Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 14, 1903.djvu/479

Rh personal rather than local, and the person of the trader or of the middle man becomes inviolable.

It is not the entertainment of guests but that of strangers as guests which is unfamiliar to the primitive man. In the early stages of this novel relation the stranger is still regarded as an enemy, but is treated as a friend for a limited time and for a specific purpose. Gradually the idea of extra-tribal hospitality extends beyond the herald and the trader till it embraces the wanderer and the suppliant. What was once dictated by self-interest and continued by custom becomes fixed by law, and when it is no longer legally obligatory, comes to be regarded as a moral or even as a religious act. Such is a brief outline of the argument of this interesting little book. The author gives full references and footnotes, and a lengthy list of authors cited; the copious table of contents does duty for an index.

this study, which, though dealing with the fairy element in Arthurian tales in general, is more especially concerned with the nature and evolution of Morgain le Fay, Miss Paton has given us the result of much reading and patient investigation. She has collected a large number of passages from widely differing sources, and her monograph, as a book of reference, will be of great value to the Arthurian student. But from a constructive point of view the study is not so satisfactory; both the views advanced and the methods employed are alike open to serious objection.

In the introductory chapter the writer sets forth the character and attributes of the Celtic fay, and does so with justice and accuracy; having established this framework she then proceeds to fit Morgain, as Celtic fay, into it. But is Morgain ab origine a Celtic fay? And if certain qualities of the fay have been postulated of her are we therefore bound to believe that all the essential characteristics must, at one time or another, have been hers? That is a question the answer to which must be proven and not