loot REPORT— 1898. 



from me. Two Committees appointed by the Association in connection with this 

 Section touch upon this interval — the Committee for investigating the lake dwel- 

 lings at Glastonbury, and the Committee for co-operating with the explorers of 

 Silchester in their well-conducted and fruitful investigation of the iniiueuce of 

 Koman civilisation on a poor provincial population. I pass on to consider the very 

 great progress that has been made of late years in some of the branches of anthro- 

 pology other than physical and prehistoric, and especially in that of folk-lore. I 

 do this the more readily because I do not recollect that folk-lore has ever before 

 been prominently referred to in an Address to this Section. It is beginning to 

 assert itself here, and will ia time acquire the conspicuous position to which it is 

 becoming entitled, for the British Association is sensitive to every scientific 

 movement, and responds readily to the demands of a novel investigation. Already, 

 for three or four years, a day has been given at our meetings to folk-lore papers; 

 and at the Liverpool meeting an exceedingly philosophic, and at the same time 

 practical, paper was read by Mr. Gomme, and is printed in e.rten-o in the Pro- 

 ceedings as an Appendix to the Ileport of the Ethnographic Survey Committee. 

 The term ' folk-lore ' itself is not without a certain charm. It is refreshing to find 

 a. science described by two English syllables instead of by some compound Greek 

 word. The late Mr. W. J. Thorns had a happy inspiration when he invented the 

 name. It is just twenty years since the Folk-lore Society was established under 

 his direction. It has accumulated a vast amount of material, and published a 

 considerable literature ; it is now rightly passing from the stage of collection to 

 that of systematisation, and the works of Mr. J. G. Frazer, Mr. E. Sidney 

 Hartland, and others, are pointing the way towards researches of the most absorbing 

 interest and the greatest practical importance. 



A generalisation for which we are fast accumulating material in folk-lore is 

 that of the tendency of mankind to develop the like fancies and ideas at the like 

 etage of intellectual infancy. This is akin to the generalisation that the stages of 

 the life of an individunl man present a marked analogy to the corresponding stages 

 in the history of mankind at large ; and to the generalisation that existing savage 

 races present in their intellectual development a marked analogy to the condition 

 of the earlier races of mankind. The fancies and ideas of the child resemble closely 

 the fancies and ideas of the savage and the fancies and ideas of primitive man. 



An extensive study of children's games, which had been entered into and pur- 

 sued by Mrs. Gomme, has been rewarded by the discovery of many facts bearing 

 upon these views. A great number of these games consist of dramatic representa- 

 tions of marriage by capture and marriage by purchase — the idea of exogamy is 

 distinctly embodied in them. You will see a body of children separate themselves 

 into two hostile tribes, establish a boundary line between them, demand the one 

 from the other a selected maiden, and then engage in conflict to determine whether 

 the aggressors can carry her across the boundary or the defenders retain her 

 within it. 



There can be little doubt that these games go back to a high antiquity, and 

 there is much probabilitj' that they are founded upon customs actually existing, 

 or just passing away at the time they were first played. Games of this kind pass 

 down with little change from age to age. Each successive generation of child- 

 hood is short : — the child who this year is a novice in a game becomes next year a 

 proficient, and the year after an expert, capable of teaching others, and proud of 

 the ability to do so. Even the adult recollects the games of childhood and 

 •watches over the purity of the tradition. The child is ever a strong conservative. 



Upon the same principle, next to children's games, children's stories claim our 

 attention. MissEoalfe Cox has collected, abstracted, and tabulated not fewer than 

 345 variants of Cinderella, Catskin, and Cap o' Rushes. These come from all four 

 quarters of the globe, and some of them are recorded as early as the middle of the 

 sixteenth century. These elaborate stories are still being handed down from 

 generation to generation of children, as they have been for countless generations in 

 the past. Full of detail as they are, they may be reduced to a few primitive ideas. 

 If we view them in their wealth of detail, we shall deem it impossible that they 

 could have been disseminated over the world as they are otherwise than by actual 



