Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/124

 1 04 Revieivs.

on the Knossos script, and brings together in a convenient form much information on primitive pictographs. Mr. Lang's paper on Homer is mainly a summary of his book, Ho7tier and the Epic, published in 1906. As might have been expected, Professor Gilbert Murray, when dealing with anthropology in the Greek Epic outside Homer, is interesting and suggestive ; thus he compares the Dionysos cult with the ritual of the Dukduk society in New Guinea and the Egbo of West Africa, suggesting that, as in these cases, a man impersonated Dionysos. His remarks on the Greek " deification " of heroes in which the term has a connotation unknown to primitive religion, his account of Salmoneus, the medicine-king, and his suggestion that the myth of Zeus swallowing Metis is based on the necessity of such kings swallowing or hiding possible claimants to the throne, and that the worship of sacred flints or thunder-stones appears in the swallowing of a stone in place of Zeus by Kronos, are noteworthy. Dr. Jevons' paper on Graeco-Italian magic is largely devoted to the theory that the earliest form of "singing" or spell is connected with cursing. Speaking of Mana he remarks that "this extraordinary personal power does not come to be regarded as magic — indeed that magic does not come into existence — until religion has come into existence." Mr. Warde Fowler surveys the development of Lustratio, the means of getting rid of hostile spirits by means of solemn processional rites. Probably the most valuable lecture in the series is that of Professor Myres on Herodotus. He points out that "Herodotus gives us for the first time a reasoned scheme of ethnological criteria" — community of descent, of language, of religion, and, last of all, community of observance in social life. The account of the influence of the Coan medical school, and the identifica- tion of the Amazons with the beardless Scythians, are novel and interesting. It may be hoped that this book will be a success in spite of its unhappy preface, and that in the next edition this will be removed to give space for an index.

W. Crooke.