Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/325

 Reviews. 313

as a whole answers to no reality either in the present or the past. I fear too many English works on the folklore of foreign countries v.'ould be open to the same reproach, but the evils of the method are brought home to one when applied to one's own country.

Alfred Nutt.

Segnius Irritant, or Eight Primitive Folklore Stories. By W. W. Strickland. Robert Forder. 1896.

North-West Slav Legends and Fairy Stories. By the same. A sequel to " Segnius Irritant." Forder. 1897.

South-Slavonic Folklore Stories. With an Introductory Preface. By the same. Forder. 1899.

La Veill^e : Douze Contes Traduits du Roumain. Par Jules Brun. Avec une Introduction par Mdlle. Lucille Kitzo. Paris. In order to present a collective view of Slavonic fairy tales, Karel Jaromir Erben published a kind of anthology containing just one hundred such tales, in the very languages in which they had first been made known. Mr. Strickland is now endeavouring to make this anthology known to English folklorists, by as exact a translation as anyone could furnish who, though not too well acquainted with all the nuances of the Slavonic dialects, has yet mastered the general tenor of those dialects and languages. The flavour of the original frequently vanishes, though the narrative be correctly reproduced. The translation of the whole hundred tales, to be completed by a fourth still outstanding volume, seems to be the result of an afterthought. In the book mentioned first, Mr. Strickland pub- lished a selection of eight tales. They were chosen for the pur- pose of illustrating a new theory as to the origin of fairy tales, thus explained by the author himself (p. 103): "The analysis of these eight stories has, therefore, brought out into strong relief three important facts about them, (i) They are all solar high-latitude myths, and not low-latitude solar myths of the dawn. (2) They can all be traced to somewhere in the Arctic circle as their point of origin ; the total disappearance of the sun in winter and an excessive degree of frost and cold being essential elements in iheir composition. (3) The hero is 7iever the sun, but invariably the latent force of organic life, conceived as some-