Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/281

 Reviews. 243

these tales were really at home everywhere. In some cases the Gypsies may have brought a finer version into a given district, in others they encountered finer versions, but all throughout Europe there was a common folk-tale protoplasm dating back to prehistoric times, and which would have developed much as we find it now even had there been no Gypsies and no Mongols, no Byzantine minstrels or Jewish scribes. It is the special merit of Celtic literature that it records scenes, incidents, modes of conception and expression which characterise European folk-narration at a date prior to most of the historic influences alleged to have affected it. We may argue endlessly and fruitlessly whether particular elements in Slavonic folk-lore are or are not due to the Gypsies ; in the case of Celtic tales we can often refer to Irish or Welsh analogues which we know to date back to the twelfth century at the latest.

If I attach less importance than does Mr. Groome to the Gypsy factor in the folk-tale problem, I none the less recognise its existence, and in common with all folklorists I thank him for an admirable collection of material, and for disquisitions which always charm even when they do not convince.

Alfred Nutt.

Aplech de Rondayes Mallorquines d'en Jordi Des Rec6 (Antoni Ma. Alcover, Pre.). Tom iij. Ciutat de Mal- lorca : Tip: Cat61ica de Sanjuan, Germans. 1897.

Father Alcover continues in the present volume the collection of folktales, of which a brief notice was given last year (vol. ix., p. 158). The present volume is marked by the same excellent characteristics as the two previous ones. Some of the stories have special features of interest. Es Fustet, for instance, offers a compound of Cat skin and Cap d Rushes; not, apparently, an example of a primitive undifferentiated type, but a union of the two. The phenomenon of the union of two or more tales occurs several times, and affords an interesting problem. Another volume will complete the collection. I shall look for it with great interest ; and once again I would plead with the author for a glossary, which would render the book more accessible to foreign

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