Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/429

 Revieivs. 397

the sun, is in love, in quite Apollic fashion, with a mortal maid" is as unfortunate in matter as it is in form, and is not hkely to find favour with classical scholars. Some of the generalisations about things Egyptian and Indian are possibly as unbalanced. At least the author's adventures in the classical field do not give one con- fidence in her guiding.

This is indeed a work with many grave defects, but at the same time it is not without qualities. Prejudices may peep out, but it is not inspired by any perverted fad, and there is never intentional dis- honesty of method. The faults, I suspect, are due to inexperience in the science of weighing evidence and a certain lack of training. The author has attempted a task at present beyond the powers of her equipment. Industry, interest, and wide reading are there, but of no particular department of her subject is the author complete mistress. To survey mankind from China to Peru it is essential that the writer should know by personal experience the detailed intricacies and difficulties of a smaller portion of the field. But setting aside the blunders, mistakes of method, and the weak- ness of too facile generalisations, the material contained in the work provides a very useful book of reference on certain topics. Occasionally the material overwhelms its collector, but it is often, particularly in the earlier part of the book, methodically arranged. In the later parts, for instance in the chapter on Chastity in Christianity, the want of sensitiveness to differences of quality in evidence makes itself felt, and the chapter becomes an aggregate of curious rather tlian useful items. But for the attitude of the Lower Culture towards widows and the rituals connected with widowhood, and for such topics as the sexual relations, theoretical and actual, between divinity, priest and priestess, the work con- stitutes a valuable index.

There is, by the way, a classical reference which might find a place among the author's collection. It consists of a statement in the -so-called Letters of Aeschines that Trojan maidens before marriage waded into the Skamander and made formal offering in words of their maidenhood to the river. On one occasion a mortal took a mean advantage of the custom. The passage is quoted and discussed in Farnell, Ctdts of the Greek States, vol. iv., P- 423- W. R. Halliday.