Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/237

 Reviews. 221

back as 200 years ago at the latest, constructed the infinitely more elaborate and more "literary" 7nanuscript "runs." Otherwise we must conclude that the manuscript " runs " were degraded in pre- cisely the same way in Cork, in Galway, in Argyleshire, and in Inverness-shire, a conclusion which strikes me as infinitely more unlikely, a priori, than the other one. But the question is one which can only be settled by trained linguistic examination of the originals. The particulars in which the various Irish dialects differ among themselves, and in which all differ from Gaelic as it has differentiated itself in Scotland during the last 300 years, are fairly well known. A careful examination, such as is now possible, of the same ^ra/ "run" in half a dozen different dialects of Gaelic, both Irish and Scotch, cannot fail to reveal whether it is, as I believe, older than the oldest similar manuscript " run " we possess. If it proves to be so, the further conclusion (which I maintained in the first paper I ever read before the Folk-Lore Society) follows as a matter of course ; viz., that the living folk-tale is substantially older than, and is presupposed by, the Irish manuscript romance of which we have examples dating back to the early sixteenth and even the fifteenth century.

I warmly commend M. Dottin's volume to all storyologists.

Alfred Nutt.

Short Notices.

Licht und Nebelgeister. Ein Beit rag zur Sagen- utid Mcirchen- kunde. Von Professor Karl Amersbach. Baden-Baden ; Kolblin. 1901.

This interesting paper is an attempt to determine the origin of the superstitions in reference to various kinds of apparitions. The author begins with the ignis fatuus. He has no difficulty in explaining as forms of either the ignis fatuus or St. Elmo's fire many fiery appearances which the imagination of the peasant has clothed in the form of animals of various kinds, or of human beings or evil spirits in their likeness. He ingeniously explains the apparition at night of a dark body with shining eyes, or accompanied by a light, as the negative after-impression produced