Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/426

 400 Reviews.

Feste und Brauche des Schweizervolkes. Kleines Hand-

BUCH DES SCHWEIZERISCHE VOLKSBRAUCHS DER GeGENWART IN GEMEINFASSLICHER Darstellung. Von Prof. Dr. E. Hoffmann-Kraver. Zurich; Schulthess & Co., 1913- pp. xvi+ 179.

Professor Hoffmann-Krayer has produced a very useful little handbook of Swiss folk-customs, to which the attention of the Folk-Lore Society, and especially of those members engaged in the work of revising Brand's Popular Antiquities^ may well be directed. Though it is specially concerned with the present-day customs and those practised within living memory, earlier customs are not wholly left unmentioned. It is chiefly derived from the collections of the Swiss Folklore Society (the Sch-weizerische Archiv fiir Volkskunde, the Schweizerische Vaikskunde, and the Schweizerische Jdiotikoti), in the pages of which further details are obtainable. Earlier publications on the subject are enumerated and discussed in the introduction, which is in effect an excellent summary guide to the literature.

The first chapter, dealing with the epochs of human life, is by Prof. Hoffmann-Krayer's pupil, Dr. Hanns Bachtold, who has had the advantage of consulting a large collection of material made (under the Professor's direction) by his fellow-students W. Mohr and Dr. P. Geiger, and moreover is preparing a work on the important subject of marriage customs. The remainder is by Professor Hoffmann-Krayer himself; It is in two chapters, dealing respectively with calendar customs and non-calendar customs, and affords numerous points of comparison with our own corresponding customs and superstitions.

The influence of Prof. Hoffmann-Krayer has resulted in much

valuable work in Swiss folklore during the past few years ; and the

Feste und Brauche will be found not the least interesting and

important outcome of the enquiries he has been the means of

setting on foot.

E. Sidney Hartland.