Cosquin, EMMANUEL,

Cosquin, EMMANUEL, an eminent French folklorist, was born at Vitry-le-François in Marne, where his father was a notary, as well as maire for nearly twenty years, 25th June 1841. He made his studies at the college of his native town, taking at the close of his course the diploma of licentiate in law, and here he has lived ever since. He has contributed many articles on religious questions to the Conservative and Catholic journal, Le Français (since November 1887 incorporated with Le Moniteur Universel), as well as numerous articles on more general questions to other newspapers and magazines, and has translated La vraie et la fausse Infallibilité des Papes (1873), and Le Concile du Vatican (1877), two works by Mgr. Fessler, general secretary of the Vatican Council. But his most important work was a series of articles from 1876 to 1881 in the pages of Romania, which at once arrested the attention of scientific folklorists everywhere. These were collected into two volumes, issued in 1886 as Contes populaires de Lorraine, perhaps the most really important contribution made to storiology since the classical collections of J. F. Campbell (1860-62) and Von Hahn (1864). The stories were taken from a limited region, and were for the most part poorer in detail than parallel versions found elsewhere, but they possessed in their scientific accuracy a value which belongs unhappily to but few collections of folk-tales available to the student. The theory of the origin and transmission of such stories that M. Cosquin supports in his admirable introduction and in his no less luminous than learned notes, is a development of that put forth by Benfey in the famous introduction to his translation of the Panchatantra (1859), that not only the bases of these stories but their combinations have been carried from India within the historical period. M. Cosquin's position has been vigorously assailed by Mr Lang and others, but has been as vigorously defended by himself. See FOLKLORE.