Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 29, 1918.djvu/258

 REVIEWS.

The Polish Peasant through American Eyes.

The Polish Peasant in Europe and America. Monograph of an Immigrant Group. By William I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki. 5 vols. The University of Chicago Press. 1918.

The announcement of this work, promising a valuable addition to the ethnography and folklore of the European peasant, was welcomed by all who knew the scarcity of such data in the English language. For we must remember that it is not for the lack of written materials regarding Eastern Europe that they are not used in scientific speculation in the west. But it is easier to quote ethnological examples from Australia and Africa, which are to be found in the English language, than from any part of Europe outside France or Germany.

Polish literature stands amongst the richest in monographs on Customs and Traditions, but owing to these detailed studies there seems to be a lack of synthetical books summarising these researches. Hence the difficulty of advising the translation of a particular book on Polish folklore. Nevertheless it is easy to furnish the requisite references to anyone proposing to write a synthetic book. The authors of this work, therefore, were in the particularly happy position of having no predecessors or competitors, either in the Polish or English language. Again, the subject they have chosen is satisfactory in this sense, that, of all the Slavs, the Polish peasant is most free of either Turko- Mongol or West European admixture. It is obvious from his customs and traditions that he has never been under Tartar rule, and though for the last century Poland has been under