Folklore: Letter by William Thoms

 In 1846 William Thoms used the name Ambrose Merton to write a letter to ‘The Athenaeum’, a

popular literary journal.

 He proposed that a “good Saxon compound, Folklore,” be employed in place of such labels as

“Popular Antiquities and Popular Literature”.

 Thoms’ conception of folklore and his essentially enumerative definition: manners, customs,

observances, superstitions, ballads, proverbs, and so forth.

 The materials of folklore had been studied with rigor long before. An obvious example is the work of

the Grimm brothers whose “household tales” first appeared in 1812.

 During the middle and later portions of the nineteenth century, however, the discipline of folklore as

it has developed in the twentieth century began to appear.

 The increasing awareness of folklore was closely associated with nineteenth-century intellectual

currents of romanticism and nationalism.

 The glorification of the common man included a nostalgic interest in his speech and manners which

were believed to be dying out. Thoms’ phrases, “neglected custom,” “fading legend,” and

“fragmentary ballad,” reflect this view.

 There is more than a hint of nationalism in the very idea of suggesting that a “good Saxon

compound” be used to designate the lore of a people.

 Saxon compound refers to the original Germanic Saxon tribes.

 Thoms cites John Grimms’ efforts of collecting the myths that constitute the Deutschland – Deutsch

Mythologie.