Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 17, 1906.djvu/539

 Reviews. 501

At last the Master arranges that her despised husband shall save her life, whereon she is reconciled to him.

Among miscellaneous matters may be noticed in No. 522 (p. 68) the account of the archer whose arrow traverses the lour corners of a square and returns to the hand of its owner — a suggestion of the boomerang which is still used by some of the tribes in South India. In the same tale we have a remarkable episode in which people spit on the matted hair of an ascetic and thus transfer their sins to him, with which the editor aptly compares Dr. Frazer's account of Divine Scapegoats {Golden Bough, iii. 120). We meet (p. loi) with an ascetic who is able to prevent rain from falling by looking angrily at the sky; and (p. 142) a very curious device to secure offspring for a childless queen. No. 536 is a quaint account of the wiles of women, in which (p. 239) we have what looks like a survival of polyandry. Here a queen when rescued shares her favours with her husband and her preserver. The matter is so arranged by the councillors on both sides to avoid a war. Both kings were quite content, " and built cities on opposite banks of the river and took up their abode there, and the woman accepted the position of chief consort to the pair of kings."

What I have said will be sufficient to show the value of this volume to all students of folklore, who will look forward to the completion of this great work which they owe to the learning and perseverance of a body of Cambridge scholars.

W, Crooke.

Simla Village Tales, or Folk-Tales from the Himalayas. By A. E. Dracott. London: John Murray, 1906.

The announcement of a collection of stories from the lower Himalayas naturally interests Indian folklorists, who hitherto possessed little from that region except the Russian tales of Minaef, which are not readily accessible. Mrs, Dracott has given us a pleasant budget of stories collected at first hand from