Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 22, 1911.djvu/547

 Reviews. 5 1 1

equipped with that special knowledge which would have qualified him to discuss the tangled origins of the prehistoric Mediter- ranean world. In this area new information is being almost daily acquired, and the prospect of a successful interpretation of the Cretan hieroglyphs is hopeful. A final review of the question is thus premature. But all students are indebted to the author and publisher for the fine series of illustrations with which the book is furnished.

Among the scattered essays, out of which the book has been compiled, attention may be called to the remarkable series of steatopygous cultus images from Egypt and Mediterranean sites. M. E. Piette found similar figures in the Grotte du Pape at Bras- sempouy, in the Chalosse district, Landes, which he connects with the physical types from Punt or Somaliland and with the modern Bushmen. They apparently represent a type of the Mother Goddess which descended to Mycenaean times from the neolithic age. The remarks of the writer on the early use of copper and bronze, and on the survivals of beliefs of the Minoan period in Italy, and his rapid survey of the problems connected with the Mediterranean race, all deserve attention.

It is to be regretted that a work of this character should lose some of its value from the inadequacy of the index.

W. Crooke.

Folklore of West and Mid-Wales. By Jonathan Ceredig Davies, with a Preface by Alice, Countess Amherst. Aberystwyth : Welsh Gazette Office, 191 1. 8vo, pp. xii + 348. Wales is fortunate in her patriotic children. The intellectual tastes of the Welsh, their antiquarian and historical bent, and their local pride of race and country have resulted in making her the best covered part of the British Isles in the matter of recorded folklore. Only last year we had the pleasure of giving a favourable review of Mrs. Trevelyan's Folklore and Folk-stories of Wales, {Folk-Lore, vol. xxi, p. 117), and now Mr. Jonathan Ceredig Davies follows