"Why did the folklorists not focus upon images of a green and ordered land centred upon the manor house, the parish church, the common fields, and the village feast, as the proponents of Merrie England had done? Why did they turn instead to evocations of pagan deities and archaic rites?
The question, although not it's resolution, becomes considerably plainer when the writings of Frazer, Murray, Alford, and thier colleagues and followers are treated as not a branch of scholarship but as one of creative literature."
-Roland Hutton 'The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain' pg.425