Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/137

Rh to all festival-songs which are sung for largesse before the doors of wealthy houses. I venture to think, however, that Mr. Frazer's informant is wrong in saying that "the festival of the First of May originated in Corcyra during the time of the Venetian domination". For May-day is celebrated with songs and floral rites similar to those he describes, not only in the Greek kingdom generally, but throughout Turkey, and the custom is evidently an extremely ancient one, dating back to pagan times.

The St. John's Eve customs alluded to by Mr. Frazer may be found fully described in The Women of Turkey (p. 120); as also what he terms the "rain-charm" (Perperià or Perperoíma), with the invocation sung on the occasion (p. 123), both observances being common throughout the East.

Author:Lucy Mary Jane Garnett

—The Zanzibarí parallel to the story in the Exempla of Jacques de Vitry—which Etienne de Bourbon took into his Liber de Donis, etc.—of the devout girl who plucked out her eyes, which had caused a man to become enamoured of her, given by Miss Barclay in the last number of (vol. i, p. 515), is very interesting. The same legend is told of St. Bridget, for which see Three Middle-Irish Homilies, by Mr. Whitley Stokes (p. 65), and it is probably of Buddhist extraction. With a royal ascetic in place of a girl, a similar story is told in the famous Hindú collection, Kathá Sarit Ságara (Ocean of the Streams of Narrative), to this effect:

A prince, who had abandoned his kingdom and become a wandering ascetic, entered the house of a merchant one