FOLKLORE

folklore, the science of popular beliefs, traditions and customs, has made great progress since igo, especially in countries which till then remained more or less outside general scientific movements. unfortunately scholars in countries like the balkan states, finland, czechoslovakia, yugo- slavia, now publish the results of their work in their national language, thus adding to the difficulties of comparative study. this scientific decentralisation may perhaps culminate in con- centration and standardisation, as has been effected in physical anthropology. the need for some such measures is evident. the scope of folklore needs to be defined. its methods must be organised and, where necessary, renovated. scope of the sctence—early students of folklore lim- ited their studies to beliefs, tales, legends, myths, songs and games—that is to a great extent to “ literary traditions.” early in the 20th century folklore was only a section of compara- tive literary history and of comparative mythology. but in some countries, as those under habsburg rule and slavonic areas, investigations covered the details of dress and ornaments, of houses and villages, of arts and crafts, as well as literary material. in these countrics folklore was thus inevitably associated directly with ethnography. while such conditions obtained, it was true that folklore was the ethnography of european peoples, and ethnography the folklore of the non-european peoples. such indeed, but only as regards belicfs and popular literature, was the attitude of the folklore society of london, which in its publications has always granted equality of place to ‘ primitive or half-civilised ” sav- ages, as to the peasants of europe. again, sir james frazer in his golden bough and in folklore of the old testament has in- cluded all popular documents without geographical or chronolog- ical distinction. for him, as for the majority of folklorists of the older school, the term folklore refcrred only to intellectual, not to material, culture. obviously the variations of dress, houses and implements have not, in great britain and the central states of europe, the same importance as in eastern and south- ern europe, although certain areas, such as scotland, the alps, the pyrenees and parts of germany, have preserved vestiges of very ancient cultures. riitimeyer has discovered in switzerland many prehistoric survivals, instruments, decorations, even modes of life. the. spanish anthropological society has started investigations in spain into local fashions of dress, which have already yielded interesting results. in eastern and northern europe the varieties of material culture and survivals of the stone, bronze and iron ages are evcn more numerous and better preserved. in these countries, therefore, folklore has gathered in more such data than in those where it was first organised. the scope of folklore needs enlargement, so as to include the study of varieties of types. of houses, villages, utensils of every sort, furniture, jewels, dress and every expression of popular art. since the war, a movement o4 in this direction has been started in england and in france by the publication of numerous monographs on country houses, too often in a purely utilitarian, rather than in a scientific spirit, because conditioned by the exodus of people in towns towards the country. but the investigations of bancalari, meringer and the school of students in finland, russia, bulgaria, rumania, serbo-croatia and czechoslovakia into the material culture of those areas have been undertaken in strict accordance with the scientific rules of folklore. methods of investigation.—the ampler the scope of folklore and the wider its domain, the more rigorously must its rules be determined. no single method of approach is adequate. the historical method is necessary—so also is the comparative method necessary; for in distinction from the historical method it does not put chronology into the first place, but compares the data according to their intrinsic nature, according to their tech- nique and their external forms, without note of conditions of time and place. frazer, lang, hartland and westermarck in eng- land, de basset, sebillot, cosquin, gaidoz in france, mannhardt and his followers in germany used this method, which had the advantage of bringing to light the gaps in the historical method of which the older philological method was but a secondary vari- ation. a new philological method was founded by edmond and gilleron, who published the great linguistic atlas of france. their study of words such as scier forced them and their fellow workers to investigate things as well, such as faux, faucille, segue, scie, etc. thus came into being a new scientific department, in which folklore and linguistics were united. so great was its suc- cess in germany that meringer and his pupils founded a review, w erter und sachen,in order to exhibit the scientific advantages of this combination. and so useful is it that modern folklorists are obliged to give heed to this class of investigations. human geography.—under the name of anthropo-geography or human geography (q.v.), the science of geography lends valua- ble aid to folklore. while the comparative method eliminated all conditions of place, geography regards them as essential. the union of the two has produced a new method which, so long as it holds a just balance, will continue to produce valuable results. _as in modern linguistics, distribution maps are now essential in folklore studies. by this means the easy generalisations of the comparative school can be rectified, as has been done by van gennep for the savoy area, where more than 630 parishes were examined, with the result that the generalisations of mannhardt and frazer, etc., were found to be not valid in the areas studied. there are local variations, and even disappearances of customs, which the older, comparative method failed to explain. not only must the data be strictly localised but they must also be related to all their concomitant conditions. in addition to the historical, linguistic and geographic qualities already men- tioned, note has to be made of the psychological, economic and political conditions. in short, to make due progress, folklore must adapt the psychological method to its needs, as well as the sociological method, by which all elements in the social life are classified. folklore is concerned with social and collective, not individual and isolated, phenomena—its very derivation proves this. a tale, a myth, a ritual act, a dance, a ballad, a mode of dress, a type of house, are collective expressions. the individual in invention.—this does not mean that these are collective inventions. every study of the growth of an ele- ment of this nature reveals an individual act as the origin or moment of borrowing—never the act of a large group. a small and limited group behaves as an individual just as the admirers of a popular poet, the followers of a prophet or the pupils of a painter or a sculptor form a school. thus a new end is given to folklore. the comparative method has disclosed to us the domi- nant and constant elements for all mankind. this was necessary to ascertain the conditions in which these dominant and con- stant elements came into existence, by whom, how and why, variations in them are effected in distribution of place and time. in short, it is its business to discover the action of individuals, or of small groups of individuals, as well as the mental and material evolution of collectivities. folklore collection and preservation of data.—the wider the scope of folklore, the more delicate become its methods of interpretation and the more necessary is it to gather its data in a strictly scien- tific manner. at the outset, complicated questionnaires were used almost at random. they are now prepared on a less ambi- tious scale and with more precise terminology. personal experi- ence goes to show that questionnaires are uscful only if used by an investigator who has an adequate general knowledge of manu- als and comparative studies. folklore afaterial—the data of folklore fall into two series, intellectual and material. no great dictionary or encyclopacdia as yet exists to cover the first group of topics, as has been ac- complished for other sciences. the only attempt in this direction in europe is the folklore of france by paul sebillot, in four vol- umes, which, but for the untimely death of this great pioneer, would have been followed by four other volumes; and in america the two volumes of the wandbook of the american indians by hodge (bureau of ethnology). in most countries recourse must be had to collections of monographs, such as those published by the folklore society of london, by pitre in italy, and by machado y alvarez in spain. the work that has to be done in this direction could, and should, be accomplished by international co-operation. the finnish authority, antti aarne, has drawn up a list of catch-words which, with items supplied by his co-adju- tators, contains more than 3,000 items concerning specially the themes of tales and legends. museums.—the material data, implements, dress, etc., find their place in museums. but it is still rare to find a museum specially devoted to folklore, properly termed. such are the nordic museum at stockholm, the finest of all, then the museum of vilkerkunde at berlin; the folklore museums at hamburg and basel, the museum of popular traditions at paris (troca- dero), the national museums at prague, at bucharest, cluj klausenburg at zakopane, at warsaw and cracow and at buda- pest. in almost all big towns where there is an archaeological museum, there is a section set apart in it for folklore material, specially of historical and artistic nature. of peculiar interest are sections of this kind at south kensington, at the german museum in nuremberg, at the landes museum at zurich, the natural history museum, vienna, the polytechnic museum, moscow, and the alsatian museum, strasbourg. in most large provincial towns in england, france, germany, switzerland and austria there are local museums which contain folklore objects, such as exhibits of ancient costumes, as_ ell as coins, pictures and historic objects of every kind. nevertheless, the scientific organisation of folklore museums has not yet been founded. we are still at the simple stage of curiosity and rarity. the historical point of view in general overrules the special aspect of folklore interest according to which specimens should be collected and classified in technological and evolutionary series. the folklore material of non-european peo- ples is naturally much better represented, for it is ethnography pure and simple. the number of ethnographic muscums has increased greatly in this period and their organisation improved, notably in the united states, switzerland and the netherlands. bibliographical notes.—general: the volkskundliche biblio- graphie, ed. by e. hoffmann-krayer (berlin, 1919, etc.), deals with all elements in folklore and, in some degree, with ethnography. the gypsy bibliography by george f. black (1914) deserves mention. manuals and method: charlotte s. burne, the ilandbook of folklore, london folklore society (1914); paul sebillot, le folklore. lalterature orale et ethnographie traditionelle (paris, 1914); a. van gennep, le folklore, moeurs et coutumes popuiaires (paris, 1924); luis de hloyos-sainz, einografia, sus bases, sus metodos y aplicaciones d espafia (madrid, 1917); karl reuschel, deutsche volkskunde, 2 vol. (leipzig, 1920-1); e. hoffmann-krayer, fesie und brduche des schweizervolkes (zurich, 1913); jos. schrijnen, nederlandsche volkskunde (zutphen, 1916); raffaele corso, folklore, sioria, obbteto, metodo, bibliografia (rome, 1923); f. w. hodge, hlandbook of american indians, 2 vol. (washington, bureau of ethnology, 1906 and 1910). ‘comparative’ works: (a) beliefs and customs. j. g. frazer, the golden bough, 3rd ed., 12 vol (1907-15), abridged ed., 1 vol. (1922), folklore tn the old testament, 3 vol. (1920), and the belief in immortality, 3 vol. (1924; to be continued); e. a. westermarck, lhe litstory of iluman marriage, 3 vol. (1921); sidney hartland, folksong—foochow ritual and belief (1914); hutton webster, rest days (new york, 1916); r. r. marett, psychology and folklere (1920); w. wundt, voalkerpsychologie, 8 vol. (1910-24); l. levy-bruhl, la mentalite primitive (1920). (6) tales, legends, etc. j. bolte and g. polivka, anmerkungen zu den kinder- und hausmirchen der briider grimm, 3 vol, (1913-8); e. cosquin, les contes indiens et l'occident (1922) and etudes folklor- iques, kecherches sur les migrations des conies populaires (1922); a. van gennep, la formation des legendes, 6th ed. (1923); otto rank, psycho-analytische beitraege zur m-ythenforschung (1919); alfons de cock, studien en essays over oude volksvertelsels (1920); g. huet, les contes populatres (1921); macleod yearsley, the folklore of fairy tales (1925); von des peyen, maerchen, sagen, etc. (1910-5); antti aarne, letifaden der vergleichenden marchenforschung (helsingfors, 1913); and vergleichende redtselforschungen (helsing- fors, 1918); fr. seiler, das deutsche lehnsprichwort (1921-4). (c) periodicals and collections. portugal.—revisita lusitana, the review of the geographical society of lisbon and the reports of oporto university, edited by mendes correa. spain.—acts and memoirs of the spanish society for anthro- pology, ethnography and prehistory, with a bibliography of works in spanish dealing with all humanistic science, including folklore. basque folklore.—revue des etudes basques (bayonne), the annual review and monthly bulletin of notes and queries by the socicty of euske-folklore founded by jose miguel de baran in ig2!i at vittoria: also memoirs on the basques by c. schuchardt of graz, n. densu- sianu of bucharest, and m. haberlandt of vienna. france.—on the death of paul sebillot, in 1918, the societe des traditions populaires was amalgamated with the societe francaise d’ethnographie et des traditions populaires which has published a review since 1919. the review afeiusine has not appeared regularly since the death of eugene rolland. volume 13 appeared in 1912. regional reviews and the publications of academies and local learned socicties contain much material. in the revue de folklore, to appear in 1926 under the direction of a. van gennep, provincial researches will be centralised. the folklore of northern africa is dealt with in the revue tuni- stenne, and the revue africaine; western african folklore in the bulle- tins published at st. louis and at brazzaville. in the revue indo- chinoise and the bulletin de t' ecole francaise ad’ extreme-orient will be found material dealing with the folklore of india and china. the bulletin de la societe des etudes oceaniennes has articles on folklore. british empire.— folklore, published by the folklore society of london, is both comparative and descriptive. the socicty also publishes a collection of monographs dealing with the folklore of england under various headings. there are no special folklore re- views for scotland or ireland, or, for the most part, of the domin- ions; canadian folklore finds a place in the journal of american fotklore; asiatic folklore, especially indian, is dealt with in the journal of the asiatic society of bengal; and chinese folklore is also recorded in the journal of the north china branch. the chinese society also deals with such matcrial from time to time. there are atso local reviews and publications in the african territories which are not, however, centralised. as regards australia, the publications of the local geographic societies must be consulted. belgtum.—the publication of la revue volkskund, interrupted by the war, has now been resumed under the direction of a. de cock, victor de meijere and j. vercoulic. in walloon belgium folklore brabancgon has now commenced to appear in both languages under the direction of a. marinus. the belgian folklore society proposes to publish a centralised bulletin dealing with folklore in both por- tions of belgium. switzerland.—in spite of the war, ia societe suisse des traditions populaires has continued the publication of archives and separate memoirs and monthly bulletins dealing with swiss folklore. much information has been collected and classified in the glessaire des patois de la suisse romande now appearing in instalments. the dictionary of patois suisse-italien has commenced publication, and includes a description of material, objects, customs, etc., and dis- tribution maps covering northern italy as well. ftaly.—for central and southern italy, and especially sicily, sce the archivio italiano tradisioni popolart and the review, ii folklore taliano. the review augusta praetoria deals with the valley of aosta and neighbouring regions, and, from time to time, local or general papers publish folklore material. germany.—all german folklore societies are united in the verband deutscher vereine fiir volkskunde which publishes mitteilungen (reports). the swiss society is a member, and the scandinavian, dutch and czech-german societies also form part of this league. its reports deal with the activities of various socicties under the various heacings of folklore. the best folklore reviews are:— berlin, zettschrift fiir volkskunde; munich, two reviews, bayerische hefie and bayertsche blatter fiir volkskunde; giessen, itessische blatter fiir volkskunde; leipzig, mittezlungen des ver. fiir sdchische volkskunde; lreslau, afittetiungen der schlesischen gesellschaft fiir volkskunde, further folklore articles, essays and bibliographies will be found in anzetger fiir deutsches altertum,; archiv fiir das studium der neucren sprachen; archiv ftir religionswissenschaft; worter und sachen; zetischrift fiir ethnologie. the german output 55 of folklore is by far the most important in the whole world because it is recognised to constitute an element in german nationality, and because the german country people are very conservative in their manners and customs. scandinavian countries.— most periodicals in scandinavian coun- trics publish folklore articles, such as, the danske studier a copen- hague, ymer at stockholm, etc. there are special reviews, such as, norsk folkekultur at christiania; folkiminnen och folktankar at stockholm, and for finnish swedes folkloristiska och etnografiska. finland and the baltic countries—the finnish-ugrian society publishes an excellent journal. the academy of helsingfors publishes memoirs relating to the ugrians, the mongols, the manchus, the votiaks voguls, the tcheremisses and the estonians. the society of folklore fellows publishes at helsingfors the well-known com- munications comparatives, under the editorship of antti aarne. there are also folklore societies at dorpat, in latvia and in lithuania. russta.—nearly all periodical publications came to an end during the war and the revolution. among them were zhiva ‘ia starina, published by the geographical society of st. petersburg, and etnografitcheskove obosriente, published by the polytechnic museum of moscow. at nielf, however, a laboratory of anthropology and ethnology has been founded by the academy of science of the ukraine, which publishes a bulletin in ukrainian, in which folklore is dealt with. in manchuria a periodical appears, published by the local historical and archaeological society, and deals with russian, nongol, manchu and chinese folklore. poland.—while the review, wisla, has ceased to appear, the academy of science at cracow continues the publication of much material. the principal centre of activity is, however, at lemberg, the headquarters of the polish socicty for ethnology and folklore. its publication, lud, is in its 23rd year, and appears simultaneously at warsaw, cracow, posen and vilna under the editorship of a. fischer. ‘sechoslovakia.—on the death of zibert, the review, cesky lid, ceascd to appear, but the mnarodopisny vestnik cesko-slovansky is still published under the editorship of g. polivka. other local reviews, notably in slovakia, deal with folklore. austrta.—on the break-up of the habsburg empire the scope of the societies which publish journals of folklore has diminished; each element in the population prefers its own language as a means of publication so that there are local reviews in the tirol, styria, etc. much folklore material is published by the museum of volkskunde and ihe anthropological institute in their publications. llungary.—folklore material is centralised by the academy of science at budapest, by the revue ethnographigque, and in the reports of the ethnographic museum. bulgaria.—the academy of science publishes an important series of volumes on the popular manners and customs of bulgaria. rumania.—the bucharest academy has already published some 50 vol. on rumanian manners and customs. then n. densusianu has founded the review, graz si sujlet, devoted to linguistics and to folklore. local material is also published by the universities of jassy and klausenburg. yugoslavta.—there are three important centres for folklore work in the country; the first at belgrade where the academy of science and the university publish important memoirs from time to time; secondly, at zagreb, where the review narodna starina (national antiquities) is published under the editorship of josip matasovic; and thirdly, at lubljana, where carniola and mitteilungen des afuseum-vereines ftir krain are published. it may be indeed that yugoslavia is one of the countries richest in folklore materials. greece.—the hellenic folklore society founded by politis at athens, in 1910, publishes a review laographia, to which also it has published as supplementary a collection of the complete works of politis himself. america.—in north america a distinct division of labour is ob- servable. indian folklore is centralised with the bureau of ethnology and the smithsonian institution and the american anthropologist. the folklore of peoples of european and african origin falls to the journal of american folklore on bchalf of the american folklore society, which also publishes memoirs. this society deals only with popular literature, tales, legends, songs, and not with popular mate- rial culture. mention must be made here of the important investiga- tions of marius barbeau on french canada, and of elsie clews parsons on the bahamas. central america.—gamio, in mexico, deals with the folklore of the indians in the publications of the ministerio del fomento. in cuba, fernando ortiz has commenced publication of archives del folklore cubano (san ignacio del habana). venezuela, brazil and chile are commencing publication of their folklore material, both of indian and european origin. an annual bibliography of a complete nature, dealing with the folklore of north, central and south america, has been published since 1917 by g. rivet, of the society of americanists of paris. (m.a. van g.) folksong: sce singing. foochow, china (see 11.271), a treaty port, had an esti- mated population, according to the chinese maritime customs; of 320,900 in 1923. the streets have been widened and paved, 56 the steps leading to the long bridge have been removed, and the road between it and the city planted with trees. electric light has been installed, and also an ice-making plant to supply the fishing boats. in 1921 the fukien christian university was established on a site of so ac. below kushan point. the trade of foochow has declined with the decline of the tea trade. the timber resources of the country are waning, and the trade in camphor is small. the demand for and the output of lacquer ware has increased. ships discharge and load at the pagoda anchorage, 10 m. below foochow, since above this the min river, divided into a number of channels, is obstructed by shoals and bars. a conservancy board was formed in rorg, and plans were worked out for directing the river into one channel, and permitting navigation by vessels drawing 17 ft. up to nantai, the harbour of foochow. the work was almost completed in the first and third sections in 1925, and the second section only required improvement by dredging. :