Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/159

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steps. When it comes to crossing continents, we are less confident in our guides. The bridges are at best working hypotheses. It is not the fault of Diihnhardt and his collaborators, but of the present state of our scientific equipment. Above all more regional study is needed. A comprehensive study of the beast tales of Africa, for example, is necessary before we can follow the Tar Baby story without misgiving from a literary source in India across Africa to America.

The fact of the matter is that our working hypotheses are weak instruments, and I suspect Diihnhardt of under-estimating the difficulties of charting lines of transmission. Firstly, the earliest literary source does not necessarily give us the home nor the original form of a story. Both yEsop and the Panchatantra are highly sophisticated, and an oral version of a story may quite well represent an older tradition than they. Secondly, the possibility of independent invention cannot wholly be excluded, particularly in the case of beast tales, whose motifs are so very simple. Thirdly, a connection between two regions must imply an inter- change of stories both ways. Before satisfactory conclusions can be drawn as to lines of transmission we need new criteria, and these can only be supplied by a closer study of regional characteristics. It is precisely for the reason that both the literary and the oral tradition in Europe have been subjected to this intensive study that we find Dahnhardt convincing in the European field and only plausible outside it.

The addition of a bibliography is a valuable asset for the student. It is a pity that it is unnecessarily disfigured by a number of misprints in the titles of foreign books.

W. R. H.MXIDAV.

The Life of a South African Tribe. By Henri A. Junod. Vol. ii. The Psychic Life. Neuchatel : Attinger Ereres, 1 91 3. [Macmillan.] 8vo, pp. 574. 111. 15s. «.

With this second volume M. Junod has completed the task of giving an account of the customs, institutions, and beliefs of the Thonga tribe of the South African Bantu. Although the sub-title