Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/267

 CORRESPONDENCE.

The Completion of Professor Pitre's Collection of Sicilian Folklore.

In the spring of the present year was pubHshed the twenty-fifth and final volume of Dr. Pitre's Biblioieca delle Tradizioni Fopolari Siciliane. The occasion ought not to pass unnoticed in these pages, seeing that the Biblioieca is the most extensive and com- plete collection of the folklore of any country ever made, or at least ever published in a tongue generally accessible to students. The work of collection was commenced by Dr. Pitre at the age of eighteen, in the year 1858. The first volume, consisting of songs with a critical study of folk-poetry, was issued as long ago as 187 1 ; and both collection and publication have been carried on with steady and persistent determination during all the intervening years, amid the arduous duties of professional life as a medical man, in addition to other literary labours, and recently despite heavy bereavements and some of the infirmities of age. The touching dedication of the final volume to the memory of his only son, while bearing witness to the intense grief and disappoint- ment of a father's heart, contains yet a note of satisfaction that "the precious treasure of the traditions of the Sicilian people is henceforth safe," though he who, with his mother and sisters, could testify how many sacrifices his father had made for the work was no longer here to partake of the triumph.

A triumph indeed it is. For Dr. Pitre is idolized by his fellow- citizens. His kindly personality and devoted professional labours have won their affection. They recognize that his literary labours, — his studies of various aspects of the history of Palermo and of Sicily, a number of works on Italian folklore either written or edited by him, and above all this great collection of Sicilian traditions now completed, — have reflected lustre on the city of