Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/447

 Reviews. 405

by globes of fire in her breasts, are too usual and widespread to be taken as anything more than general symbols of the future brilliance of a youth's career. They are poetic formulae common to all literatures, Eastern as well as Western, and do not necessitate a definitely solar connection, though they generally accompany it.

Mr. Plummer has taken his material chiefly from two manu- scripts which probably have a single source, — one in Marsh's Library, and the other in Trinity College, Dublin (marked E. 3. ii),' — and from two Rawlinson Mss. in the Bodleian (Rawl. B. 485 and 505), of which one is a copy of the other. Many of these lives have not been published before, though a few of them have appeared among the great collections published by Colgan, Fleming, and the Bollandists. We can fancy with what admiration the devout and indefatigable Colgan would have regarded this work, representing the completion of his labours and the fulfilment of his aspirations ; and also with what pain and horror he would have read the Editor's admirable introduction on the " Heathen folklore and mythology in the lives of Celtic Saints," in which over a hundred pages are devoted to the discussion of the solar and water elements in these lives, the cult of trees, stones, and other objects, the association of the saint with the heathen druid, charms, taboos, fairy elements, etc. Full as these biographies are of pagan admixture, they have yet undergone a careful and in many instances all too successful farcing and editing for the purposes of edification and for the due glorification of the Saint ; and many of their wildest and most savage elements have been omitted or transformed into some milder and more acceptable mould. This can be clearly seen in comparing the Irish Life of St. Moiling, edited by Whitley Stokes, with the Latin Life given in this book. The former is written in the crude folk-tale style, and is full of unpleasant incidents, many of which, such as the Saint's birthstory and the meeting with the leper, have either been greatly modified or omitted altogether in the Latin Life. This Saint seems to have been popularly regarded as a grotesque figure, about whom it was legitimate to create strange stories. His interview with the devil, upon which subject an ancient Irish poem is founded, his wild leaps over hills and into the clouds, the