Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/155

 Reviews. 139

contributions to journals of New Testament criticism or Hessian folklore. The chronological sequence of the whole throws an interesting light on the development of the author's interests. Up to 1900 we find him engaged in the disentanglement of the literature of the magical papyri and Orphic hymns, or occupied as a pure classical scholar chiefly with his favourites, the Attic dramatists. In I goo the first of his folklore papers appears, — Ein hessiches Zauberbuch. It is an interesting application of the method learned in working on the magical papyri of antiquity to the no less chaotic material of folk magic, and demonstrates the distribution of an original document over a wide area. The Hessian magic book turns out to be derived from Wiirtemburg, and the Black Forest district appears to be the home, at any rate in the nineteenth century, of a familiar type of magic book which is found all over Germany.

After I goo we find Dieterich in increasing degree applying himself to problems of folklore or utilising the comparative method in his investigations into classical religion. The two papers on Hitnmelsbriefe illustrate the same method as that on the Hessian magic book. He analyses the text of these letters, which are supposed to descend from heaven to serve as charms, and demon- strates that the majority form a combination the parts of which consistently conform to certain original types. The kernel of the letter, with its injunctions as to the observance of Sunday, suggests a Jewish original as the ultimate source. This hypothesis is con- firmed by corroborative evidence in the second paper, which proceeds to suggest some classical references to the same supersti- tion. That it may have influenced the literary forms adopted by Menippos and Lucian, both Semites, is a brilliant conjecture, but the alleged references in classical authors are more dubious, and the letter in Fausanias, x. 38, does not seem to me quite parallel.

The papers on ABC-Denkmiiler link the alphabets on Greek vases, and house walls, hitherto awkwardly explained as schoolboy exercises or fruits of a mason's idle moments, with the use of the Greek alphabet in the dedication ritual of the Roman Church, through a connecting chain of evidence as to the magical use of letters of the alphabet in spells and exorcism. In the matter of the