as
amulets, in the gold of Etruscan necklaces. In Perugia the arrow-heads
are still sold as charms. All educated people, of course, have long
been aware that the metal wedge is a celt, or ancient bronze axe-head,
and 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 used 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.[6] 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.[7] 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 wants 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-