The impact of recent anthropological thought and practice upon Lang's approach to folklore is further exemplified in the two following pieces. The first, ‘New System Proposed’, is taken from Myth, Ritual and Religion, 2 vols (1887; Longmans, Green and Co., second edition 1899) – a major two-volume study that sets out to provide scholarly explanations for the existence of apparently irrational elements in mythological and religious traditions. Lang surveys ‘past systems of mythological interpretation’ (p. 29) from the classical period through to the nineteenth century that have sought to explain away irrational elements in religion by resolving ‘nonsense and blasphemy’ into ‘some harmless or even praiseworthy explanation’ (p. 17). ‘Each of these systems had its own amount of truth,’ Lang judges, ‘but each certainly failed to unravel the whole web of tradition and of foolish faith’ (p. 30). In the second chapter, extracted in this section, he begins to unfold his own view, supported by recent anthropological research, that these irrational elements are in fact ‘survivals’ from the period of savagery.

Myth, Ritual and Religion was first published in August 1887; the text was then revised – significantly in some places – for the ‘Silver Library’ edition of February 1899. The objective of the revisions was to incorporate newly available anthropological research, to reflect developments in Lang's own thinking, and to excise a ‘fragment or two of controversy’ (p. xv; for discussion see Richard Dorson, The British Folklorists: A History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), pp. 170-1). The passage extracted here is taken from the second edition. Lang made some minor changes to the 1887 text. Typographic changes and changes to punctuation have not been noted here, but textual changes are recorded in endnotes.

The second piece in this section is from Lang's extended essay, ‘Household Tales; Their Origin, Diffusion, and Relations to the Higher Myths’, which prefaces the two-volume translation of the Grimm's Household Tales (London: George Bell and Sons, 1884) published by Margaret Hunt.