Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/289

 Reviews. 249

tion is very effective. The more elaborate stories are all good of their class, and "The Seven Princes," "Vikram and the Faqir," and "Prince Mahbub" are well worthy of association with our old favourites from Alif Laila.

It is to be hoped that Shaikh Chilli will continue his collections, and make known to the world some more gems from his treasure- house. M. LoNGwoRTH Dames.

Ancient Tales and Folk-lore of Japan. By Richard Gordon Smith. A. & C. Black, 1908. 4to, pp. xv-i-361. 62 col. illus.

Although not addressed primarily to the student of folklore, this volume is of considerable interest and importance to him, as there is no reason to doubt that the substance of the tales is faithfully set down as told by fishermen, peasants, priests, and others to Mr. Gordon Smith during his collecting tours in Japan on behalf of the British Museum. Occasional terms, such as "masses" (pp. 43, 62) and "Buddhist Bible" (pp. 132-.^, 221), may suggest misleading associations to the reader, — and " What ho, she bumps !" (p. 170), as the cry of a daimio's retainer when his boat drifts on shore, is at least a lapse of taste, — but there seems to be little ' touching up ' of the kind which has made so many story collections useless for comparative study. So great is the charm and value of the book that one longs, ungratefully it may be, for a special folklore edition, in which each tale is told in a literal translation, the explanatory notes and descriptions are separated from the tale itself, and full details are given about every narrator. To make a clean breast of it, one wishes also that the illustrations were here, as in Captain O'Connor's Folk Tales of Tibet, the unguided work of a native artist, instead of being a native rendering of the English author's sketches. It should be added, however, that sketches by the author must be needed for localities unfamiliar to his native coadjutor, that the loss of quaintness and of utility for the student is possibly a gain in attractiveness for the ordinary reader, and that the general