Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/36

24 voyage are dramatically rendered; in another, a jaguar hunt is enacted; a fourth represents a troop of monkeys suddenly alarmed and angered; while in a fifth the action of a jaguar trying to get an agouti out of a pen is simulated. Mr. Thomas's collection of animal superstitions from Asia Minor illustrates, among other things, the interpretation of the appearance of animals when seen in dreams. Mrs. Gomme's harvest doll from Berwickshire, which she has kindly presented to the Society, throws light on those superstitions connected with the last standing sheaf which have been investigated by Mr. Frazer. Mr. Lovett's researches into the ancient and modern game of astragals and Miss Turner's demonstration of the variant now played in Derbyshire show how the games of children are correlated with the more serious play and perhaps the attempts at divination of ancient races. Miss Sykes's collection of Persian folklore enforces the lesson she draws that Persians of all ranks are like children in their love of stories. Mr. Aston's important paper on the Japanese Gohei, and the Ainu Inao, which has been published in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute, tells a wonderful story of the manner in which religious ideas are modified by time. In the old nature-worship of Japan, pieces of cloth and raw material for the manufacture of clothing were offered to the gods, who were supposed to derive as much pleasure from such gifts as human beings would experience. At first these propitiatory offerings consisted of so many ounces of hemp or bark fibre or so many pieces of cloth; but later they assumed a more specialised and conventional form, and were made with paper or cash. With the alteration of form came a change in the mental attitude of the worshipper. These offerings came to be looked upon, as they are now, as representatives of the deity. Instead of the worshipper bringing them to the shrine, they are now given out by the priest to the worshipper, who takes them home and sets them on his