Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/556

 542 recently published work, Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion, a review of which appears below. The reviewer remarks that the principle of the work,—i.e. the idea of illustrating from present popular belief the beliefs and practices of classical times,—is a perfectly sound one, but it was precisely for this that Alfred Nutt, twenty years ago, incurred the biting scorn of his foreign critics,—i.e. for daring to use modern folk-tales in elucidation of mediaeval romance. The gulf Mr. Lawson proposes to span is far wider, but the bridge is of identical construction, and the feat of literary engineering which was received with opprobrium twenty years ago, meets with no more than ordinary criticism to-day.

The latest work of importance published by Mr. Nutt, the text of The Voyage of Bran, with essays on "The Happy Other-World," and "The Celtic Doctrine of Re-birth," is one which I think has not yet received its due meed of appreciation. Mr. Nutt, I know, felt this himself; when discussing the support which the theory of the Life-Cult origin of the Grail tradition receives from the facts collected in the work referred to, he wrote to me as follows,—"I do believe The Voyage of Bran is a good sound piece of work, seminal, and creative, and I think it should have received higher recognition than it did." The book was, indeed, ahead of the critical knowledge of the day, and at the moment we did not possess the facts which would enable us to appreciate the importance and critical value of the evidence to which Mr. Nutt drew attention. In my opinion the book,—certainly the second volume,—is likely to gain in interest as time goes on, and will probably prove to be the most valuable legacy the writer has left us. But, if due recognition was not forthcoming, Alfred Nutt did not fight a losing battle; as his notice of Dr. Nitze's work, above referred to, clearly shows, he was keenly aware of the progress which Arthurian criticism has made in these latter years, and, if the cause in which he spent himself so generously has not yet quite come to its own, the time is not far distant; the future is with the Folklore School, and their opponents know it.

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