author is assigned to
any given fragment or element it is generally safe to ignore the
tradition as the product of a later age; it does not deal with persons
nor, as a rule, with specific events; it has no date. It has therefore
to undergo a process of its own before it can be accepted as
historical evidence, and this process, if somewhat tedious, is all the
more necessary because of the tender material of which tradition is
composed. This will be made clearer if we understand exactly what the
different classes of tradition are and how they stand to each other.

Considering the materials of folklore in their true sense and not
their attributed sense then, we may proceed to say something as to
methods. Definitions and rules are needed. No student can attack so
immense a subject without the aid of such necessary machinery, and it
is because the attempt has been so often made ill-equipped in this
respect, that the science of folklore has suffered so much and has
remained so long unrecognised. Already, in dealing with the
relationship of history and folklore, one or two necessary
distinctions in terms have been anticipated. We have discovered that
the impersonal folk-tale is distinguished in a fundamental manner from
the personal or local legend, and that the growth of mythology is a
later process than the growth of myth. These distinctions need,
however, to be systematised and brought into relationship with other
necessary distinctions. The myth and the folk-tale are near
relations, but they are not identical, and it is clear that we need to
know something more about myth. Because mythic tradition has been
found to include many traditions, which of late years have been
claimed to belong to a definitely historical race of people, it must
not be identified with history. This claim is based upon two facts,
the presence of myth in the shape of the folk-tale and the
preservation of much mythic tradition beyond the stage of thought to
which it properly belongs by becoming attached to an historical event,
or series of events, or to an historical personage, and in this way
carrying on its life into historic periods and among historic peoples.
The first position has resulted in a wholesale appropriation of the
folk-tale to the cause of the mythologists; the second position has
hitherto resulted either in a disastrous appropriation of the entire
tradition to mythology, or in a still more disastrous rejection both
of the tradition