Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/391

Rh appeal to folk-lorists. In fact, the only paper which specially concerns us is Dr. Westermarck's The Influence of Magic on Social Relationships. He shows how deeply the relations between parents and children, rich and poor, hosts and guests, may be influenced by the belief in the efficacy of blessings and curses, and in the Evil Eye, incidentally illustrating his thesis by his own experiences in Morocco. He follows Dr. Frazer in finding the distinctive mark of magic in the compelling power of the magician, as opposed to the supplicatory attitude of the religious votary, but it does not seem to strike him that the essence of the magical influence of the Evil Eye, for example, lies in its inherent mana, or natural uncanny power, not in the will of its possessor. In fact, we meet with cases where the power of the Evil Eye is supposed to be exercised involuntarily, and to be beyond the possessor's control. Neither does he seem to us to lay sufficient stress on the idea that the wandering stranger may be a deity in disguise, as a motive for his hospitable treatment. Altogether the subject of the paper seems rather to be the influence of superstitious belief (as for want of a better name we must call it) on social relationships, than of magic. But we need hardly say that it is an original and weighty article, based on the evidence of facts. In so short a space compression was unavoidable, but some day we hope Dr. Westermarck will work out the subject more fully. The custom of Sanctuary, for example, on which he touches, is almost unbroken ground.

, the third edition of the Imperial Gazetteer of India, will run to twenty-six volumes, including a companion atlas, in place of the previous fourteen. The whole work has been revised, and practically re-written, so as to incorporate the latest attainable information; only the historical account of the British Empire in India, by the late Sir W. W. Hunter, has been left as far as possible untouched. The single volume on The Indian Empire has been expanded into four: "Descriptive," "His-