Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/293

 Reviews.

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many friends of Lady Asenath will here become more fully acquainted with the Path of the Shades, one of the most wonderful and eventful journeys to the next world which has been recorded among any people, and definite additions are made to the knowledge of the Nanga rites which we owe to Fison and Joske. On the other hand we would willingly have heard more of the cult of the Lnve-ni-tvai or Children of the Water which is at the present time so widespread and prominent in Fiji.

In the chapter on Warfare there is given an excellent account of the nature of the intertribal fighting which probably holds good of Melanesian warfare generally, and the chapters on disease are of great interest.

The account of social institutions is less satisfactory. The social organisation of the Fijians shows a great advance from those forms which are believed to be relatively primitive, and a thorough study of the exact nature of those divisions which are called tribes and of their different subdivisions is much needed. We should very much like to have heard more of the " carpenter septs " and " tribes of hereditary fishermen " which are mentioned incidentally, for, though it is probable that they are due to Tongan influence, their exact nature in Fiji would probably be very instructive to those interested in the origin and growth of caste.

The book would have been greatly improved by a map. Places and districts are constantly being mentioned which are not in any atlas, and a good map would have been of great service, not only to the readers of this book, but also to illustrate many articles on Fiji which have appeared in the past. The system of orthography which has been adopted is not very happy. It is a pity to lead people deliberately to mispronounce words in order to avoid a slight uncouthness of appearance, and slips in several places have produced such words as yafjgkona and tangka which are even more uncouth than the correct yafiggona and tangga would have been. Further, in several places, especially in the epic of Ndengei, the reader will be puzzled by several slips in which the customary Fijian spelling has remained uncorrected.