Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 22, 1911.djvu/418

 382 Reviezvs.

Brythonic tribes, the Brython pushing the Gael westward to Ireland, is less universally accepted than it was a few years ago. Dr. Kuno Meyer's alternative theory that no Gaelic tribes came into Britain direct from the Continent, and that the Gaelic settlements in Britain were entirely offshoots from Ireland, seems to be gaining ground, and to be supported by Mr. George Coffey's investigations into the origin and date of late Celtic ornament in the tumuli of Ireland.

Eleanor Hull.

KwARTALiNK Etnografioncy LuD. Tom. XVI., zcsryt I. Lw6w, 1910.

This is the first number for igio of the quarterly review issued by the Polish Ethnological Society of Lw6w (Leopol). It contains a few original articles on comparative folklore, among which may be mentioned an erudite discussion of the motif oi the Flowering Branch by the editor, Mr. A. R. Fischer. Among the shorter notes are an interesting extract from the records of a sorcery trial held in a small town of South Poland (Bochnia) early in the seventeenth century, and accounts of popular superstitions and customs drawn from the court records of other small places and communicated by Prof. Fr. Bujak of Cracow University.

It may be interesting to Western folklorists to say a few words on this review in general, and to give a short outline of the history of ethnographical and folklore research in Poland.

There are several reasons why Polish folklore should attract the special attention of students. In the first place, a new acquisi- tion of material has not merely the importance of a simple addition to the present store of knowledge. For, if folklore and ethnology are to be comparative sciences, — and they seem to tend always more and more in that direction, — every new term of comparison opens quite new horizons and tests former conclusions, and often parts of the previously stored knowledge which appeared useless can be utilised by means of some clue contained in the new contribution, especially if the latter presents an original type