Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/375

 Reviews. 335

the Folk-Lore Society. How great must have been the temptation to enlarge on his text, and to let the varied reading, which has formed the basis of his exposition, carry him away, those who have attempted similar work will best appreciate. He has not in every direction succeeded in compression to the extent desirable when writing for a public that soon tires; but, on the whole, he has had strength to resist the temptation so easily besetting a writer familiar with the ramifications of his subject.

Having reprinted the story at length, he gives abstracts of several important variants. He then briefly discusses the question of the diffusion of stories, coming to the safe conclusion, that " where coincidences in stories extend to minute detail, a common origin may be assumed, but that where only a like idea is present as the chief motif, without correspondences in incidental details, independent origin is probable." The meaning of some of the incidental features of the variants is next dealt with ; after which the author proceeds to the main thesis — that of barbaric ideas about names, and the taboos connected therewith. This occupies the bulk of the volume, and involves, of course, a consideration of magic, first through tangible, and then through intangible, things.

The sections on taboo might perhaps have been better arranged; and I wish that at the end of every chapter the author had sum- med up the results arrived at so far. Moreover, it would have added somewhat to the value of the exposition if he had stated his reasons for discarding Mr. Andrew Lang's suggestion that we have in the story simply an instance of a bet on an unusual name. As it is, while those to whom the subject is familiar will have no difficulty in following him, I fear that the readers for whom the book is mainly intended will sometimes be puzzled for want of an explicit statement. For such, it is needful to label one's conclu- sions in distinct and unmistakable form.

But these may be hypercriticisms ; and they leave after all an interesting book in which initiated as well as outside readers will find not a little both of entertainment and instruction.

E. Sidney Hartland.