Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/122

 166 time and place where, and the person by whom, every story was told, including his domicile of origin, present residence, occupation, and age.

The other collection is that of M. Sauvé. It includes the whole range of folk-lore, and the author seems to have undertaken his work in a thoroughly scientific spirit, and comprehending the difficulties of his task. The result is, on the whole, satisfactory, though for the purposes of the “storyologist” the arrangement is hardly to be commended. However, the tales are few, and they occupy a subordinate place in the scheme. Only two märchen are related, and a few sagas and beast-tales.

Lord Archibald Campbell has published, in the first volume of his Waifs and Strays of Celtic Tradition, some sixteen or seventeen sagas. Some of these are clan-traditions; and the editor notes as an evidence of their antiquity the fact that none of them makes any mention of firearms. These clan-traditions all relate to feuds and vendettas; and it is in one case expressly recorded that the descendants of one of the foes of the clan, in their account of the incident narrated, “altered this tradition and reversed the main facts.” Could we have had both sides of the story, here and in the other instances given, from the mouth of descendants, they would have formed most interesting and valuable studies in folk-tradition, and its ability to preserve the record of events long passed. It is worth while noting that this, or something like this, is what we do actually get in some of the Maori tales in Mr. White’s collection above referred to. The value of Lord Archibald Campbell’s sagas falls short of those in that they present only one version; but in saying this I am not pointing out their defect so much as laying stress on the remarkable character of Mr. White’s work. Other contents of the Waifs and Strays are variants of well-known fairy tales, stories of the Bruce and of Michael Scott, and the questions put by Finn to the maiden. Mr. Alfred Nutt’s wide