Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/436

 404 Revietvs.

attribution, and the discussion of the various practices in detail is postponed to the chapters still to come.

The last section of the book is an interesting discussion of the relation of betrothal to the final ceremony. For the conclusions some of the evidence collected earlier in the book will have pre- pared us. One notices how often in folk practice the betrothal is the essential rite, and throughout we see the Church gradually enforcing the claims of the religious ceremony. Even the ratifica- tion of the betrothal was originally secular, and the traditio puellae in early German law a civil rite. Martin Luther's view, quoted on p. 142, appears to be that the religious ceremony consists solely in the blessing of a contract already made.

A good deal of the material collected from the early official records is interesting to the student of institutions. One sees the gradual checking of possible abuses by legal safeguards, as, for instance, the enforcement by legal enactment of the presence of reputable witnesses at a declaration of betrothal (p. 14) or common- sense inspiring a sumptuary law against too great an extravagance in betrothal presents (p. 119). If only a similar check could be exercised in the analogous case of funerals among our own people !

It will be seen that the researches of Dr. Bachtold have col- lected a quantity of interesting facts. His handling of them is marked by sound sense and a real mastery of his material. The complete book, when it appears, is bound to be of great importance for students alike of legal institutions and of folklore. Both classes of readers will be interested to observe the many concrete cases presented where folk practice is the outcrop of an earlier stratum of legal institutions. ^V. R. Halliday.

Anthropological Report on the Ibo-Speaking Peoples of Nigeria : Part I., Laiv afid Custom of the Ibo of the Awka Neighbourhood, S. Nigeria; Part IL, Etiglish-Ibo and Ibo- Efiglish Dictionary; Part III., Proverbs, Narratives, Vocabu- laries arid Gra??tmar. By Northcote W. Thomas. Demy 8vo. Pp. 161, 391, 199. London: Harrison & Sons. 1913.

This painstaking survey of the Ibo-speaking tribes furnishes matter of considerable interest. We have a full account of the