FOLKLORE. The word was coined by W. J. Thoms in 1846 to denote the traditions, customs and superstitions of the uncultured classes in civilized nations. The meaning of words, however, is prescribed not by definition but by usage, and to-day the scope of folklore includes what was deliberately excluded in the early definition, popular arts and crafts, i.e., the material as well as the intellectual culture of the peasantry. Mainly as the result of the work of the English anthropologists, Tylor, Frazer, and others, who directed attention to the use of the analogies presented by the practices and beliefs of the lower culture to illustrate and explain the superstitions and traditional customs of the European peasantry, no sharp boundary is drawn by English practice between the field of folklore and that of social anthro pology. But although it is true that their content overlaps and that one can hardly be explored without assistance from the other, the general implication of usage is towards restricting the province of folklore to the culture of the backward elements in civilized societies. The use of the word folktales is less circum scribed and the branch of folklore which is concerned with pop ular stories, will therefore be considered in a section by itself.
The collections of material from different parts of Europe, which were the fortunate consequence of the example set by the Grimms, revealed that, as Aubrey had already noticed, there were many popular beliefs and practices to which parallels could be found in the records of classical antiquity, and that there was a large stock of tales, customs and beliefs, which was common to all European countries. For a time speculation, which was led astray by a mistaken philological theory and by a belief, now proved erroneous, that the Vedas represented a very primitive stage of "Aryan" culture, attempted to derive this common stock from the original ancestors from whom the various peoples who now speak languages belonging to the Indo-European family were thought all to have been descended. A prominent feature of the theories of this school, of which Max Muller was the protagonist, was the view that mythology and folktales were vestigial relics of an allegorical religious literature connected with the worship of natural phenomena. But the work of E. B. Tylor, followed by that of Sir James Frazer, whose Golden Bough extended to the lower culture the results of Mannhardt's researches into the agri cultural customs of the peasantry of Europe, and made popularly effective by the adroit pen of Andrew Lang, demolished these theories by demonstrating that analogies to these supposed sur vivals of "Aryan" religion among the European peasantry were j to be found also among primitive peoples in all parts of the world. Popular superstitions in Europe, it was now suggested, were not debased remnants of an elaborate archaic religious system, but vestiges of the stages of culture which the higher strata of civilized society had passed through but had outgrown. The world-wide distribution of similar or identical customs was explained by the hypothesis that the normal reactions of the human mind at similar stages of its development to similar conditions of environ ment will everywhere produce similar results.
This reasonable view has maintained its position upon the whole, though from time to time challenged by theories of varying plausibility advanced by advocates of varying knowledge and intelligence, that these world-wide similarities are due rather to the diffusion of culture from some single civilization. Some have sought this universal source in a lost continent, Atlantis; others look to the VIth Dynasty of Egypt, about the details of whose civilization and its history almost equally little is known for certain.
Of the trend of the study of folklore in recent years two features may be noticed. Firstly its materials have been greatly enriched by the systematic collection and recording of data, particularly in the smaller countries of Europe, where circumstances have been peculiarly favourable. Here the recent very strong revival of national sentiment among the smaller nationalities has supplied an effective stimulus, and the opportunities for collection have been exceptionally rich where the conditions of European civili zation have been but recently introduced into what were pre viously peasant societies. Secondly with greater knowledge the complexity of the material is more adequately appreciated, and a more cautious and more historical approach to its problems is general. The acceptance of Tylor's doctrine of survivals led for a time to an exaggerated emphasis upon similarities, which were sometimes superficial, to the neglect of differences, which were often fundamental. Survivals, it was held, could not be dated; it might therefore be assumed that they belonged uniformly to an infinitely remote antiquity, and since no individual originator could be traced or named, some held that all popular songs, ballads and stories were "collective creations of the folk." How a ballad, or indeed any work of art, could actually be evolved by this committee process was never satisfactorily explained, but the view, which possessed a certain sentimental attraction, received some support from the works of the French school of sociologists, Durkheim and his pupils, who endeavored to interpret the data of folklore and social anthropology in terms of contemporary theories about the psychology of crowds.
The present tendency is to recognize that the survivals of which the material of folklore consists, are not all of equal antiquity. Difficult though it undoubtedly is, the main task of the student is that of analysis and stratification. Many of the general ideas which find expression in popular customs and superstitions are doubtless the product of simple psychological reactions to environ ment, which are common to human nature in all parts of the world, but an examination of the detailed forms in which they have been given expression, often reveals substantial differences. The distribution and, where possible, the chronological develop ment of these specific forms demand the most careful attention. Only thus can the data be disentangled. For, if much is very old, much is relatively recent. Culture is affected by foreign contacts of all kinds, whether peaceful or warlike, and within a single society, the learning of one generation has a way of becoming the folklore of another. Much that is handed down eventually by oral tradition, perhaps in a debased and distorted form, has its origin in literature. The satisfactory analysis, therefore, of folk lore material demands the use of every available instrument, historical, literary and philological, as well as that of comparative analogy. What is quite certain is that in this, as in other fields of scientific enquiry, there is no master key which will unlock all secrets with a single simple formula.
The problem of stories is more complicated. Popular stories fall into three main categories; myths, legends and stories which are told primarily to provide entertainment. As distinct from these last, myths have a purpose. They are essentially aetiological, or, as Mr. Kipling would say, "Just-So Stories." Their object is to explain (i) cosmic phenomena (e.g., how the earth and sky came to be separated) ; (2) peculiarities of natural history (e.g., why rain follows the cries or activities of certain birds) ; (3) the origins of human civilization (e.g., through the beneficent action of a culture-hero like Prometheus) ; or (4) the origin of social or religious custom or the nature and history of objects of wor ship. It will be obvious that myths which fall into the first three categories are likely to present resemblances which may be ex plained as coincidences, identical questions having provoked similar replies, whereas the myths of our fourth class are likely to differ as widely as the particular customs or local deities which they seek to explain.
Legend may be said to be distorted history. It contains a nucleus of historical fact the memories of which have been elabo rated or distorted by accretions derived from myths or from stories of our third kind. In so far as they are historical the simi larities between the legends of different peoples must be due to coincidences of real circumstance; in so far as they are fiction, the similarities will be of the same kind as those of myths or fairy stories from which they have really been borrowed.
The majority of the recorded stories of primitive peoples, with the possible exception of the animal tales to which the African races are peculiarly addicted, fall into the categories of myth or legend, perhaps because disinterested or unmotived flights of the inventive imagination and fancy, which are rare or rudimentary among savage peoples, are essentially products of a relatively advanced civilization. But the problems presented by stories, which are neither myths nor legends, cannot be restricted to Europe; for there is a large stock both of incidents and of plots which is common to all countries between Iceland and India. Is this to be accounted for by the coincidence of independent in vention or by diffusion? Theodore Benfey, whose Pantschatantra was published in 185g, maintained that India had provided the great reservoir of stories from which European folktales, were derived. In Germany the work of Kohler and in England the writings of Clouston helped to elucidate the debt of Western Europe to oriental story-books, and in France the late Emmanuel Cosquin devoted great learning to the maintenance of the extreme view that all European folktales had their prototypes in India.
If we are unable to accept the Indianist position, we may be grateful for definite gains which these scholars achieved. Firstly, they established the fact that certain kinds of similarity can only be accounted for by diffusion. While it is conceivable and often probable that a general idea or an isolated incident may have occurred independently to story-tellers in different countries, it is to ask too much of coincidence to suppose that the same plot, i.e., an identical series of incidents arranged in the same logical order of interest, could be independently invented more than once. Secondly, they proved that an undoubted influence had been exerted upon the folktales of Europe by the big literary collections of Indian stories, which passed through Persian and Arabic trans lations li to the West. Factors in promoting this influence werethe pilgrimage to Jerusalem, the crusades and the mediaeval con tacts between eastern and western civilization which were occa sioned by the material and intellectual expansion of Islam. In mediaeval Europe translations of oriental story-books like the History of the Seven Wise Masters provided entertaining litera ture for the cultured, and eastern tales were collected in preachers' handbooks of exempla, as they were called, in order to enliven and adorn popular sermons. Popular satire, again, as represented by the fabliaux of France and Germany adapted this material to its purpose. It was later used again by the writers of novelle who presented it in some cases but little altered (e.g., Straparola and Basile) or in others (e.g., Boccaccio) transmuted by genius into the gold of literature.
Thus from the middle ages onwards there has been constant interchange of stories over the whole area, and there are some, though fewer, instances of a common property which goes back to classical times and even to the 5th century B.c. But it is diffi cult to believe that Indians have had a monopoly of invention, or that stories have not been spread mainly by exchange. The arguments which postulate a necessarily Indian origin for stories which are recorded only in modern oral tradition in India, are unsound. For there is no guarantee of their antiquity upon Indian soil, and indeed there are other reasons to suppose that many of them have entered India with Islam. Further there exist par ticular plots, the distribution of the variants of which suggests that they have travelled from West to East, and not from East to West. (See also AMERIND FOLK-LORE and NEGRO FOLK-LORE IN AMERICA.)