Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/307

 Revieivs. 279

march in night processions (the 'cours.'pp. 75, in, 11+-5) ; there are hidden treasures, etc. Some samples of the dances, games, proverbs, festivals, and courtship, marriage, and death customs have appeared in Folk-Lore^- but there is great wealth of additional material in this volume. The folk-tales are numerous, but not very striking or exceptionally interesting ; the absence of drolls probably merely shows that the narrators were generally women, as there is a Gotham village (p. 94). But the folk-songs recorded would repay, and seem to require, more critical examination, — especially as a number of melodies are noted, and Count Nigra 's Canti Popolari del Piemontc (Turin, 1888), only gives sixteen airs.

Space is not available for more than mention of the fairies (pp. 69, 1 19-21), the poltergeists (pp. 74, 113), the calchetto (a night- mare baffled by being set to count rice grains, p. in), the wicked souls who run as night dogs (p. 12), the numerous witches (with whom the marmots dance, p. 76, and who torment as flies, p. 1 13), or the magic and divination (of which we may cite that a mattress stuffed with oakleaves makes a child robust, p. 159, and that a walnut tree is split and a sick child passed through to divine the chances of recovery, p. 144). \Ve have given pages freely as the index is not very helpful.

As we hope that The Costumes, Traditions, arid Songs of Savoy and Piedmont will be followed by other volumes equally delightful, we will suggest no improvements in arrangement that might rob the notes of their spontaneity, but we must say that the value of the folklore would be enhanced if pains were taken always to indicate as precisely as possible whence it was obtained, and to distinguish what is living in the mouths of the folk from what comes from a literary source. For instance, amongst remedies on p. 145 one is told to put lion's eyes under the armpit, eat an elephant's heart warm, drink giraffe's milk, etc., but can these be current folk-medicine ? It would help the ordinary reader also if words not familiar to him were explained, e.g. on p. 7 "St. Michael's Day passed, the marenda goes to heaven," but should one be expected to know all about this dish ?

A. R. Wright.

•Vol. xxiii., pp. 457-60; vol. xxiv., pp. 91-6, 213-8, 362-4.