Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/553

 Rh not because they are otherwise than fully worthy of it. The study of Russian marriage by Professor Kovalevsky helps towards the elucidation of the Aryan history of marriage custom, and use has been made of the popular ballads, old legends, and folk-tales in the illustration of this interesting and obscure section of the subject. But here also the question of ethnology crops up; and the question of wife-purchase, as exemplified by the Russian evidence, needs careful consideration by those who are inclined to think that races do not commingle by means of marriage. Dr. Cherry deals with a somewhat uninviting subject, but he succeeds in supplying unlooked-for help in the elucidation of one of the most interesting of folk-lore problems. His object has been to compare the early ideas of several nations as to crimes and their punishment; and he has selected legal systems as far apart from and as much independent of each other as possible, with a view of showing that identity of usage did not arise from the adoption by one nation of the laws or institutions of another, but rather from the inherent principles of human nature. Dealing with Irish, English, and Roman penal law, he turns then to Hebrew and Mohammedan law, and succeeds in establishing some most important facts. We think he proves his main thesis named above, but it is open to question whether his choice of examples is best for his purpose. He would have found more to the point in the lex talionis of the Afghans, in the laws of Sumatra, and in the code of Mu'ung Ihai of Siam, where he would have found proofs which are not tainted by the possibilities of borrowing, which some scholars will be inclined to urge against him in respect of the examples he has chosen. But his treatise is an important contribution to that portion of the subject it is designed to illustrate, and it presents some singularly clear issues to those of us who have been dealing with the more extended area which unfortunately almost all branches of folk-lore compel us to travel over.