Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/414

 390 Reviews.

considered in all their aspects ; when even the modern folklore of Sardinia and other Mediterranean islands has been searched for corroborative material : the direct record appears as an unpromis- ing affair of shreds and patches.

Yet the author is not daunted. In conformity with the most modern and approved procedure, he first turns to the adjacent anthropology for the threads wherewith to sew his patchwork together; and certainly in this region, if anywhere, local con- tiguity spells ethnological affinity. Not only do the somatological and archaeological data point to a close connection, amounting, one might almost say, to an identity, between the Proto-Sardinians and the Libyo-Berber inhabitants of proto-historic North Africa, but the odd bits of literary evidence about religious practices and culture in general all point in the same direction ; witness, for instance, what Herodotus (iv, 172) tells us about the Nasamones, with their iticubaiio at the tombs of heroes as a means to getting prophetic dreams, and their methods of taking oaths and pledges. It is a farther cry to the Western Sudan ; but the author is perfectly justified in putting it forward, as a suggestion to be confirmed by further enquiry in a part of the world which, from the archaeo- logical standpoint at any rate, is but little known, that the influence of Homo Mediierraiieus extended unbrokenly as far south as this region, possibly the fabled Atlantis of the ancients, and survives in many customs, such as, notably, the ordeal. To the eastward, again, the Cretan Zeus, even if he represents a syncretism with a sky-god from the north, may on his more genuinely Minoan side be thought of as belonging essentially to the same order of Supreme Beings as Sardus Pater.

To say 'Supreme Being,' however, is to engage all along the line either with or against those doughty fighters, Mr. Lang and Pere Schmidt. Now Signor Pettazzoni is certainly not one of those, — if any such there be, — who can be accused of ignoring this powerful combination, and the success of their attack on Animism regarded as an all-sufficient account of primitive religion. Indeed, he may be said to hold the balance very fairly as between animistic and non-animistic modes of interpretation. Only, I am personally glad to note, he recognises that a triangular duel is in progress ; and therefore allows the ' pre-animistic ' hypothesis a