Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/476

 448 Revieivs.

the great Earth-Mother. The chief ceremonies at the Padstow May rites are analysed into : the hobby-horse procession ; the part taken by St. George, the Christian substitute for an ancient Sun-God; the curious appearance of "Aunt Ursula Birdhood," of which an explanation is suggested. The number is of exceptional interest to all students of folk-song and primitive custom.

Jataka Tales. Selected and Edited with Introduction and Notes by H. T. Francis and E. J. Thomas. Cambridge: The University Press, 191 6. Price 7s. 6d. net. The complete English translation from the Pali of the Buddhist Jataka, the work of a group of Cambridge scholars, has been reviewed in these pages as the successive volumes appeared. While this work, as a storehouse of Indian folklore, will continue to be indispensable to the student, like most oriental books, it contains a considerable amount of matter, particularly in the form of verses, which is of little interest. The present selection, con- taining the most important tales, will be a useful substitute for the ordinary reader of the complete edition.

To show the interest of the volume, we note that in "The Hero's Tale " we have a version of the Jason Saga ; " The King and the Stick-gatherer" contains, like the d ama of Sakuntala, the incident of identification of the heir by a rmg ; " The Monkey and the Ogre " may be compared with : Qiiia me vestigia ierreni, Omnia te adversum spectantia^ nulla retrorsum, of Horace ; in "The Peacock's Wooing" the bird dances in defiance of all decency, like Hippoclides in Herodotus ; "The Robber and the Treasure" is perhaps the origin of Chaucer's "Pardoner's Tale" ; in "The Value of a Brother" the woman selects, like the wife of Intaphernes, her brother in preference to her husband and son : " If I live, I can get another husband and another son ; but, as my parents are dead, I can never have another brother " ; in " The Great Dreams " we have a version of the tale in Pausanias, where Oknos or Indolence plaits a rope, which an ass furtively eats as he plaits it ; " The Grateful Elephant " is our old friend