MR. DYER'S "ENGLISH FOLK-LORE."*
THAT acknowledged father of the English novel, Fielding, writing in the middle of the last century, Once glanced aside to bestow a sharp, contemptuous cut on, to quote his own words, those "pages which certain droll authors had facetiously pleased to call history of England." Nor, for anything that we know, was the satirist ever called to account by any of his professional brethren for this gratuitous letting- -out at so grave a literary guild. If, in this last quarter of the nineteenth century, however, an anonymous critic were even to hint to English historians, at least by way of practical suggestion, that innovations might still be made in the very principles of their art, and indeed must be made, before -the solution of its peculiar problems can be regarded as so much as possible for it, intelligent readers would, from the first, be at no loss as to the proper classification of the strange phenomenon in critical literature. Those who, with rather cynical views of human attainments, were no more sur- prised that there should be cases of glaring literary in- competence than cases of glaring incompetence of any other kind, would dismiss the would-be innovator with an involuntarily muttered, "Another specimen of the thou- sand quacks of the time !" while those conscious of a faith weak on the moral, rather than on the intellectual, side of their fellow-mortals, would see in the case nothing more than a rather audacious attempt at startling into surprise that large and growing class of readers who look upon literature as one of the milder species of stimulants. Literary quack or panderer to a vitiated literary palate would be the alternative title assigned by common consent to the hardy critical wight. And yet we scruple not to affirm that, to our mind at any rate, the critic would have made an assertion containing as large a pro- portion of truth, with as slight admixture of error, as almost any platitude that ever passed unquestioned and -unexamined. True, that in the present century, almost in the present generation, the Muse of history, in her onward pro- gress, has shot through a mighty space, so that it would be easy to name more than one living historian among ourselves from whom even a Tacitus or a Thucydides would have had much to learn, both as to the method of his art and as to the materials to be employed in its service; true, also, that in Eng- land, more than in any other part of Europe, what we may call the new method is understood and applied, and materials once never thought of, or if thought of, thought of only to be re- * English 101k-Lore. By the Be,. T. F. Thiatleton Dyer, MA, Oxon. London Hardwick° and Bogue.
jected, as beneath the dignity of history," are recognised as entitled often to the most prominent place of all, sedulously sought after, and laboriously adjusted. Still, certain innova- tions—innovations the importance of which can scarcely be exaggerated are still possible; and as it seems to us, we cannot hope to understand the career of a given nation, to see the causes that enabled it to play its part in the human drama in which the actors are nations, while some of these innovations remain unmade. We do not speak now of any of those possible future modifications in the historical art, as practised in these days by those understood to have done most to innovate on its methods,—modifications possibly consequent on the rise and spread in educated Europe of a new philosophy of life; but of certain changes in the selection, use, and estimate of the relative importance of materials which, we cannot help thinking, the innovators acting, on their own principles, need not reject, on these principles are bound not to reject, but even carefully to search after, and with all diligence to utilise.
We have made the above remarks at this particular moment, because we believe that this little book on Folk-lore, or, as the author puts it in his preface," those superstitions that still linger on. here and there throughout the country," deals with a subject which has never yet had its importance fully acknowledged, or perhaps fairly discerned, by English historians. The biographer who should undertake to present us with a life of Luther or Calvin, carefully eschewing all reference to the superstitious notions entertained by those eminent men, we should justly censure for suppressing features of character essential to any true under- standing of his subject. And yet, though surely it is plain that it is not possible to understand a nation, any more than an individual, without a knowledge of the superstitions in the course of its history most surely believed in, it never occurs to us to complain because an English historian has made it no part of his business to acquaint him- self with the various forms of superstitious belief prevalent in that epoch of his country's history by him selected for treat- ment. A man's religion, it has been well said, is the most important fact about him, and his religion has been defined to be that which he does verily believe, lay to heart, and act upon. And what, it may be asked, did our ancestors, or the ancestors of any people, ever with their whole being so believe, lay to heart, and act upon, as just those superstitions whose mighty significance lies hidden from most of us under their designation of Folk-lore ? If these things be so— and surely at bottom all are agreed that they are—there is, then, scarcely a single one of our recognised living historical guides who has not committed faults of omission, more or less serious; and then, we may safely add, the sooner our historians direct their attention to the Folk-lore of their country, with a view to turning it to account in the future, the better both for themselves.and all who aim at being more than dilettante students of history.
It is satisfactory to know that the future English historian desirous of being strong where so many of our historians have been weak, is likely to be met half-way. As many of our readers are, doubtless, aware, a Society has been started recently which charges itself with the task of collecting indigenous Folk-lore. That the Society in question aims at more than the collection of a body of folk-lore, withojit any ulterior historical reference, we have no reason to suppose. Nor are we aware that the present work has in any way the imprimatur of the Society. We rather think it must be a private and independent venture. But be these things as they may, we venture to hail the existence of such a Society, and the appearance of such a work as this of Mr. Dyer's as promising fair to open a new intellectual vein, and to bring therefrom into conspicuous light materials which, whether he use or not, the English historian ought to know are there, which it will often be his wisdom to use, and which, even when he may introduce none of them into his fabric, he shall knowingly and deliberately exclude.
Passing to the book itself, the writer does not seem, on com- mencing his labours, to have had it in his mind to devote him- self to any particular branch or branches of his subject,—to, for example, the superstitions current in a particular district, such as he could himself collect and himself authenticate. Rather would it seem to have been his aim to gather whatever might turn up from whatever quarter, and he certainly lays no claim to have compiled a work embodying none but his own independ- ent gleanings from living lips of popular superstitions. On the
contrary, the pages of Notes awl Queries and of numerous other works are laid under heavy contribution, and the debt is every-
where openly and duly acknowledged. We make these remarks by no means with a view of depreciating what Mr. Dyer has done; it was for him to decide on the expediency or otherwise of admitting into a work of this kind materials not gathered by himself, and already given to the public ; but simply with a view of apprising the reader of the part-iron, part-clay, nature of the work ; in other words, that he has to do with a book in great part, we doubt not, new and original, but in great 'part old and borrowed. Such being the field, the very wide field, selected by Mr. Dyer, it, of course, became a matter of prime importance that it should be partitioned out after a simple, intelligible, and thoroughly natural fashion. And here, we think, he has not only succeeded, but been decidedly happy. Of the materials here collected, at any rate, we are un- able to think of any better arrangement than that adopted. The book is divided into thirteen chapters, in each chapter the various superstitions relating to a particular subject or particular natural object being dealt with. The most important and interesting of these chapters are those in which the superstitions relating to plants, the moon, birds, animals, birth, marriage, death, are arranged. In that a great deal will be found not alone of wide human and his- torical interest, but of interest to all who are not merely readers, but students of our own poets. Mr. Dyer seems to have had the wants of this class in his mind throughout his work, and we heartily thank him for it, as, we believe, will many others, who find more difficulty in understanding passages in English poets which can only be explained by a reference to our ex- isting English superstitions, than corresponding passages in Greek or Latin poetry. To take an example. Most readers of any sensibility will be able to recall the weird awe with which for
the first time they read Coleridge's Christabel, and especially the superstitious horror for the moment excited in them by that powerfully imaginative passage, where the sleeping dog moans,
as the seeming mortal woman passes by with Geraldine. Mr.
Dyer has not, that we remember, referred to this passage, but his remarks on what were once the supposed powers of dogs to be the subject of experiences from the spirit-world explain the otherwise unaccountable conduct of the dog, as that of a creature distinguishing even in sleep the seeming female for something far other than she seemed to unsealed human eyes. But perhaps it will be thought that it is only very dense and rare ignorance that can have occasion to feel grateful for such a piece of information as this, most readers perhaps being sup- posed familiar with a thing so eleffientary in superstitious lore. Take, then, this passage in Milton's Comus, quoted by Mr.
Dyer. The spirit is speaking of Sabrina, the " Nymphs " of -" the smooth Severn stream" :—
"The shepherds at their festivals Carol her goodness loud in rustic lays,
And throw sweet garland-wreaths into her stream, Of pansies, pinks, and gaudy daffodils."
How many of us, as we read these lines, have ever thought of this as other than one of the thousand exquisite fancies of Milton, and how few will hear from Mr. Dyer without a feeling of strange surprise that "the practice formerly prevailed in this country of sprinkling rivers with flowers on Holy Thursday," and that "it was, no doubt, a relic of the Fontinalia of the Romans, ceremonies held in honour of the nymphs of fountains."
We ought not to conclude, we think, without adding that, while there is much in this book both interesting and important, there is much also which seems to us supremely unimportant, and of the very faintest interest for all but triflers ; but perhaps it may be thought the proper course, at the commencement of probably a long series of labours of this kind, to draw to land in the compiler's net all sorts of fishes, good and bad, prior to the final work of selecting and storing up the one, and casting the other way.
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