Now, as to the other class of people, namely, those who object to folklore in every shape and form, they may be roughly distinguished into different groups, such as those to whom folklore is an abomination, because they hold that it is opposed to the Bible, and those who regard it as too trivial to demand the attention of any serious person. I have no occasion for many words with the former, since nearly everything that is harmful in popular superstition has ceased in Wales to be a living force influencing one's conduct; or if this be not already the case, it is fast becoming so. Those therefore who condemn superstitions have really no reason to set their faces against the student of folklore: it would be just as if historians were to be boycotted because they have, in writing history--frequently, the more the pity--to deal with dark intrigues, cruel murders, and sanguinary wars. Besides, those who study folklore do not thereby help to strengthen the hold of superstition on the people. I have noticed that any local peculiarity of fashion, the moment it becomes known to attract the attention of strangers, is, one may say, doomed: a Celt, like anybody else, does not like to be photographed in a light which may perchance show him at a disadvantage. It is much the same, I think, with him as the subject of the studies of the folklorist: hence the latter has to proceed with his work very quietly and very warily. If, then, I pretended to be a folklorist, which I can hardly claim to be, I should say that I had absolutely no quarrel with him who condemns superstition on principle. On the other hand, I should not consider it fair of him to regard me as opposed to the progress of the race in happiness and civilization, just because I am curious to understand its history.
With regard to him, however, who looks at the collecting and the studying of folklore as trivial work and a waste of time, I should gather that he regards it so on account, first perhaps, of his forgetting the reality their superstitions were to those who believed in them; and secondly, on account of his ignorance of their meaning. As a reality to those who believed in them, the superstitions of our ancestors form an integral part of their history. However, I need not follow that topic further by trying to show how 'the proper study of mankind is man,' and how it is a mark of an uncultured people not to know or care to know about the history of the race. So the ancient Roman historian, Tacitus, evidently thought; for, when complaining how little was known as to the original peopling of Britain, he adds the suggestive words ut inter barbaros, 'as usual among barbarians.' Conversely, I take it for granted that no liberally educated man or woman of the present day requires to be instructed as to the value of the study of history in all its aspects, or to be told that folklore cannot be justly called trivial, seeing that it has to do with the history of the race--in a wider sense, I may say with the history of the human mind and the record of its development.