Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/426

402 to do with men after death" (pp. 19-20). Men's spirits pass at death into snakes, and die finally with these new bodies. There is belief in the evil eye, grass has magical properties (pp. 20, 25), and pot-making is a secret trade, for women only, with its special rites and taboos. Several pages are devoted to a valuable account of the customary punishments for witchcraft and crime amongst the Suk and their immediate neighbours. The dances are distinctive, but the riddles are not very characteristic, and the dozen folk-tales given are abbreviated versions and, as Mr. Beech remarks, "not very good." The illustrations are interesting, but some are not sufficiently clear. The author has accomplished much in little time and under many difficulties, and folklorists will be grateful for his decision to publish at once his valuable results, even though he felt that his enquiries were still incomplete.

is not a volume of folklore, but a very interesting book of travel written by a man who allowed little to escape observation and who took note, among other things, of customs such as ordeal by heat, the value of iron as a protection against ghouls, how to get the better of jinns, and such like. There is nothing in itself very new in any of these things; their chief interest lies in the fact of their having been noted in a country so little known as "The Land of Uz."

The author's relation with this country grew out of the demarcation of the boundary between the Aden Hinterland and the possessions of Turkey. The country traversed proved to be, not the desert which had been expected, but "mountainous districts, containing more or less fertile valleys, and at least as well populated as were the highlands of Scotland in the middle of the 18th century" (p. ix). It is a country which has so far escaped the attention of the tourist, and which has therefore not lost its characteristic interest.

There is a great deal of information, especially about the life of