Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/375



TOOK advantage of an Easter holiday-trip to Edinburgh to devote a few hours to the examination of a portion of the MSS. bequeathed to the Advocates’ Library by the late J. F. Campbell, the collector and editor of the Popular Tales from the West Highlands, and of the Leabhair na Feinne. I reckoned that to work carefully through those MSS. bearing upon folk-lore and upon Celtic antiquities, and, by indexing them, to render their contents accessible to students, would require at least a month’s steady labour. The following notes must thus only be considered as an attempt to draw the attention of folk-lorists to this mine of unworked matter; and no conclusion respecting the richness and value of the collection must be drawn from my silence respecting those portions which I had not time to examine. I may say at once, however, that the hopes I entertained of finding English versions of the many variants and unpublished tales to which Campbell refers in the P. T. were not realised. I came across a considerable deal of unpublished English, but chiefly stories about fairies, local and clan traditions. How many of the unpublished Gaelic tales, of which a list is given at the end of P. T., vol. iv, may be found in the collection I cannot of course say, but I incline to believe very few. It would thus appear that, besides the MSS. in the Advocates’ Library, there must be another batch elsewhere. If this is so, I would appeal to the owner to allow examination at the hands of a competent Gaelic scholar.