Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/145

Rh on conceived an insensate passion for him. To cure her infatuation, he miraculously drew milk from her breasts, and so established with her the relation of mother and son. Those who are aware—and what folklore student is not?—of the range of M. Cosquin's knowledge and his views as regards the inter-relation and spread of popular tales, will readily imagine what wealth of illustration is brought together of the separate items into which he analyses the legend. Tales of the ancient Indian city of Vaisali recorded by Buddhist travellers of the fifth and seventh centuries and in a Ceylonese book of the thirteenth century, the Mahâbhârata and Rámâyana, tales from Salsette, Gujerat, and almost every part of India, the Assyrian library at Kouyunik, the inscriptions at Nippur, the classic myths of Cyrus, Semiramis, Danae, and Romulus and Remus, the second chapter of Exodus, the Legenda Aurea, and stories from Asia Minor, Socotra, Egypt, the Balkan Peninsula, the Caucasus, Russia, Tunis, the Berbers, Mogador, Malaysia, and the Mongols, are all pressed into service, and, whatever may be one's opinion of the relation of these contes to the Javanese legend, one cannot but admire M. Cosquin's learning and the skill with which he marshals his materials. It is perhaps unnecessary to add that the parent source of all this ocean of the streams of story is placed in India.

second portion of Mr. Strehlow's study of the Central tribes is, like the first, edited by Baron v. Leonhardi, who states in the preface that he has practically confined himself to reproducing Mr. Strehlow's opinions; we are, however, clearly much indebted to him for his careful examination, to which, as his own words show, he has submitted the information sent him by his collaborator.