Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/299

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plausible, and worth careful examination by specialists in Finnish subjects.

H. J. Rose.

Sagen und Marchen aus DEM Oberwallis. Aus dem Volks- munde gesammelt von J. Jegerlehxer. Basel : Verlag der Schweiz. Gesellschaft fiir Voikskunde, 1913. Svo, pp. xii + 348.

This volume, the ninth of the series of Schriften der Sclnveizer- ischen Gesillschaft fiir Voikskunde, contains 45S traditions and folk-tales published in German by a collector of experience and local knowledge. The district and locality from which the various items hail are carefully noted, and at the beginning of each section a list is given of the names of those in the district from whom the author collected his stories. Two specimens of the dialect are given. Perhaps it might have been as well to have added trans- lations of these : to a foreigner they are very unintelligible. A useful index and some comparative references have been compiled by Hanns Biichtold with the assistance of Prof. Singer. Both index and notes include in their scope Dr. Jegerlehner's previous publication Sage/i uftd Mdrchen aus dem Ufiterwallis. The notes would be more useful if they had not been so rigorously compressed. They are limited almost entirely to paginal refer- ences without any explanatory text. The bulk of the collection- consists of traditions ; Mdrchen and drolls form hardly a fifth of the whole. Occasionally it is a little difficult to follow the author's distinction between Mdrchen and Sagen. For instance, No. 76 (p. 55), a variant of T/ie Three Words of Advice, is labelled Ma re he 71 ; Das Bettelkind, No. 74 (p. 52), which is not so desig- nated, must have equal claims to the title. It belongs to another branch of the same family, the story, ultimately of Eastern origin, of which the central maxim is " Never tell a secret to your wife."^ The Mdrchen for the most part belong to well-known types, — Cinderella, The Grateful Dead, Konig Drosselbart, Little Snow- white, and so on. For the drolls, the district possesses its Gotham, and Lotschen is the local home of wiseacres.

'See Clouston, Popular Tales and Fictions, vol. ii., p. 450.