German colony, later amplified by the immigrations of 1710, 1818, and 1848. From that centre small German-American groups have since spread in different directions.2

The complexity of these primary sources has in recent years been greatly increased by various movements of population within America, and by the influx and random dissemination of the motley crowds of European immigrants.3

We may also refer to the ubiquitous - especially in the Southand historically important African element, which has become the vehicle of much European lore, while preserving various native features.

Ethnologists, in their studies of American Indians, have observed foreign or European elements in the aboriginal traditions, arts, and customs. These we shall call "secondary sources." Barely a few hundred thousand in the United States and Canada, the pure-blooded or half-breed people in Mexico and Central America, comprise more than half of the total population. The Spaniards and the Mexicans, having now mingled together for many centuries, must have reciprocated in the exchange of each other's culture. The native Mexicans, more particularly, seem to have retained within their own lore an immense stock of old Spanish traditions. To a lesser degree the scanty tribes of the North have assimilated various attributes of their white invaders. Decorative patterns, technical devices, and folk-tales, for instance, are now mixed promiscuously with native themes.

The problem of unravelling the ancient data from recent interpolations has proved an intricate one; and, the recorded Indian materials being bulky, they are bound some time to loom large in the attention of analytic scholars. How could one safely assert that a narrative or a design is American or European in origin, when barely any material from either side is at hand for comparative purposes? Although the Spanish and French, much more than the English, primary sources of oral tradition, have invaded the native field, who could, without further materials, define precisely their respective spheres of influence, especially with regard to the Western Plains? How and whence came in America, for instance, the widely known. stories of the wily Fox or Rabbit playing tricks upon his gluttonous.

1 Beliefs and Superstitions of the Pennsylvania Germans, by E. M. Fogel (1915), p. 3: "It would seem a conservative estimate to say that more than 500,000 people in Pennsylvania alone understand Pennsylvania German and that 300,000 speak the dialect." "The more distinctive Pennsylvania German counties. . . have a population of more than one and one quarter millions." Mr. W. J. Wintemberg, of the Anthropological Division, Geological Survey, Ottawa, has made an extensive collection of folk-materials among the German-Canadians, which may some time be published through this Society. "The Portuguese Element in New England," by H. R. Lang (JAFL 5 [1892] : 9-18). For instance, the French population of New England now is about equal to that of the Province of Quebec.

and silly cousin the Wolf? While many episodes in that cycle are found both in the oral narratives and in mediæval literature of Europe ("Le roman du Renard"), they also occur in the traditions of Central Africa. The question, therefore, is, Were they introduced here by the Spaniards, the Negroes, the French, the Dutch,' or any other? The list of similar problems is now growing into an exceedingly long one. A satisfactory solution may be reached only when we have secured enough parallel versions or examples of the same themes among the different races of America.2

We should also bear in mind that some intrusive elements in the native lore may go back to foreign sources no longer surviving independently on this continent. The former Russian occupation of Alaska and the adjacent strip of the Northwest Coast, the more ancient Scandinavian colonization of Greenland, the Dutch and Scandinavian settlements at Port Royal (1562), Jamestown (1607), and in the New Netherlands and New Sweden, on the Delaware River (1638-55), are quite likely to have left obscure traces in the traditions of the Indian populations.

Let us now revert, for closer analysis, to the primary sources of British-American and French-American folk-tradition.

Although abundant British folk-lore materials have been gathered in the United States since 1888, and published chiefly in “The Journal of American Folk-Lore," far more remains to be done. Even in the field of the folk-song and ballad, where such excellent results have been obtained by many noted students and collectors, the possibilities are too vast and indefinite yet to be estimated. From reliable in

1 The Boers in South Africa, and their Zulu neighbors, are said to possess a part of the same cycle.

2 Negative evidence should never be accepted, except after exhaustive observation. See A Phonetical Study of the Eskimo Language, by William Thalbitzer (Meddelelser om Grønland, 31 : 34-35); The Ammassalik Eskimo, by the same author (Ibid., 39 [1914]: 332); An Anthropogeographical Study of the Origin of the Eskimo Culture, by H. P. Steensby (Saertryk af Meddelelser om Grønland, 53: 218). — C. G. Leland, in The Algonquin Legends of New England (1884), insisting in a rather uncritical way upon the reminiscences in Eskimo and Algonkin mythology of Scandinavian themes, said (p. 11), "When we learn that the Norsemen, during the three centuries of occupation of Greenland, brought away many of the marvelous tales of the Eskimo, it is not credible that they left none of their own."

Fogel, Beliefs and Superstitions of the Pennsylvania Germans, p. 1. The Dutch and German elements are still conspicuously present in the neighborhood of Halifax; and a German dialect is spoken in Lunenberg County, Nova Scotia.

6 Among other authors, we note Child, Newell, Belden (Missouri), Barry (Irish material, Kentucky, etc.). Kittredge, Brown (North Carolina), Pound (Nebraska), A. Smith (Virginia), Perrow (South), Peabody, Tolman, Lomax (cowboy songs), Wyman (Kentucky), and Campbell and Sharpe. See bibliography in "Ballads and Songs," edited by G. L. Kittredge (JAFL 30 [1917] : 283-369); also "English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians," by Olive D. Campbell and Cecil J. Sharp (1917), 336-337.

formants we have recently learned that there is a large number of come-all-ye's, sailors' chanties, and other songs to be recorded in the Maritime Provinces of Canada, in Ontario, and in the lumber-camps of Quebec, Wisconsin, and Michigan. For instance, no less than three hundred and fifty old-time songs were — according to a list made up some time ago — included in the repertory of a single Irish singer, William O'Connor, Sr., now aged eighty-three, of North Low, Quebec. In the very city of Ottawa we now have at our disposal a singer that knows "a large number of shanty come-all-ye's." Newfoundland,1 Cape Breton, and Nova Scotia would also furnish-so we have repeatedly been told - an incredible number of sailors' chanties and other songs. The number of good singers available, we feel sure, is still much larger than could ever be fully utilized by folk-lorists.

If nursery and play rhymes and current superstitions have already received considerable attention here, it would be a mistake to believe that these subjects no longer deserve the attention of the collector. As to English folk-tales and ancient technology or material culture, it is amazing to realize that practically nothing has yet been achieved. These very subjects have apparently fallen out of sight. Barely a few English narratives have, since 1888, been published in the "Journal of American Folk-Lore;" and no attempt has apparently been made at the study of British folk-ethnography: that is, the study of old technical processes, useful arts, and ways of living.

The existence of an antiquated technology, especially in the older communities, is still remembered by many people, and several vestiges of it have not yet disappeared. Folk-tales and narratives recited in English, on the other hand, were a few years ago to be heard in the lumber-camps of Wisconsin, Ontario, and New Brunswick. At least, so we have been told by many of our French-Canadian informants who usually spent their winters there.

The field of Gaelic-American lore, language, and custom is one of extraordinary interest, although it has been ignored or neglected by those who should naturally be interested in it. If there may not be much Irish-Gaelic preserved on this continent, such is not the case with the Scottish branch, which is still thriving in large sections of Nova Scotia, in Cape Breton, and to a lesser degree in Glengarry County, Ontario. (A paper on this subject is being prepared at our request by Mr. Edward J. O'Brien of Boston, who had good opportunities for making observations in parts of that field.)

We may speak with greater familiarity of the French element in America, as it has recently come under our active observation. Louisiana has already furnished to Alcée Fortier, one of the founders of our

The late Bernard Robertson of Bridgewater, N.S., has made a collection - still unpublished of Newfoundland come-all-ye's.

Society, a small number of Créole tales, published in our Memoirs and Journal. Some folk-songs and anecdotes have been gathered independently in Quebec; but those interesting specimens did not suffice to stimulate research in probably one of the most fertile fields of folk-tradition in existence. Varied, and indeed inexhaustible, are the traditional resources of the distinct Quebec and Acadian French groups; and abundant materials might, we presume, be rescued from oblivion in the Louisiana, Detroit, and the Western districts.

When closely scrutinized, the Quebec section, for one, does not appear to be absolutely homogeneous. With insufficient materials, we have already noticed local diversities in the familiar stock of tales, songs, anecdotes, in the technology and the mode of living, and in the linguistics. This is not surprising, as the three original settlements of Quebec proper, Three-Rivers, and Montreal, were, on the whole, established by different immigrants, often from different French provinces (especially Normandy and the Loire River provinces), under leaders sometimes in conflict with one another. The traditional rivalry resulting from ancestral divergences had not disappeared thirty years ago, when Quebec laborers in Montreal were sometimes ostracized by their local confrères.

The Quebec and Montreal regions have recently engaged the attention of some of us, particularly M. Massicotte and myself. The collection of a huge amount of data 1 from over half a dozen localities has brought to our mind many complex problems of general interest bearing on the origin and diffusion of ancient traditions disseminated under different forms in many countries. Many of those problems could not be solved without systematic and all-round investigations. in other districts in Canada, or in the provinces of France from which the ancestors came.

In the Quebec group proper, there are several spheres, the characteristic traits of which are only vague to us. Many deep-seated peculiarities distinguish from each other the people of the north and south shores of the St. Lawrence below Quebec; of Beauce and Gaspé Counties, for instance. To what are these due? To recent evolution and differentiation within Canada, or to conservation of ancient cultural forms? Although our impression in some cases, definite knowledge leads us to believe that conservatism is the chief factor, more extensive surveys will enable us to disentangle what is modern from what is ancient.

Some people believe that the French oral traditions in Canada. have remained undisturbed since the time of the English conquest (1750). All relations with the mother country being abolished, the

1 About 3000 versions of folk-songs, 300 folk-tales and anecdotes, and much information on customs, beliefs, and material culture, have, in the past four years, been recorded.

popular lore here would have been preserved pure and archaic; that is, it would be that of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in France. That theory is, indeed, true to quite an extent. It might be added, that, the immigration having on the whole ceased by order of the King about 1673, the bulk of the imported traditions was already here before that date; but grave errors would result from such a presumption, if it were relied upon to fix the age of any data gathered indiscriminately. Even when parallels are also found in France, it is not always safe to say that the Canadian variants were introduced here before 1673 or 1750. Any accidental contact since is likely to have led to oral exchanges of ancient knowledge. We ourselves have noted several such cases. For instance, about 1830, two carpenters, named Bourget and Maufond, came from France, and worked for the Hudson Bay Company in the Tadoussac region. Two of our old singers, Hovington and "Louis l'aveugle," dictated to us several old songs which they had learned from them years ago. In the conservative and rather undisturbed county of Charlevoix we recorded, in 1916, what is likely to be a German folk-tale. An old woman named Bouchard recited a version of "The Three Wishes" resembling closely that of Grimm, and the like of which had not yet been recorded in Canada, except among the Ontario Pennsylvania German. Our inquiry brought out the fact that over sixty years ago the story-teller had learned it at Saint-Fabien (Rimouski), her birthplace, from a man named Berger, belonging to one of three families nicknamed "les Allemands" (the Germans). Although their German origin was only a memory, it may be presumed that the great-grandfathers were German soldiers of the Hesse-Darmstadt or Meurons regiments in the British Army, disbanded in Canada during or after the war of independence. The tale of "The Three Wishes" in Canada is therefore no doubt derived from an intrusive German source. Instances of this kind are probably many. When other information fails, it may safely be deduced that a particular datum is ancient in Canada when its divergent variants are archaic and widely known. An occasional song, such as the "Complainte du juif errant," may be comparatively modern while known almost everywhere; but all the versions are similar in every respect, and do not differ materially from those recorded in France. A common printed or manuscript source probably accounts for this exceptional case of diffusion.

Taking it for granted that vast stores of European folk-tradition are available in America, we may now ask whether a genuine attempt should be made to record at least a part of what is doomed to eventual oblivion; and, if so, what plan and methods are best adapted to that purpose.