Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/160

 144 Reviews.

of the volume is The Psychic Life, its subject is more comprehensive than that phrase would necessarily import. For it includes not merely the "literary" and artistic life and the religious life (in a word the folklore in the large sense used by the Folk-Lore Society), but also the agricultural and industrial life, — that is to say, that important slice of ethnography often included by German writers under the name Volkskunde.

The chapters dealing with the latter are, it is needless to say, replete with interest, and abundantly prove that the folklore in our sense of the word cannot be understood without a knowledge of the varied industries with which a people provides for the maintenance of the individual lives of its members, and its continuance as a community in its physical environment. Economic causes and considerations are inseparably bound up with its organization, its arts, and its religion. Especially is this the case with the hunting customs, where, if anywhere in this department of life, we may find indications of archaic modes of thought and archaic practices, such as may interest students who are seeking for origins.

In that part of the volume devoted to the "literary" and artistic life Junod sketches, necessarily in outline only, the Bantu grammatical system ; and he devotes much attention to the songs and music of the tribe. The poetry, as throughout the lower culture, consists chiefly of the repetition of a few phrases and sentences, and affords many a glimpse into the development of ballad poetry out of refrains continually reiterated. In dealing with folk-tales the author refers to his previous collection of Chants et Contes des Baronga, and adds here comparatively few new stories. He points out that the wealth of tales is vast. He has collected about fifty Thonga tales, but is under the impression that these only amount to a fifth or perhaps a tenth of the total : I should not be surprised to learn that this is an under-estimate, for no oral tale is conclusively fixed either in form or substance as one committed to writing is. It is still, as he says, "a plastic matter unconsciously undergoing constant and extensive modifications in the hands of the story-tellers." We are all familiar with the phenomenon. Its result is that the incidents not merely vary in themselves, but they drop out of one story and find a place of