Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 14, 1903.djvu/103

 CORRESPONBEA^CE.

Folklore from the Hebrides : A Disclaimer.

(Vol. xiii., p. 29.)

In a paper entitled " More Folklore from the Hebrides," by Miss A. Goodrich-Freer, read at a meeting of 6th November, 1901, and published 25th March, 1902, occur the following words : "In the very few cases in which I have presented examples already published by Mr. Carmichael in his Car/nina Gadelica, it is because we have both borrowed from a common fount, the Rev. Allan Macdonald, &c."

I should be guilty of an injustice to my good friend Mr. Car- michael if I were to allow the statement to pass without comment. The author of Carnmia Gadelica borrowed nothing from me. I did put a book of notes at his disposal, as he courteously mentions in the introduction of his great work, but, as he tells us in the same paragraph, he was unable to make use of these notes, having so much material of his own. Mr. Carmichael has done more for the collection of Island folklore than any living man.

Allan M'Donald.

Eriskay, South Uist, ith /a?tuary, 1903.

The Fijian Fire-Walk

(Vol. xiii., p. 29.)

Mr. Alfred Haggard has kindly sent me this most recent account of the Fire-Walk in Fiji. As we learn from Miss Teneira Henry and other writers, the Fijian ceremony used to be one of First