Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/292

264 naturally reprinted without alteration, and at this time of day comment on so well-known a classic would be superfluous. But the second edition contains valuable additional matter in the form of references to the literature which has appeared since the date of the first publication of the work. These notes are conveniently grouped in an Appendix, pp. 122-136. Some have been culled from Dieterich's own papers; many, as the signatures testify, have been contributed by well-known scholars such as Wünsch, Harnack, Reitzenstein, and others. One notices particularly the many references to the increasing literature of the folklore of the German Empire.

Naturally the notes are chiefly an accumulation of corroborative evidence, and there is no specifically new light cast on the problems raised. On the classical side the additions do not amount to much, though one or two passages which Dieterich had overlooked have been added. On p. 122 Wünsch refers the reader to Samter's attempt to connect Mother Earth with the classical adoption of a kneeling position during childbirth. As I have already had occasion to state in these pages, I cannot regard Samter's thesis as proven, nor his conclusion to be demanded by the evidence at his disposal. Classical evidence on these matters is extremely fragmentary, and Dieterich himself has pushed the possible deductions from it, to my mind, to the furthest reasonable limits. Wünsch rightly notices that Ziegler's attempt to press Theokritos, Id. xvii., 58, into the service of Mother Earth is based on a misapprehension.

I feel that the statement (p. 132, note to p. 66) "fur heilkraftig galt die Erde in Lemnos" is misleading. It is not the Earth which has healing properties, but a particular kind of earth which is used as a medicinal remedy, a very different matter. For the history of the use of Lemnian earth and analogous earths possessing magical properties reference may be made to Mr. Hasluck's learned paper on Terra Lemnia.

On one point I may, perhaps, be allowed to supplement a note. On page 126 (note to p. 21) reference is made to the pre-Hellenic infant burials on the Acropolis at Athens. When excavating the