Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/136

116 valuable northern things, the romance of Ywain and Gawain, and Minot's Poems. The edition is so good that reviewing is difficult; the reviewer feels inclined, and would be well content, to begin and end by advising all students of folklore to get the book and read it. The text itself is a good one, and well worth attention, written in the lively northern English of the good age, with some of the curious variations of dialect, for the sake of rhyme, which are to be found also in the verses of Laurence Minot, e.g.:

The stories of the Seven Wise Masters came out very fairly in this rendering; for the historian of literature, as well as the philologist, the edition is of great value. As for the treatment of the matter, besides a convenient summary of the fortunes of Sindibad in different languages, the editor traces each story through all its known forms, giving (as far as we can judge) complete and accurate references. It may be possible, here and there, to find an omission,—(the Arabian Nights might have been quoted under Senescalcus, p. xci),—but most readers will be satisfied with what is here provided. The use of the book extends far beyond the present text; it is a store of references to the folklore of many nations, and an example of sound dealing with a complicated subject.

In this small book of twenty-four pages Miss Carey (the editor of Guernsey Folklore) gives an interesting account of an entertainment, "organised in the autumn of 1907 by a little band of enthusiastic country folk belonging to the parish of St. Martin's, in Guernsey," for the purpose of reviving the old dances and songs, once known throughout the Channel Islands,