Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/571

 Reviews, 529

produced at Tumhout, (about 20 miles from Antwerp, and now a world-centre of the manufacture of playing cards), and we are told that, of the three principal houses originally producing these broadsides, one has closed its doors, another has given up their production and destroyed its blocks, and the third has adopted modern machine processes and is allowing its remaining blocks to pass to the Antwerp Museum, — a different attitude to that of a Nancy proprietor, who refuses to part with, or even to show, the blocks mouldering since 1844 in his attics, and is using the remaining stock of prints as packing material ! Much information is given, however, about other countries, with bibliographies, and it is possible to confirm Mr, Nutt's luminous suggestion {antey p. 384) that the racially distinctive elements of the lore of the folk are to be found amongst its artistic rather than its practical elements ; soldiers abound in German broadsides, while they are rare in Holland until after the Napoleonic wars and the Belgian insurrection of 1830, and many other examples occur of national preferences and additions to the common stock of subjects.

This book is not only an interesting record of the time when the workman was still a designer and thinker and not a mere machine minder, but a rich storehouse of material for study of the problems of the diffusion and variation of folklore, and is to be very heartily commended to all students.

A. R. Wright.

Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion : A Study in Survivals. By J. C. Lawson. Cambridge University Press, 19 10. 8vo, pp. xii + 620.

In this very readable book the author gives the results of his own researches when, ten years ago, he visited Greece as Craven student, together with a considerable amount taken, with due acknowledgement, from other workers in the same field. A companion volume to Abbott's Macedonian Folklore, dealing with the beliefs and practices of more southerly Hellenic populations, has long been needed, and to some extent this book, despite grave defects, fills the gap. We say " despite grave defects," for

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