202 ANNUAL ADDEESS BY PROFESSOR DUNS, D.D.^ F.R.S.E., 



that much of folk-lore that eludes explanation from the 

 thoughts and customs of civilized peoples finds ready 

 elucidation from savage practice and belief folk-lore has 

 here points of contact with ethnography and anthropology."* 

 The claims and scope of this very recent branch ot archaeo- 

 logical science could not be better indicated than in this 

 quotation from the editorial prefatory notes to the first 

 volume of the Np-vo Review^ and subsequent volumes are 

 crowded with illustrative instances. Popular superstitions 

 and usages, State institutions of every description, legends 

 of savagedom — as yet unmixed with those of early civiliza- 

 tions, or uninjured l3y European thought, or only beginning 

 to be spoiled by the reflex influences of true science and 

 modern progress — mythologies, religion, natural and 

 revealed, and the multitude of highly complex, difficult, 

 and often vital questions associated with the^e are all held 

 to lie within the folk-lore field. 



" Whate'er the eastern Magi sought, 

 Or Orpheus sung, or Hermes taught, 

 Whate'er Confucius would inspire. 

 Or Zoroaster's mystic fire ; 

 The symbols that Pythagoras drew, 

 The wisdom the great Plato knew ; 

 What Socrates debating proved. 

 Or Epictetus lived and loved ; 

 The sacred fire of saint and sage, 

 Through every clime, in every age, 

 In [Folk-lore's] wondrous page we view, 

 Discovered and revealed anew. 

 * * # * 



Ten thousand depths it can explore, 

 Ten thousand truths unknown before ! " 



These Hues have no reference to the recent Quarterly. 

 They trumpet the praises of an early seventeenth century 

 folk-lore precursor {prodromos), who, in his "■ Signatura Berum," 

 demonstrated, after his characteristic fashion, " the beginning, 

 ruin, and cure of all things." That which hath been will be. 

 The Slgnatura of Jacob Behmen (1620) was, at his day, only 

 a revival of the ancient medical " theory of signatures," 

 much in vogue two centuries previously, when its application 

 was confined to plants, but Behmen foimd room in it for all 

 things, especially in their beginnings. And De Origine — 

 research into origins — has still a fascination for many to whom 

 a differentiated fundamental notion, if it can be captured, is 



* "Folk Lore," Quarterly Review, Vol. I., p. 1, 1890. 



