Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/268

 246 Correspondence.

the Golden Shell. Nor has the Italian Government been insensible of the national debt to him. A year or two ago a chair of folklore was erected in the University of Palermo, and Dr. Pitre was appointed the professor. And since the completion of his task of recording the traditions of his native island, he has been nominated Chevalier of the Civil Order of Savoy, — an order instituted in 1831 for those who, belonging to professions not less useful than that of arms, have become by their profound studies an ornament of the State, and carrying with it a modest pension of 1000 lire.

A critical review of the Biblioteca is, of course, impossible here. Perhaps it is known to comparatively few British students. But to those who know it, it is a prized possession. The stories in par- ticular are inferior to none. They have an atmosphere of their own, recalling the conditions of life of the Sicilian peasant and the eventful and romantic history of the island. They are annotated, like the other volumes, with illustrations drawn from Dr. Pitre's stores of knowledge of Italian folklore in general. A few of them have been translated in Prof Crane's Italian Popular Tales. The later volumes of the Biblioteca are adorned with excellent sketches and photographs of almost every phase of j^easant life.

Whatever sorrows and disappointments life may have brought to Dr. Pitre, as it brings to all of us, he is happy at least in this, that he has lived and laboured to the termination of an undertaking such as profound enthusiasm alone could have inspired him to initi- ate and sustained him in prosecuting. When he began, especially in the social and political conditions that prevailed at that time, there can have been few to sympathize with him. He has lived to hear his work acclaimed as of national importance, to know that he has succeeded in painting and handing down to posterity a picture of the life of a people which, but for him, would never have been preserved. He needs not the congratulations of foreign students to be conscious that this result far transcends the measure of national value, that it is a scientific achievement. But at least we may add our tribute of praise and gratitude, and an expression of our good wishes that his life may be lengthened to reap more abundant fruits of his long devotion to the cause not less of anthropology than of Sicily.

E. Sidney Hartland.