Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/138

120 of the pages, and interspersed with innumerable scraps of paper containing notes, additions, and corrections. As Sir Edgar himself says in his preface, the items were written down as collected with no attempt at classification." With a public spirit worthy of imitation, the Royal Court of Guernsey made arrangements for the publication of the MSS., and Miss Edith Carey was prevailed upon to undertake the task of editing them. This task she has performed with the greatest care and thoroughness, transcribing the notes with her own hand, placing them "under their different headings, as recommended by the Folk-Lore Society," enriching them with numerous illustrations from photographs and drawings, and with additional notes collected in Guernsey and Sark by herself and her cousin, the late Miss Ernestine Le Pelley, a descendant of the former Seigneurs of Sark. These additions comprise some of the most interesting portions of the book, for while Sir Edgar is occasionally prosy and longwinded, nay, indeed, discursive, Miss Carey is always clear, terse, and definite. In the modesty which so strikingly characterises her editorship she has recorded her own portion of the work in tiny "pearl" type, while Sir Edgar's stands nobly forth in stately "pica," i.e. a size larger than the largest type used in printing Folk-Lore, while pearl is four sizes smaller than our smallest type, and much too small for the comfort of most readers. Sir Edgar's own footnotes are given in a medium type, with the result that three kinds of type, violently contrasted, are frequently displayed on the same page. The effect is both unsightly and inconvenient; moreover, the book is too heavy to hold in the hand and requires a desk. It is a pity that it has been got up in a style so little calculated to recommend it, for, barring a little old-fashioned prolixity, it deserves to hold a high place among local collections.

Miss Carey must be congratulated on the skill with which she has reduced her chaotic materials to order. She has classified them under the following heads: Festival Customs, Local Customs, Prehistoric Monuments, Natural Objects, Chapels and Holy Wells, Fairies, Demons and Goblins, the Devil, Ghosts and Prophetic Warnings, Witches and Witchcraft, Charms, Spells, and Incantations, Folk Medicine and Leechcraft, Story Telling, Historical Reminiscences, Nursery Songs and Children's Games, Superstitions Generally, Proverbs and Weather-lore; besides an Appendix containing (inter alia) several ballads and songs in the dialect of