Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/464

 REVIEWS.

Modern Greek in Asia Minor : a Study of the Dialects of SiLLi, Cappadocia and Pharasa, with Grammar, Texts, Translations and Glossary. By R. M. Dawkins, M.A., with a Chapter on the Subject-Matter of the Folk-Tales by W. R. Halliday, B.A., B.Litt. Cambridge: University Press. 19 16.

A study of a language to be complete must be accompanied by texts which illustrate the formation of sentences and give some partial insight into the mentality of the people speaking it. Among an illiterate people traditional texts are the only ones possible to obtain. Mr. Dawkins has produced an elaborate work on the modern Greek dialects of certain districts of Asia Minor, and has appended to his grammar, analysis and study of their relations to one another, and to the Turkish dialects which threaten to over- whelm them, no fewer than ninety-five folk-tales dictated or written by inhabitants of the villages where his researches were made. This in itself would render students of folklore greatly indebted to him. But he has added to this debt by inducing Prof. Halliday to write a valuable chapter on the subject-matter of the tales, embody- ing explanatory notes upon them and lists of variants (in many cases discussing their provenience), and winding up with a con- venient bibliography especially useful for the Greek stories and those from the Nearer East, including under that head Slavonic, Bulgarian and Magyar tales.

In studying folk-tales the attention may be concentrated primarily upon the plot. The object then is to trace the origin and wanderings of the tale, considered as a work of art. Its bearing on the general problem of the transmission of culture