Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/417

 Reviews. 393

Nothing in the book is more interesting than what the author has to tell about the ever-present bandits and their customs. It seems that as late as 1897 a group of bandits succeeded in oust- ing a French society which had taken over considerable property for vineyard cultivation. The bandits disapproved of the manager, and the company was finally obliged to resign. So homogeneous a society has naturally its own customs and folklore. In 1911 a cinematograph company was so unwise as to produce a film repre- senting the bandits in an unfavourable light, and the municipal authorities were compelled to suppress the entertainment.

A. M. Spoer.

Le Legendaire du Mont Saint-Michel. Par Etienne Dupont.

Paris: Robert Duval, 191J. Sm. 8vo, pp. xlvii-fi73. Last summer the French Government, moved at last by the Societi des Amis du Mont St.-Michel, ordered the removal of the end portion of the modern causeway to the Mont, so as to allow the tides once more to scour round the island and to stay the silting which threatened to surround the famous rock with a dry sandy waste and to destroy the ancient beauty of its site. Neces- sary repairs of the buildings are also to be made. While the State is thus tardily undertaking the preservation of the material remains of the ablmye-forteresse, M. Dupont, whose historical and topographical researches in this region are known to many, has assumed the equally pressing task of preserving and collecting its legendary cycle, partly from oral tradition, partly from the 300 manuscripts of the ancient Benedictine library which have escaped the ravages of Time and of the Revolution, and partly from other sources. The fifteen stories which he has thus amassed are arranged according to their assumed epochs, from the eighth century to the eighteenth, and include monkish legends and miracles, historical traditions, and folk-tales. The author confesses himself unable to decide whether the paucity in number of his tales is due to their failure to survive in popular memory and in timely records, or to mediaeval reluctance to let popular fancy play about a sanctuary so venerated. However this may be, the collection is very interesting, and its price (3 fr.) is trifling.