Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/444

 424 Reviews.

liberty of marrying a Bedd Gelert young woman, and who imported the story, and even, it is said, built the grave, to attract customers to his inn. After this we get a great deal of really excellent matter about witches, fairies, ghosts, goblins, and apparitions of all kinds, mainly derived from the collections of a native of the place, Mr. William Jones, one of the many intellectual Welshmen of humble birth. Some part of his notes has already been made use of by Professor Rhys in his papers on Welsh Fairy Tales in Y Cym- jfirodor, vol. v. The number of stories localised in one parish is surprising, but we are exacting, and are inclined to complain that we are told nothing of any institutions or customs, agricultural, legal, or social, beyond incidental mentions of ball-play in the churchyard on Sundays in the early part of the century, and of removing from the farmhouse to a " hafod," or upland shieling, during hay-harvest, and a single instance of the peculiar Welsh system of patronymics. Yet many ancient institutions must surely have been preserved in a parish so isolated, that up to 1805 no road passed through it, and no wheeled vehicle had been seen in it ; sledges being used to bring in the hay and peat. A sequel, remedying this omission, and confined to folklore only, would be welcome. Whatever else is unrecorded, however, the Welsh character is unconsciously revealed to us in every page, with its literary and intellectual tastes, its strong antiquarian bent, its local patriotism, and, withal, its quaint self importance. The type has not altered since Shakespeare drew Fluelen.

Shakespeare's Greenwood. By George Morley. D. Nutt, 1900. Square i6mo., xx., 289 pp. Illustrated. Price 5s.

This dainty little volume takes us into Shakespeare's native county, and shows us the scenery, the people, the language, and the ideas amid which his youth was passed. In so doing, it gives us a good deal of information on the folklore of Warwickshire, and though the author is not a scientific folklorist, as is shown at once by his classification of Superstitions, Customs, and Folklore in separate chapters, yet he contrives to avoid the chief faults of the non-scientific— embellishment and guesswork. Authorities