Folklore as an Historical ScienceGomme, George Laurence
History
Folklore as an Historical Science
Gomme, George Laurence
Folklore
Because the State has chosen or been compelled for political reasons
to lift up peasant economics into manorial legal rules, thus forcibly
divorcing this portion of peasant life from its natural associations,
there is no reason why students should fix upon this arbitrary
proceeding as the point at which to begin their examination into the
origin of village agriculture. Manorial tenants pay their dues to the
lord, lot out their lands in intermixed strips, cultivate in common,
and perform generally all those interesting functions of village life
with which Mr. Seebohm has made us familiar. But, in close and
intimate connection with these selfsame agricultural economical
proceedings, it is the same body of manorial tenants who perform
irrational and rude customs, who carry the last sheaf of corn
represented in human or animal form, who sacrifice animals to their
earth deities, who carry fire round fields and crops, who, in a
scarcely disguised ritual, still worship deities which there is little
difficulty in recognising as the counterparts of those religious
goddesses of India who are worshipped and venerated by non-Aryan
votaries. Christianity has not followed the lead of politics, and
lifted all this portion of peasant agricultural life into something
that is religious and definite. And because it remains sanctioned by
tradition, we must, in considering origins, take it into account in
conjunction with those economic practices which have been unduly
emphasised in the history of village institutions. In India primitive
economics and religion go hand in hand as part of the village life of
the people; in England primitive economics and _survivals_ of old
religions, which we call folklore, go hand in hand as part of the
village life of the people. And it is not in the province of students
to separate one from the other when they are considering the question
of origin.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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