Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/385

 Reviews. 345

be able to lead a sinless, sexless, strifeless existence. The two brothers start upon their task, but are interrupted by Sedit. Learn- ing the object of their labours, he points out what a mistaken ideal is that of Olelbis, and how much better it would be for men to love and die, to toil and strive, to warm themselves with human passions rather than to vegetate in bloodless, eventless passivity. The brothers are persuaded, abandon their task, and that is why the world of men is full of strife and toil and love, is the world we know. The stones of the unfinished stairway are there to this day ; the brothers flew back to Olelbis ; Sedit, essaying to follow them, fell back to the ground and was crushed to pieces.

Now I found it difficult to believe that this marvellous tale was imagined to account for a great mass of natural rock stairway, or to explain the metamorphosis of the Hus brothers into turkey buzzards, or of Sedit into the coyote. On the contrary, it seems self-evident to me that it is the last term of a long philosophic and literary evolution, that the choice of the coyote as the Wintu Mephistopheles is due to his presence in countless tales of a far simpler character, as an embodiment of shifty cunning. The attributes which fitted the beast for his Satanic role must have been noted and utilised for dramatic purposes long before it occurred to the Indians to wonder why the coyote was different from himself and to invent a tale accounting for the difference.

The tales lend themselves to endless comment, but I must be content to have emphasised their sahent interest according to their collector, and indicated my dissent from his theory. I can only say that, alike from the complexity of the problems which are involved, and for the originality and significance of the tales them- selves, this is perhaps the most remarkable collection of stories yet made in the New World. Students of Myth will look forward with keen eagerness to the future volumes promised by Mr. Curtin ; they will also expect him to equip them with that apparatus of elucidation and comment which he alone is qualified to supply.

Alfred Nutt.