Ultimately, however, this matters little,
because the tract is evidently drawn largely from oral traditions about
Robin, and so has a source common with that of much of Shakespeare's
fairy-lore.
Minor allusions, chiefly, to Robin Goodfellow, he may have met with in
various works[45] published before the assumed date of the play; but these,
again, add nothing which Shakespeare could not have learned just as well
from the superstitions of his day. What these were, and how he handled
them, we must now proceed to discuss.
In approaching a subject such as fairy-lore, it is necessary to prepare the
mind of the reader to go back to days not merely pre-Christian but even
pre-national. Our fairies can no more justly be called English than can our
popular poetry. Folk-lore--the study of the traditional beliefs and customs
of the common people--is a science invented centuries too late;[46] for
lack of evidence, it is largely theoretical. But it teaches its students
continually to look further afield, and to compare the tales, ballads,
superstitions, rites, and mythologies of one country with those of another.
The surprising results thus obtained must not make us think that one
country has borrowed from another; we must throw our minds back to a common
ancestry and common creeds. "The attempt to discriminate modern national
characteristics in the older stratum of European folk-lore is not only idle
but mischievous, because it is based upon the unscientific assumption that
existing differences, which are the outcome of comparatively recent
historical conditions, have always existed.
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