Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/141

 Reviews. 1 29

of the afterlife is G. Landtman's paper on " Wanderings of the dead in the folklore of the Kiwai-speaking Papuans'' (pp. 59 et seq.). The picturesque group of legends which it contains not only point to an attitude of affection, as opposed to fear, towards the dead on the part of these people (see p. 75 especially), but provide a fresh example of the ease with which two or three quite inconsistent ideas of so important a matter as the fate of the dead may prevail simultaneously among the same population. If these Papuans can hold, some of them that the dead go on a long journey to the west, some that they live underground, especially it would seem beneath their own graves, and some (p. 79) that they continue to dwell near the living, — and apparently all these beliefs may be held together, — the old criterion of different forms of ^enseitsglaube for determining the existence of different strata in a population clearly loses much of its cogency.

We have no space to do more than mention the methodological papers of K. R. Brotherus and G. C. Wheeler. B. Malinowski, in "The economic aspect of the Intichiunia ceremonies" (pp. Si et seq.), points out in criticism of Frazer that, although the actual economic value of such rites is practically nil, their potential value, in accustoming the minds of the people to continued organized work for a common end, and so laying the foundations of the organization of labour, is very considerable. R. Elander ("The clan as a local unit in society," pp. 131 et seq.) replies to some criticisms of his published views on that subject, and further develops the idea.

A word of praise is due to the printers, who have produced in a most clear and easily-read form, without serious misprints and with only two or three minor slips, so considerable a body of material in a language which was not their own. We wonder if a book of Swedish essays would be so well done in London or New York ?

H. J. Rose.