Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/123

Rh become in future years enthusiastic recruits for the Folk-Lore Society!

The second part of the Kurdish Collections of MM. Prym and Socin consists of tales and songs in the dialect of Bohtan translated by M. Socin. Nearly all of these are from written originals, and most of them are tribal or religious sagas. Literary influences have been at work on them for many a year; but they are by no means without interest for students of the problems of the diffusion of folk-tales. The wild exaggerations of oriental fancy, still more marked perhaps in the Siberian collection published by M. Radloff, in whose footsteps the present editor walks, are here abundantly exemplified. The poetical provenance of the tales is evidenced by the sad catastrophes which close them, as well as by the verbiage wherein they are clad. The first tale is noticeable as repeating the incident which opens the immortal story of "Camaralzaman and Badoura".

A book half the size of Mr. Parkinson's Yorkshire Legends and Traditions, omitting all the verses and rhetorical clap-trap, might be made of some scientific value if care were taken to specify the source of each tradition, and, where possible, to obtain it direct from the mouths of the natives. Many of the traditions are still living, as Mr. Nicholson has shown in his Folk-lore of East Yorkshire—a better book in every way, though one that still leaves much to be desired as to exactness of record. Some of the narratives Mr. Nicholson gives are very interesting: among these may be mentioned the legend of Willey How, which is told, first of all, by William of Newbridge. In Willey How the fairies had their dwelling; but I may state, for the information of Mr. MacRitchie, that the How in question was never in fact inhabited either by the living or the dead. Lord Londesborough caused it to be opened in the year 1857, but found nothing. Thirty years later Canon Greenwell reopened it, and ascertained that, in spite of its size and the enormous care evidently bestowed upon