The Handbook of Folklore [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION. 1. What Folklore Is. The word Folk-Lore—^literally, " the learning oj the people "— was coined in 1846 by the late Mr. W. J. Thorns to replace the earlier expression " popular antiquities." It has established itself as the generic term under which the traditional Beliefs, Customs, Stories, Songs, and Sayings current among backward peoples, or retained by the uncultured classes of more advanced peoples, are comprehended and included. It comprises early and barbaric beliefs about the world of Nature, animate and inanimate; about human nature and things made by man ; about a spirit world and man's relations with it; about witchcraft, spells, charms, amulets, luck, omens, disease, and death. It further includes customs and rites as to marriage and inheritance, childhood and adult life, and as to festivals, warfare, hunting, fishing, cattle-keeping, etc.; also myths, legends, folk-tales, ballads, songs, proverbs, riddles, and nursery rhymes. In short, it covers everything which makes part of the mental equipment of the folk as distmguished from their technical skill. It is not the form of the plough which excites the attention of the folklorist, but the rites practised by the ploughman when putting it into the soil: not the make of the net or the harpoon, but the taboos observed by the fisherman at sea : not the architecture of the bridge or the dwelling, but the sacrifice which accompanies its erection and the social life of those who use it. Folklore, in fact, is the expression of the psychology of early man, whether in the