Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/150

 138 Reviews,

institutions. From the point of view of the latter something has necessarily been sacrificed. Only those who are interested in linguistics, or have practical ends to serve in the study of Hausa, need the text in Arabic characters, which has added so greatly to the size and cost of production, and therefore to the price. The notes too are chiefly directed to grammatical questions, whereas students of culture would have been glad to have the observations of so good an observer and enquirer as Mr. Rattray on more matters of custom and tradition.

The stories are well told. Many of them belong, as we might expect, to the common stock. Brer Rabbit, the Wicked Step- mother, the Envious Friend who tries to perform the feat or gain the reward of another, and so forth will easily be recognized. It is interesting to find Chaucer's tale of January and May in a closely similar version. The common tale of the monster that swallows men, animals, and other objects (only to be at last killed and cut open, when its victims come forth unhurt), appears in three different variants. None of them is identical with one given by Major Tremearne in his lately published Hmisa Superstitions (p. 363), not- withstanding that one of them relates, like his, to a Dodo, a terrible bush-spirit, — an excellent example of the fluidity of folk-tales.

A long historical tradition on the origin of the Hausa nation and its conversion to IMohammedanism is instructive on the ques- tion of the authenticity of the history conveyed by tradition. Mr. Rattray comments : "In this history we have undoubtedly historical facts interwoven with mythology, as is common in most histories or traditions of barbaric and savage peoples ; nor are the historical facts of less value, or to be rejected, because the historian has sought to fill up the gaps he finds in authentic records, by resorting to his own imagination or to myths and traditions common among his people." With the former sentence I cordially agree : but it is impossible to assent to the latter without qualification. The difficulty is to discover the historical facts. We cannot do this by merely rationalizing the marvellous. We may be able to identify incidents by the help of external evidence ; but where we cannot do this it is rash to accept them as historical. Moreover, the influence of a foreign culture is subtle. Undoubtedly historical events connected with the foreign element may become identified