This is the lesson, I think, of what we call folklore or anthropology,
which to many seems trivial, to many seems dull. It may become the most
attractive and serious of the sciences; certainly it is rich in strange
curiosities, like those mystic stones which were fingered and arrayed by
the pupils in that allegory of Novalis. I am not likely to regret the
accident which brought me up on fairy tales, and the inquisitiveness
which led me to examine the other fragments of antiquity. But the poetry
and the significance of them are apt to be hidden by the enormous crowd
of details. Only late we find the true meaning of what seems like a mass
of fantastic, savage eccentricities. I very well remember the moment
when it occurred to me, soon after taking my degree, that the usual ideas
about some of these matters were the reverse of the truth, that the
common theory had to be inverted. The notion was "in the air," it had
already flashed on Mannhardt, probably, but, like the White Knight in
"Alice," I claimed it for "my own invention."

These reminiscences and reflections have now been produced as far as
1872, or thereabouts, and it is not my intention to pursue them further,
nor to speak of any living contemporaries who have not won their way to
the classical. In writing of friends and teachers at Oxford, I have not
ventured to express gratitude to those who still live, still teach, still
are the wisest and kindest friends of the hurrying generations. It is a
silence not of thanklessness, but of respect and devotion. About
others--contemporaries, or juniors by many years--who have instructed,
consoled, strengthened, and amused us, we must also be silent.