Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/365

 REVIEWS.

West African Folk-Tales, collected and arranged by W. H. Barker, B.Sc, and Cecilia Sinclair. London : George G. Harrap & Co. 191 7.

This collection of stories does not profess to be a scientific work. But it is founded on original material, which "it is hoped," as Mr. Barker in his interesting introduction says, to render ere long "available for the student of folk-lore." Arranged therefore for "a wider public," it affords the student a foretaste of what the genuine collection will offer.

The tales on which the work is " based " were collected on the Gold Coast, where Mr. Barker was Principal of the Govern- ment Institution at Accra. But we are not told to what tribes the narrators belonged, nor in what circumstances the tales themselves were told. This information is presumablyreserved until the original material is presented. Mr. Barker contends, and no doubt with justice, that " folklore can and does render valuable assistance toward a solution" of the problem presented by the traditions relating to the origin of peoples. It must, however, be used with caution when we have to deal with matter so transmissible as folk- tales. "A conquered people," it is true, "do not give up their ' lore ' with the land, but carry their customs and traditions with them to their new homes." But they learn many things on the way ; and they absorb from peoples with whom they come into contact, whether as conquerors or conquered, or by way of trading intercourse, customs and traditions, especially tales told for amusement.

Mr. Barker gives a picturesque and interesting account of tale- tellers and their audience, rendered all the more vivid by a