Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/213

 Reviews. 203

maid, and the others are named in order. They prepared the bride-vat. This was an ell high, in form a crown or a house, of twisted box- or fir-twigs, decked with gilded apples and tinsel, yellow, red, and golden streamers, and bunches of gilded nuts. It was furnished with arms, on which an egg, a cock, and a little bridal bed were placed. At the top was a cradle. Inside, it was filled with rolls of bread, with fruit and nuts, occasionally pewter I)lates. Fifty candles completed its splendour. Sometimes it took the shape of a ship with sails, which was represented as coming from Mount Lebanon and desirous of finding a haven in the house where the wedding was celebrated. The presentation of this bride-vat was part of the ceremonies ; and the Braut- fi/hrer made at the presentation a long speech in verse, accom- panied in a low voice by the whole party. It was very unlucky for him to stunible or forget the words. After the feast there was of course the dance. When midnight was past, the bride's crown was sometimes danced off, and there ensued a wild struggle between married and unmarried for the possession of the bride. The married party being successful, the crown was replaced by a hood worn by young married women, and the dance continued until morning.

The old-fashioned houses without chimneys are carefully de- scribed, and a view of one of them given. The Hertha-see is also described, and the purely literary and modern origin of the name and tradition traced. Dr. Haas has made a very useful contri- bution to our knowledge of the island and its antiquities. An earlier collection by him of the folktales of Riigen was noticed, when it came out, in Folk-Lore, vol. iii., p. 119.

E. Sidney Hartland.

Naturgeschichtliche Volksmaerchen aus nah und fern. Gesammelt von Oskar Daenhardt. Leipzig, 1898.

Herr Daenhardt's volume is devoted to those folk-stories which offer a serious or an absurd legend in explanation of the remarkable characteristics of some natural object. If anyone wishes to know why the moon waxes and wanes, how there come