« Notes pour servir à l’histoire du folk-lore en France I et II »

In 1912, three years after Eugène Rolland’s death, Henri Gaidoz published a long article entitled « Eugène Rolland et son oeuvre littéraire » in Mélusine, the magazine they had founded together in 1877, retracing the life and work of his late friend. He violently attacked Paul Sébillot, the founder of the Société des Traditions populaires and the magazine of the same name, calling him the “Amerigo Vespucci of folklore” and accusing him of trying to claim Eugène Rolland’s merits, in particular the founding in 1882 of the Dîners de Ma Mère l’Oye (Dinners of My Mother Goose). Sébillot replied with an article, « Notes pour servir à l’histoire du Folk-lore en France », published in two issues in the February and April 1913 issues of the Revue des Traditions populaires. Henri Gaidoz asked for a right of reply in the June 1913 issue, which Sébillot published with a page of « Simples notes » to close the polemic without exhausting it. Here are the two issues of Sébillot’s article, Gaidoz’s response and the « Simples notes » that follow it.