Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/371

 Reviews. 33 1

pages ; but the translation has been revised, and the " Origins " form only a small part of the collection now given.

The Magic Songs are not ancient as regards the time of their production, although they contain many old-fashioned ideas. Most of them are evidently later than the twelfth century and the conversion of the Finns to Christianity ; and it is almost certain that none are older than the Fifth Period, when the word " runo" was introduced into their language. Probably, as Mr. Aber- cromby thinks, " they received their greatest development in the " (very long) " interval between pure heathenism and pure Christianity."

The Magic Songs are of great interest to the student of litera- ture, for, as Professor Comparetti has conclusively shown in his work on the Kalevala, they are the original root of Finnish poetry, and there is no other instance of a poetic literature deve- loped from Shamanism. They are not stiff pieces of priestly ritual, like the Magic Songs of the Babylonians, for instance, but essentially popular. Two elements in their vitality are obvious. They are all beneficent, and they contain far higher poetic worth than the charms of any other people. In fact, many of them are pure lyrics which rival in beauty the products of literatures far more catholic than that of the Finns.

To the student of folklore they are interesting for many rea- sons, and not least because they offer a notable example of the way in which a people of foreign origin can assimilate and work up into original forms of their own the materials supplied by the folklore of their neighbours. For instance, there is nothing else- where quite like the Finnish " Origins," as Mr. Abercromby re- marks (vol. ii. p. 41), but the materials of which they are composed are not derived (except in some cases) from old Finnish myths, but are drawn generally from the current folklore of Europe. Mr. Abercromby gives a few specimens of East Finnish, Russian, and other charms for comparison with those of the Loitsw-unoja, but in order to complete the subject it would be necessary to traverse a far wider field. For instance, on p. 122, the reader will recognise, under a Finnish exterior, the famous Merseburger Gebet, or Dislocation Spell, a charm which ranges from India to Ireland ; and the Finnish charm for pleuri.sy is exactly similar in idea (as Professor Comparetti has pointed out) to an Anglo- Saxon gealdor, prior to the tenth century, which is given in