Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/286

 248 Correspondence.

Andromache, and said : " Andromache ? andro-mache means a fight of men ! " The tone of your reviewer reminds me of the scepticism shown by the gentleman-geographers of the Royal Geographical Society, when Mr. H. M. Stanley, who did not belong to their ranks, came home and said he had found Living- stone ! " Impossible ! who is he ? "

Geo. St. Clair.

[I am sorry that Mr. St. Clair should think that he has been treated with "scant courtesy" and an "air of disdain." The care- ful examination of his book implied in the review, and the fact that it is stated to be " brimful of learning," ought to have shown him that such could not have been the case. But —

(i) Bad or indifferent authorities mean false or doubtful state- ments, and arguments that rest on such statements are neces- sarily of little value.

(2) One may have a first-hand acquaintance with the language, literature, and religion of a country without having actually visited it. The slips in Mr. St. Clair's book, however, show that he does not possess this very needful preliminary to the investigation of one of the most difficult problems of Egyptology. Had he done so he would never, for instance, have made such an elementary mistake as to say (p. 316) that it is a "recorded fact that Abydos was formerly called Tini, which the Greeks converted into This or Thinis."

(3) Mr. St. Clair asks us to accept a theory which is incon- sistent with the conclusion to which the greatest living scholars who have devoted their lives to the study of the ancient Egyptian monuments have come by different roads. But he can hardly expect that in such a matter the opinion of a " layman " should be preferred to that of an expert.

The Reviewer.]

Death-warnings.

(Vol. X., p. 122.)

The Irish idea that a pigeon entering a house is a death-sign is well known in many English counties. Not long ago I was in- formed that when my sister Edith was dying, in 1874, a wounded pigeon entered the saddle-room, which died after being captured. Two other instances of the "warning" occuriring in connection