ground, but that the 

 materials used in the day were con- 

 stantly taken away at night and 

 carried to the top of the hiU, which 

 was considered as a supernatural 

 intimation that the church should 

 be built there." 



The fact is that the hill-top was 

 fortified probably from prehistoric 

 times (the rampart is still to be 

 seen), and the original village was 

 there with its church, but that some 

 time before 1170, doubtless in con- 

 sequence of the greater security of 

 the country, the village but not 

 the church was removed down 

 to the side of the hill, and the top 

 subsequently became deserted. The 

 tradition, now comparatively old, 

 could not have originated until the 

 history of the village had been 

 forgotten. 



Vagueness of Tradition 



It may be said in general terms 

 that the exact facts cannot be re- 

 covered from tradition after a cen- 

 tury, or at most two. Subsequent 

 to that they become vague, con- 

 fused, and at length fade out of re- 

 collection. In France memory 

 hardly goes beyond the Revolu- 

 tion. It is " a sort of chronological 

 landmark, the only one, beside the 

 reigns of some modern sovereigns 

 and the war of 1870, which the 

 people really knows " (Sebillot, 

 Folklore de France, 1904-7, iv. 

 379). All beyond is vague or for- 

 gotten. " Before the Revolution " 

 conveys the utmost antiquity. 



Some American Indian traditions 

 go back to the events of the 17th 

 century. They are generally pre- 

 sented under more or less romantic 

 guise, and they cannot be depended 

 on. The Wyandots suffered a very 

 great disaster about the years 

 1648-50 : they were massacred, 

 and the tribe was almost totally 

 extinguished by the Iroquois. It 

 might be supposed that so terrible 

 an experience would have been 

 deeply impressed on the minds of 

 the people. So far, however, is this 

 from being the case that " practi- 

 cally nothing seems to have been 

 remembered " (Bar beau, Huron 

 and Wyandot Mythology, 1915). 



Instances like those cited might 

 be multiplied indefinitely. They 

 render it impossible to rely upon 

 folklore to transmit a know- 

 ledge of events. What it does 

 transmit is a record of the men- 

 tality of past generations and of 

 earlier stages of civilization. Such 

 a record is transmitted not merely 

 by tale and song and saying, but 



also and perhaps still better by 

 game, institution, periodical ob- 

 servances, and the more intimate 

 doings and cautions of daily and 

 family life, as well as by the 

 shapes taken by the beliefs in the 

 supernatural and the uncanny. The 

 problem for students of folklore is 

 to unravel them, to compare 

 them with familiar phenomena 

 elsewhere, and to assign to each of 

 them its place and meaning in 

 human evolution. See The Hand- 

 book of Folklore, new ed., by Miss 

 C. S. Burne, 1914, and the works 

 there enumerated in Appendix D. 



Folk-Lore Society. British 

 society formed with the object of 

 collecting and preserving the relics 

 of folklore. It was founded in' 

 1878, and publishes a quarterly 

 journal, Folk-Lore, and also occa- 

 sional volumes and periodical 

 Transactions. It meets at Univer- 

 sity College, Gower Street, W.C., 

 and the address of the secretary is 

 4, New Square, Lincoln's Inn, W.C. 



Folkmoot. Name given to a 

 moot or meeting of the folk or 

 people. There were moots of var- 

 ious kindsin medieval times, e.g. the 

 shiremoot. Theoretically all free- 

 men could attend, but practically 

 nothing is known of the matter 

 except that among the Teutonic 

 tribes there were meetings of this 

 kind. In England, according to one 

 theory, there was a f olkmoot in each 

 of the little kingdoms until these 

 were united and the witan became 

 the dominant assembly. See Moot ; 

 Witenagemot ; consult Primitive 

 Folkmoots, G. L. Gomme, 1880. 



Folk-Song. Song created by 

 the common people, those whose 

 cultural development has been 

 effected, not by any formal system 

 of training or education, but 

 through the unconscious and intui- 

 tive exercise of natural and inborn 

 faculties. Albeit folk-music is the 

 creation of unlettered and techni- 

 cally unskilled musicians, it is not 

 on that account embryonic, i.e. 

 undeveloped or inferior music. 

 The difference between the music of 

 the people and that of cultivated 

 musicians is one of kind, not of de- 

 gree, akin rather to the difference 

 between the wild and the garden 

 flower neither of which can be 

 said to be incomplete or imperfect. 



Folk-music ordinarily consists of 

 melody only ; it is very seldom 

 e.g. among the peasants of Great 

 Russia that it has been carried 

 as far as the harmonic stage. Tech- 

 nically, the folk -tune is essentially 

 non -harmonic in construction and 

 implication, being devised by those 

 in whom the harmonic sense is 

 dormant. It is frequently cast in 

 one or other of the diatonic modes, 

 more rarely of the chromatic, 



