Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/576

 512 Reviews,

since, to disprove, through his intimate knowledge of Hebrew literature, the baselessness of the ritual murder accusation, or blood accusation, levelled against the Jews from the thirteenth century onwards. The book, originally a small pamphlet, has gone through eight editions, and is now lying before us in an English translation made by Mr. H. F. E. Blanchamp, whose name, however, does not appear on the title-page, and who probably is responsible for the somewhat sensational title given to the book. It is, as the author points out, a "historical and sociological inquiry undertaken for the sole purpose of eliciting and stating the truth."

Out of twenty chapters into which the book is divided only seven are devoted to the refutation of the accusation of ritual murder ; they form the concluding section. The preceding twelve deal with the general problems which alone fall within the purview of folklore proper. The last (ch. xx.) contains a brief sketch of the old accusations against Christians of exactly the same character, and these very accusations as levelled afterwards by the Church triumphant against sundry heretical sects in the Middle Ages. To those mentioned by Prof. Strack I can add the accusation made against the Russian sect of the Molokani, and more specially against the Skopetzi in our own days. But, as already remarked, this part of the book lies outside the sphere of our investigations, and it would be superfluous to repeat here the abhorrence one feels, as a student of historical evolution and of the growth and transfer of superstitions from one nation to another, for such charges and beliefs.

The folklore part, however, is of great interest, and is not merely an addition to a rich literature dealing with blood super- stitions and blood practices among the most diverse nations of the world, but is a substantial contribution to the solution of that problem. The author is not a folklorist, and he is repelled by the unsavoury matter which offends him as a theologian and a man of strong religious ethical views. It must be treated, however, as a pathological case, and probably as a decayed survival of ancient practices and customs in which the offering of sacrifices, the shedding of blood, indifferently human or animal, was endowed with a sacramental character, and had not yet been degraded to

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