Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/143

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Lawson ^ having nothing to do with the matter, as Polites shows in vol. iii., p. 355. It is therefore open to anyone to assume that the ancient empyromancy died out completely and was replaced by a foreign custom. Still, the opposite theory is, as he says, " by no means improbable," and other customs may be more clearly traced.

Beside Prof. Polites' scholarly articles the elaborate essay of A. Adamantios on chastity-tests (vol. iii., pp. 51, 390) looks very amateurish. It contains indeed some good collections of material on this interesting if not very novel subject, but we note several weaknesses. Thus the discussion rests partly on the interesting passage in Numbers, ch. v., vv. 11 et seq., on the "water of bitter- ness " ; but the author handles this in a way which indicates that he had neither consulted any Hebrew scholar nor noticed Robertson Smith's discussion of it.- Later, when he speaks of the Roman "worship of Talassio," tries to emend a perfectly plain passage of Polybios ^ in a way which would make shipwreck of the grammar, and finds a sufficient source for the magico- religious importance of virginity in family pride, we see that neither his scholarship nor his anthropological training is sufiicient for the task he has undertaken.

But most of the contributions are, as we have said, of a high order. Many are naturally of interest chiefly, if not entirely, to the specialist in Byzantine and Modern Greek ; but the majority are of wider importance. We would especially notice G. A. Megas' description of a sacrificial rite surviving in Thrace and reminding one decidedly of pre-Christian customs (vol. iii., p. 148) ; a number of interesting variants of popular songs ; another article by Megas on buried treasure (vol. iv., p. 22); and two contribu- tions consisting of popular compositions, the work of unlettered peasants, referring to incidents of the past year, such as the murder of the late King. These present a most curious combina- tion of old and new, since their form is of almost immemorial

^Modern Greek Folklore etc., p. 237.

- The Religion of the Semites (1907), p. 180.

•*III. XXV., 6; 5ta \l9ov for At'a XiOov. E. Harrison [Essays presented to Wtn. Ridgera<ay, p. 97) has the same suggestion ; but dfivvfii does not take dia + ace.