Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/425

 Revitivs. 399

It is partly because the facts themselves lie in a smaller compass and are more readily seized, partly because he includes in Tradi- tional Ethnography many things that we should classify as tales, and therefore Oral Literature. Of this kind are legends of creation, the origin of rivers, lakes, fountains, and other bodies of water, the heavenly bodies, plants and animals, and the cause of their several peculiarities. From legends such as these he proceeds to the relations of men with the various ol)jects of the external world, and the superstitions which attach to them. The life of man is traced from or before birth to death, burial, the life after deatii, and the fear of the dead. M. Sebillot then proceeds to a section denominated Ethnographic Sociology, including the cultivation of the ground, hunting, fishing, commensal customs, building of dwellings and shi[)S, industries, commercial relations, the administration of justice, gestures, war, ornaments and clothing, art in its various manifestations, and amusements, such as dramatic jierformances, dances, periodical and other celebrations, whether religious, magical, or purely recreational. It will thus be seen that a very wide area is covered. We miss, however, the subjects of social organization and of religion. Their want would perhaps be explicable if the work referred solely to European folklore. In fact it draws its illustrations from all quarters of the globe. Whether the omission be due to oversight or design, it is to be hoped that an early opportunity will be taken to repair it.

For in what he has included all M. Sebillot's great gifts of arrangement and exposition are displayed. He has known how to condense without allowing his account of the many branches of his subject to degenerate into a dry catalogue. He preserves the reader's interest, he directs the collector's attention, without com- mitting himself to theories which new facts or the reexamination of old facts may bring to nought, and which in any event are better kept out of sight in a book intended as an introduction for the tyro and a guide to the collector. His references are carefully given ; and a good bibliography and index are appended.

E. Sidney H.vrtland.