Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/579

 Reviews. 515

the influence of the popular imagination, which mixes up with them many famihar elements or episodes. Not only do we find gnostic and heathen elements intermingled, but there are oriental parallels ; and myths of origin are common. Rude humour also is not absent. Thus we find features of Wodan or other northern gods in the stories of Jesus, and attempts to account for the existence of the snake, the ape, and other natural objects. There is a Christian variant of the story of Philemon and Glaucis. Obstinate or unbelieving men are changed into a dog, a stork, a cuckoo, and other creatures ; the inhospitable become an owl, or a swallow, or a tortoise ; we learn what made Peter a baldhead ; Judas appears as a child, and as the man in the moon. Apart from the scientific value of this collection, it is very entertaining to read.

W. H. D. Rouse.

Religions Mceurs et Legendes. Essais d'Ethnographie et de Linguistique. Arnold van Gennep. Paris : Mercure de France, 1908. 8vo, pp. 319.

This is a book which might fairly be described as interesting but scrappy. The first part consists of a number of reprints of reviews of books, of very various merit and suff"ering from the defects that most reviews of books, save the carefully excogitated articles written around a work or works, necessarily suffer from, namely absence of knowledge of those rebutting or supporting publications which are sure to appear if the original book is really of impor- tance. Hence M. van Gennep's papers may be not unfairly described as first impressions, and, as such, they are worthy of all consideration.

The second and third parts, and especially the latter, are much more serious and also much lengthier contributions to the science of ethnology, and one of them, " de quelques cas de Bovarysme coUectif" is one of the most interesting things which I have ever read of its kind, and deserves expansion into a book by the aid of other modern instances, which could easily be supplied, even from these islands.