Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/150

 128 Reviews.

A good deal is told us, also, of the lives of the present inhabi- tants of Savoy, and on p. 50 we have an elaborate account of the swaddling of a baby. At the end of each chapter songs and music are quoted, — chiefly in French, but sometimes in dialect.

W. F. KiRBY.

VoLKSLiEDER Aus DEM Kanton Aargau. Gesammelt von SiGMUND Grolimund. (Schriften der Sclnveizerischen Ge- seUschaft fur Volkskunde, No. 8). Basel : Augustinergasse 8, 191 1. 8vo, pp. vi + 279.

Herr Grolimund, (whose Volkslieder aus dem Kanton Solothurn was reviewed in Folk-Lore, March, 191 1), acting on behalf of the "Kommission fiir die Sammlung der deutschschweizerischen Volkslieder " under the Schweizerische Geselhchaft fiir Volkskunde, has continued his work of collecting the popular songs of his country. The result is a volume of two hundred and seventy-two "folk-songs" from Canton Aargau. In this the system referred to in our previous review has been adhered to by Herr Grolimund, who in his preface explains that he has included "composed" and "borrowed" songs where these have become "folk-songs" for the people. His method would seem to lead to confusion so far as the study of folk-music and poetry goes, although of possible value to folklore generally, in showing the trend of popular taste and the powers of popular memory.

Herr Grolimund has noted his songs chiefly from the singing of old or elderly persons, who have in many cases lent him manu- script books of words compiled by themselves. The language of the texts is a mixture of good German {SchriftdeutscJi) and dialect, the German, — as might be supposed in Canton Aargau, — pre- dominating greatly. As the collector points out, there are amongst them no songs in any pure local " Mundart," even the most " dialectal " presenting a mixture of many dialects interwoven with ordinary German.

Amongst the texts are a number of narrative ballads, the subject and phraseology of which in many cases point to antiquity. One of these tells of the youngest daughter of a Pfalzgraf on the