Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/570

 532 Revieivs.

removed from ourselves in time or culture, or are unknown, we may grope for their intentions without much reason to expect success, and cup-and-ring markings and other ancient patterns will long supply us with material for dubious discussions and lengthy (and very dull) dissertations.

In his first chapters Mr. Bayley seeks to show that paper marks and printers' marks were originally not merely trade-signs but hieroglyphs embodying a mystic tradition of vast antiquity. In chap. viii. we arrive at the tales in Miss Cox's Cinderella, which are continually referred to throughout the rest of the work. (In view of this frequent quotation it is odd that one of the few misprints we have noticed is in Miss Cox's Christian name, p. 179). Cinderella is held to be a solar allegory, of which there are indications and parallels in The Song .of Solo7?ion, and in chap. ix. we have a study of Cinderella's changes of raiment. After Cinderella come discussions of the worship of the Queen of Heaven ; eye symbols ; bull and other animal symbols ; the Heavenly Twins; horses, pigs, and dogs in symbolism, mythology, and tales ; the sign of the cross ; the tale of Atlantis and fire customs ; stones and rocks ; plant and tree symbols ; dragons, hands, crowns, etc. Throughout all this are distributed over 1400 text illustrations of paper and printers' marks (mainly from the 16,000 examples in Briquet's Les Filigranes), and the author, taking all knowledge for his parish and ranging from the arms of Marylebone to Peruvian sun festivals, gives us a riot of suggested roots, and derivations, and comparisons. He allies Peru to the Slavonian god Perun or Perkunas (vol. i. p. 311), and equates the Spanish Perez with the Old Testament Perizzites (p. 311), and Frazer with Pharaoh (p. 320); Pankhurst is compared with the town name of Panuca or Panca in ancient Mexico. It is a pity that the author should treat Mr. F. W. Bain's charming stories as if they were real translations of Hindu Mss., and frequently quote Churchward's Signs and Symbols of J^rimordial Man ^ and Le Plongeon's extraordinary Maya derivations.

Such a book as this it would be unjust to dismiss with a few words of casual criticism or of easy ridicule of some of its innumerable details, while it is obviously impossible to discuss 1 Cf. vol. xxi., pp. 525-7.