Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/503

 Reviews. 461

English ship stranded at Bergen. There is much to notice for English folklorists all through the book, and Mr. Craigie's brief notes are both helpful and concise. A good index adds much value to the whole.

F. Y. P.

^i6ds6gur og MuNNMiELi. Nytt Safn. Part I. By J6n Thorkelsson. 8vo, pp. iv. 450. Two illustrations. Reykjavik. 1899.

This most excellent book contains a valuable collection of un- printed folktales and legends and traditional stories from Iceland. It is a necessary appendix to J6n Arnason's grand compendium and to the good little book Olafur Davidsson brought out in 1895. Its editor, who has added much from his own materials, is the well-known scholar to whom we are indebted for a masterly work on the Icelandic Ri'mur (alliterative ballads originally used for dances), and for much research into post-Reformation and late medieval Icelandic literary history. It is a proof of the extra- ordinary Hterary activity of this little state of some 70,000 in- habitants, that its native scholars have had so vast a body of folk- lore collected and printed within this century. There is probably no country in the world that has rendered its folklore so accessible as Iceland. Nowhere (save perhaps in Finland, where folklore has re-created a nation) has such trouble been taken to collect, and such pains to collect in the proper way and to ensure the proper pubHcation of the results, and this by the labours of a few devoted and enlightened scholars. It would be impossible within our limits to analyse in any useful way the manifold contents (250 various items) of this well-printed and well-edited book. It is sufficient to say that its place is secure beside the master work of J6n Arnason himself. We shall all look forward eagerly for the promised second part.

F. Y. P.