Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/286

 250 Reviews.

supplement well-known earlier works now falling out of date, Miss Cameron brings together, with numerous illustrations, what is known of the manners, customs, and religious beliefs of the mysterious Etruscan people. In her introduction she rightly praises the collection of the fast-growing material, not in huge central institutions, but in local museums, where the finds from the neighbouring ancient sites are preserved in juxtaposition and can be studied as local wholes. In her final chapter on " Links between Old Etruria and Modern Tuscany " she may perhaps insist a little too strongly on resemblances such as those between Etruscan and mediaeval demons in art, on the descent of horse races such as the Palio of Siena from Etruscan times, and so on, but her references to the giostra plays in remote Apennine villages, (which sometimes have for subjects Bible stories but never Gospel narratives), and a curious folk-tale (pp. 320-1) collected by her on Monte Amiata, make one wish that she would utilize her intimate knowledge of modern Tuscan places and people to do for the folklore of the remoter districts what another member of our Society, the late C. G. Leland, did for the neighbourhood of Florence in his Etruscan Roinati Remains in Popular Tradition and two volumes oi Legends of Florence.

High Albania. By M. Edith Durham. Edward Arnold, 1909. Demy 8vo, pp. xii -1-352. 111. and Map.

What is the literary gift ? As well ask why does one here and there win your confidence by a smile, but another not by a service. All things are big with jest, said George Herbert, if you have the vein ; what bores one to death makes a charming tale for another. Miss Durham has the vein ; she has the gift ; she has also any amount of pluck, and wins everybody's confidence, — her readers' also. What a treat for one of our Society, which can so easily fall into priggishness ! Not that Miss Durham takes her task lightly. Far from it, she uses all pains to get at the truth, her curiosity is insatiable, and down it all goes in the book. Here we have not a transcript of life, which must have been as dark as life itself can be, but a picture of life, the lights and shadows