Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 22, 1911.djvu/135

 Reviews. 109

the titles of a large number of papers from the proceedings of various societies and foreign publications, with occasional appreciations. These are acceptable in the absence of any really complete bibliography of Social Anthropology and Folklore.

W. Crooke.

Les Joyeuses Histoires de Bretagne. By Paul Sebillot. Paris: Bibliotheque-Charpentier, 1910. f. 8vo, pp. xviii + 318.

M. Paul Sebillot needs no introduction to students of folklore. The present volume is intended to vindicate the claim of his Breton compatriots to be far more than mere mystics, melancholy dreamers, possessed by their superstitions, oppressed by appre- hension of the supernatural and the unknown. It comprises nearly "a hundred merry tales," many of which had previously appeared scattered through his numerous volumes. He has brought them together here to exhibit a side of the Breton character often ignored. The acute perception of the comedy of life is a true and widespread trait of Celtic character. It is the complement of the more sombre vision, of the deeply religious emotion equally characteristic of the race. The drolleries of the Irish peasant are renowned. Those who know the Welsh inti- mately are familiar with the depth and vividness of their humour. But that which has impressed the world at large is the more serious, the sadder mood of the imaginative Brython, whether insular or continental.

So far as the continental Brythons are concerned, this collection is designed as a corrective. M. Sebillot's eloquent preface bears testimony from his own experience to his fellow-countrymen's gaiety of disposition, of which more ample proofs are furnished in the subsequent pages. No one reading them can be dull. The Joyous Tales of our old friends the Jaguens afford mirth galore ; and they are well matched with other comic adventures, animal tales, znd fabliaux. The volume concludes with a number of naive or facetious sermons, some of which M. Sebillot states to have been reported to him by ladies of approved orthodoxy, who have themselves actually heard them from the pulpit. The student of