Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/531

 Revieivs. 507

Die Erloser in der Wiege. Ein Beitrag ziir Deutschen Volkssagenforschung. Von Friedrich Ranke. Munich : C. H. Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 191 1. 8vo, pp. vi + 78. A GROUP of stories exists to this effect : — A soul is under a curse, and a wayfarer tries to set it free, but fails ; the soul laments, crying that it can never be free until a certain tree shall grow up, and a cradle shall be made of it ; then the deliverer shall lie in that cradle. Mr. Ranke traces this story to the Evangelium Nicodemi, from which it borrows two motives, — of Adam in limbo rejoicing over the Coming of Christ, and the prophecy of the tree of the Cross made to Adam at the point of death. Mr. Ranke draws the moral that (i) the wide diffusion of a tale does not prove its great antiquity, and that (2) it may have nothing to do originally with the district where it is best known. The study is a wholesome corrective to rash theorizing. But, even so, the "monkish legend" may have borrowed something from popular (heathen) tradition I

W. H. D. Rouse.

Deutsches Sagenbuch. Herausgegeben von Friedrich von der Leyen. Vierter Teil. Die deutschen Volkssagen. Von Friedrich Ranke. Munich : C. H. Beck'sche Verlags- buchhandlung, 1910. 8vo, pp. xvii + 294.

Whatever may be the principle of classification in stories it always seems to be artificial. Here we have The Soul and Powers of the Living, The Soul of the Dead, Dwarfs, Goblins, and such like. Mysterious Animals, Giants and Robbers, Treasures and Bells, and the Devil, — an odd list perdie ! Also the first section includes some tales of the soul issuing forth from the mouth as a mouse or whatnot, nightmares, the werwolf, and others. The stories are interspersed with paragraphs explaining the ideas that underlie the episodes. Mr. Ranke is euhemeristic. He says,- — " ' In the marketplace of Remicii could be seen for many years a white rabbit. Many a time the people, men and women, made a ring round it to catch it, but, when they grasped