that it
was not fairies, but the forgotten peoples of this island who used the
arrows with the tips of flint. Thunder is only so far connected with
them that the heavy rains loosen the surface soil, and lay bare its long
hidden secrets.

There is a science, Archaeology, which collects and compares the material
relics of old races, the axes and arrow-heads. There is a form of study,
Folklore, which collects and compares the similar but immaterial relics
of old races, the surviving superstitions and stories, the ideas which
are in our time but not of it. Properly speaking, folklore is only
concerned with the legends, customs, beliefs, of the Folk, of the people,
of the classes which have least been altered by education, which have
shared least in progress. But the student of folklore soon finds that
these unprogressive classes retain many of the beliefs and ways of
savages, just as the Hebridean people use spindle-whorls of stone, and
bake clay pots without the aid of the wheel, like modern South Sea
Islanders, or like their own prehistoric ancestors. {11a} The student of
folklore is thus led to examine the usages, myths, and ideas of savages,
which are still retained, in rude enough shape, by the European
peasantry. Lastly, he observes that a few similar customs and ideas
survive in the most conservative elements of the life of educated
peoples, in ritual, ceremonial, and religious traditions and myths.
Though such remains are rare in England, we may note the custom of
leading the dead soldier's horse behind his master to the grave, a relic
of days when the horse would have been sacrificed. {11b} We may observe
the persistence of the ceremony by which the monarch, at his coronation,
takes his seat on the sacred stone of Scone, probably an ancient fetich
stone. Not to speak, here, of our own religious traditions, the old vein
of savage rite and belief is found very near the surface of ancient Greek
religion. It needs but some stress of circumstance, something answering
to the storm shower that reveals the flint arrow-heads, to bring savage
ritual to the surface of classical religion. In sore need, a human
victim was only too likely to be demanded; while a feast-day, or a
mystery, set the Greeks dancing serpent-dances or bear-dances like Red
Indians, or swimming with sacred pigs, or leaping about in imitation of
wolves, or holding a dog-feast, and offering dog's flesh to the gods.
{12} Thus the student of folklo