Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/446

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The first of these two works is a reprint, with additional notes up to date, which has long been a desideratum, of Dr. Pitrè's splendid collection of Sicilian folk-songs. Some very few of these have been made known to folk-lorists in their restricted place in my Folk-songs of Italy, but the complete collection is a model of scholarly work of its class, and the Treatise on the subject in the Preface (173 pp.) is a most instructive account of the place Sicily holds, a highly important one, in the scientific regions of folk-lore—a place which some may think is a significant landmark of the migrations of folk-songs. The work has been entirely recast (rifusa), and numerous additions incorporated.

The work which stands second on our heading is even more important for the non-Italian folk-lorists, as, with the great linguistic knowledge and professional perseverance he has at command. Dr. Pitré knows how to bring together an exhaustive cyclopædia of works in all languages bearing on the folk-lore of Italy. The whole family of folk-lore is so intimately inter-connected, that nothing which is important to one branch of it can be without bearing on every other. And just as the specimen-programme we have received shows that neither the works which English nor American writers have contributed to the subject are wanting to the list, among purely Italian ones will appear many which are at present little, if at all, known in this country.