286 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
European folk-lore and anthropology. It in no way points to 
literary sources, but to purely popular ceremonies which are 
still to be observed in many parts of Europe, and are to be met 
with in various forms wherever the savage or the peasant is to 
be found. 1 In brief, we have in plain sight the ceremonies and 
practices which have been studied so carefully for Europe by 
Grimm 2 and Mannhardt, 3 and the Eturopean and savage prac¬ 
tices, in their world-wide distribution, which have been more 
recently studied by Mannhardt’s disciple, Frazer. 4 This field 
has drawn to it many students of_ late, prominent among whom 
are EL V. Anichkof, 5 who has considered the ritualistic songs 
of the Slavs and the attendant ceremonies, and, on the basis of 
a very wide comparative study, has done much to show that the 
origin of poetry is in the primitive ceremony. 6 
The idea, or ideas, at the basis of all these ritualistic cere- 
monies is the efficacy of sympathetic and imitative magic. As 
Frazer says: 
“The general explanation which w'e have been led to adopt 
of these and many similar ceremonies is that they are, or were 
in their origin, magical rites intended to ensure the revival of 
nature in spring. The means by which they were supposed 
to effect this end were imitation and sympathy. Led astray by 
his ignorance of the true causes of things, primitive man be¬ 
lieved that in order to produce the great phenomena of nature 
on which his life depended he had only to imitate them, and 
that immediately by a secret sympathy or mystic influence the 
little drama which he acted in forest glade or mountain dell, 
1 See J. G. Frazer, “The Golden Bough,” vol. 2, pp. 190-192; and 
Yrjo Hirn, “The Origins of Art,” 1900, pp. 283 ff. 
2 Jakob Grimm, “Deutsche Mythologie.” English translation by 
Stallybrass. 
s W. Mannhardt, “Wald- und Feldkulte,” new ed., 1904. 
4 “J. G. Frazer, “The Golden Bough,” 3 vols., 2d ed., 1901. 
s “Ves’ennyaya Obryadovaya Pyesnya na Zapadye e u Slavyan' r 
(Spring Ceremonial Songs in the South and Among the Slavs), St. 
Petersburg, 1903. Part 1, “From Ceremonial to Song,” alone is pub¬ 
lished. 
e His formula is: “From Ceremony to Song,” and “From Song to 
Poetry.” 
