Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/306

 278 Reviews.

ments and amulets against the evil eye, and such intimate domestic scenes as the scouring of coppers and the making of petticoats, — all so lovingly rendered that even the beads of the rosary held by the girl ready for mass are of the right number, — an accuracy rarely achieved by painters !

The text also shows how woman can enter and record where man might not think to tread, for, when the simple communal life of the peasant is depicted for us, we are told the methods of his baking and the shapes of his baskets ; we hear how the old women climb trees to get leaves for their animals, and how shoes are usually carried in the hand so that they shall not wear out quickly.

Miss Canziani has gathered a good deal of folklore of types familiar over a far wider area. Thus (pp. 14 1-2) a strong wind shows that a bad person is dead ; it is unlucky to shoot a swallow or to borrow a needle (unless you prick yourself with it), or for bells to sound when the clock strikes, or for a bridal party to meet a funeral or to encounter rain; you should wish when a star falls; the " man in the moon " was taken up as a punishment for throwing mud at her; (p. 75) potatoes should be sown under a waxing moon; (p. t^i) a falling star foretells death; (p. 145) a-dried toad stops bleeding^; (p. 144) a mad dog's hair fried in oil cures hydrophobia ; a seventh child has the power of healing ; (p. 36) a dead pine-tree and flags are always set on the roof of a newly finished house ; and so on. But there is much unfamiliar matter, and the differentiation due to race, (which tends to be obscured by the emphasis laid so often and almost exclusively on "parallels"), is perhaps indicated by the considerable dissimilarity of the Piedmont collections as a whole from those made by the author in Savoy. Much of the difference seems due to importa- tion from the south, which is confirmed by such things as the preservation at Orta of a "dragon's vertebra," a profane relic of a kind nowadays mainly found in Italy.

The folklore typical of mountain districts is also fairly abundant ; the devil causes thunder by beating his wife (p. 140), makes a mountain by dropping a load of stones (p. 174), leaves marks of his claws, and has his Stones and Holes and Bridges ; the dead

^Cf. vol. xxiv. , p. 495.