Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/445

 Reviews. 425

are not given, but as Mr. Morley evidently writes from the personal knowledge of a local resident, this is perhaps excusable ; and he records many interesting items and some uncommon ones. As a Shakespearian study, the chapter on Dialect is the best, but the whole makes up a very pleasing little picture of rural English Ufa and scenery, such as will be enjoyed by all folklorists who like to find their " lore " presented to them in its native atmosphere and surroundings. May it, without compromising the dignity of a learned society, be suggested to them as a suitable Christmas gift-book ?

All about the Merry Tales of Gotham. By Alfred Stapleton. Nottingham : R. N. Pearson. 1900. Illus- trated. 190 pp.

This is an examination into the connection of the famous noodle- stories with the village of Gotham, in Nottinghamshire. The author touches but lightly on the subjects of parallels and variants, and not at all on the question of the position of these and similar "drolls" among the folk-tales of the world. But he gives the text of the tales themselves, a full bibliography of them, and a reproduction of all allusions to them in literature, beginning with that in the Towneley Mysteries in the fifteenth century, which he reproduces in facsimile as the frontispiece. It is a very careful and conscientious bit of work, if not a very profound or scientific one. The author's own view is that the men of Gotham gained the reputation of fools and attracted to themselves the current noodle-stories of the world, through the ignorant and stupid judgments given at the Hundred Court for the Wapentake of Rushcliff, held at Rushcliff, in Gotham parish. One does not see why, if this were so, nearly every meeting-place of a hundred- court in the kingdom should not have gained the reputation of the habitation of fools. But this idea leads Mr. Sutherland to make personal investigations on the spot, and to give us an account, plan, and drawing of the Cuckoo Bush Mound, where the so-called " bush " grows on an old tumulus on the hill above the moated site of Rushcliff Hall ; a map of the parish ; details gleaned from old inhabitants ; and notes from the local Enclosure Award of 1806. This, the appendix, is the best part of the book, and the minute care, sagacity, and perseverance which Mr. Suther-