ng the events of the saint's life.

PREFACE

If I have essayed to do in this book what should have been done by one
of the masters of the science of folklore--Mr. Frazer, Mr. Lang, Mr.
Hartland, Mr. Clodd, Sir John Rhys, and others--I hope it will not be
put down to any feelings of self-sufficiency on my part. I have
greatly dared because no one of them has accomplished, and I have so
acted because I feel the necessity of some guidance in these matters,
and more particularly at the present stage of inquiry into the early
history of man.

I have thought I could give somewhat of that guidance because of my
comprehension of its need, for the comprehension of a need is
sometimes half-way towards supplying the need. My profound belief in
the value of folklore as perhaps the only means of discovering the
earliest stages of the psychological, religious, social, and political
history of modern man has also entered into my reason for the attempt.

Many years ago I suggested the necessity for guidance, and I sketched
out a few of the points involved (_Folklore Journal_, ii. 285, 347;
iii. 1-16) in what was afterwards called by a friendly critic a sort
of grammar of folklore. The science of folklore has advanced far since
1885 however, and not only new problems but new ranges of thought have
gathered round it. Still, the claims of folklore as a definite
section of historical material remain not only unrecognised but
unstated, and as long as this is so the lesser writers on folklore
will go on working in wrong directions and producing much mischief,
and the historian will judge of folklore by the criteria presented by
these writers--will judge wrongly and will neglect folklore
accordingly.

I hope this book may tend to correct this state of things to some
extent. It is not easy to write on such a subject in a limited space,
and it is difficult to avoid being somewhat severely technical at
points. These demerits will, I am sure, be forgiven when considered by
the light of the human interest involved.

All studies of this kind must begin from the standpoint of a definite
culture area, and I have chosen our own country for the purpose of
this inquiry. This will make the illustrations more interesting to the
English reader; but it must be borne in mind that the same process
could be repeated for other areas if my estimate of the position is
even tolerably accurate. For the purpose of this estimate it was
necessary, in t