Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 17, 1906.djvu/125

Rh 21. Hartland's Science of Folk-tales. 22. Clouston's Popular Tales and Fictions. 23. Tawney's Katha Sarit Sagara. 24. Grimm's Household Tales. 25. Temple & Steel's Wideawake Stories. 26. Miss Stokes' Indian Fairy Tales.

This list is of course specially intended for would-be students of Folk-Lore in India.

It will be observed that this list does not contain much relating to some of the very important subjects which may be described as lying between Folk-Lore on the one hand and Archæology on the other. It does not include any work which deals specifically with the history of institutions, primitive law (whether customary and unwritten, or codified); or primitive economics, a subject which, as I fancy Mr. Gomme pointed out in Folk-Lore some years ago, had hardly ever been touched, at least in England. Doubtless to the above list one might add Maine's works, and now Dr. Frazer's recent work on the early history of the kingship. But where are these matters being investigated in England, and what books on them can be obtained?

My justification for inviting assistance in this matter is the great practical importance of it. I think that attempts to interest busy officials and practical men in folk-tales must fail, and that such people will rarely find time to take up epigraphy or numismatics, which must be left to specialists. But I do think that a good many people would be interested in the history of practical politics, and I should Uke to be able to refer enquirers to any accessible works on the subject. H. A. Rose.

In the thirteenth-century Chinese novel, Shui hu chuan, a "writing of divorce" is authenticated by the husband stamping on it the impress of his hand smeared with ink.