Folklore as an Historical Science

An argument that folklore is evidence, not entertainment: that custom, rite and tale preserve the history of peoples who left no documents, and that the historian who ignores them loses half his country. Gomme was one of the founders of the Folklore Society and wrote this in 1908 to make the case at full length. His method has been much corrected; the claim that ordinary practice is historical evidence has not. Fifty-two plates of peasant and village life by painters including Millet and Corot, from 1509 to 1907, show the ordinary customs and rural scenes Gomme argued were historical evidence.