Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/146

 124 Revieivs.

As we expect from this author, his summaries and methods of exposition are clear, and his references to other works for a continuance of the enquiry are numerous. His chapters on "Symbolism in Dreams" (vii.) and "Dreams of the Dead" (viii.) are particularly valuable. Although perhaps not many now adopt Herbert Spencer's estimate of dreams as the origin of the belief in gods and in a future life, it may well be that in dreams we can draw nearer to the ways of thought of early man than in the highly-evolved conditions of savagery. To dreams may be owed far more of myth than is at present suspected; the flying and falling dreams common to most of us may, for example, have given rise to the Icarus story, to saintly levitations, and to much more.

Survivals in Belief among the Celts. By George Hen- derson. Glasgow : James MacLehose & Sons. 8vo, pp. xi-t-346. 191 1.

Dr. Henderson is more at home in dealing with the primitive beliefs of his native Scottish soil than he is when he travels further afield, and his new volume Survivals in Belief atnong the Celts is a more valuable contribution to folk-history than his previous work on Norse influences in Celtic Scotland. The scientific folk- lorist may perhaps object that the titles that he gives to the divisions of his subject are more picturesque than systematic, and that his method is wanting in cohesion. But if any subject may escape the trammels of system without severe loss, it is surely the old lore of the Celtic peoples, and such titles as 'The Earthly Journey,' 'The Wanderings of Psyche,' or the 'Finding of the Soul,' serve to whet our appetite more than strictly scientific head- ings could do. Indeed, Dr. Henderson's somewhat loose and scattered style gives us the pleasant feeling that we are listening to the outpourings of the native story-teller himself, whom we must not interrupt, lest the thread of his narration should be broken, and something of importance forgotten in consequence. As a native-speaker, who has spent some years of his life in a remote parish in Sutherlandshire, Dr. Henderson has had excellent oppor-