Ancient savagery Ancient savagery
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Savagery Civilisation

We thus arrive at some conception of the work to be accomplished by
and involved in comparative folklore. The results are worth the work.
They relate to stages of culture in the countries of civilisation
which are recoverable by no other means. The stages of culture are
practically lost to history. In ancient Greek and Roman history, and
in ancient Scandinavian history, there are priceless fragments of
information which tell us much. But these fragments are not the
complete story, and they belong to relatively small areas of European
history. Every nation has the right to go back as far in its history
as it is possible to reach. It can only do this by the help of
comparative folklore. In our own country we have seen how history
breaks down, and yet historical records in Britain are perhaps the
richest in Europe. The traditional materials known to us as folklore
are the only means left to us, and we can only properly avail
ourselves of these when we have mastered the methods of science which
it is necessary to use in their investigation.

FOOTNOTES:

[182] Mr. MacCulloch, in the title of his interesting book, the
_Childhood of Fiction_, has emphasised this mischievous idea. I am not
convinced to the contrary by the evidence he gives as to the popularity
of the folk-tale among all peoples (p. 2). Indeed, the book itself is
an emphatic testimony against its title. Mr. MacCulloch evidently began
with the idea that the folk-tale belonged to the domain of fiction.
Thus the opening words of his book are: "Folk-tales are the earliest
form of romantic and imaginative literature--the unwritten fiction of
early man and of primitive people in all parts of the world;" whereas
as he nears the end of his study he observes: "Thus, in their origin,
folk-tales may have had some other purpose than mere amusement; they
may have embodied the traditions, histories, beliefs, ideas, and
customs of men at an early stage of civilisation" (p. 451). Mr.
MacCulloch himself proves this to be the case, and it is therefore all
the more unfortunate that he should have stamped his very important
study with the