Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/303

 Reviews. 275

10 pages. The autlior inspires confidence in his generalisations, and his equipment is evidently adequate. The value of what one may call intensive comparative study is becoming increasingly recognised, and indeed it is the one path by which any advance may now be made. Here we have a study of two bodies of folk- tales which have points of contact and conspicuous differences. Obviously the results are valuable and often illuminating. It is perhaps a pity that the work was planned quite in this way and limited in scope to the hero of folk-tale. It would have been preferable if the hero had formed a chapter in a work contrasting more generally the two bodies of folk-tale of which the author has special knowledge. We hope that he will follow up this work with at least an essay on the relations between Russian and German Afiirchen designed on broader lines.

To tell the truth, the analysis of the hero is a little too scientific, — a good fault, but at times the comic spirit cannot but feel that we are attacking a butterfly with a sledge hammer ; and a deal of our thoroughness does not lead to much, and might in the pre- sentment of the researches have been omitted. A confirmation of the suggestion that the author owes us a comparison of the two bodies of Miirclien of a more general character I find in the fact that quite 75 per cent, of the points which I jotted down while reading the book are obiter dicta which do not concern the hero, and in the short chapter of conclusion three pages out of the ten go beyond the alleged limits of the treatise.

To ask for more, however, is a part of gratitude. The book contains many very suggestive and interesting facts, and it is to be hoped that it will find imitators. The study, for instance, of the names of the heroes of the tales of specific races is exceedingly interesting. The author has shown that, at least in German and Russian Mdrche7i^ the hero is more often given a personal name than is perhaps usually supposed. Of the stories told by the Greeks of Cappadocia to Mr. Dawkins, on the other hand, certainly over 90 per cent, had for hero or heroine a character without a personal name. The one constant exception is the specific story of the Brother 7vho was turned into aft Animal, where the names Sophia and Constandi are always used.^ ^Cf. von Hahn, No. I, Asterinos itnd Pttlja.