Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 29, 1918.djvu/259

 Reviews. 249

Russo-German domination, of all the social groups it is the peasantry which foreign influence has affected the least. It can be partly accounted for by the peasants' conservative devotion to old religious and national traditions, but still more by their fanatical attachment to the land.

With the industrial development of Poland many' peasants, tempted by higher wages, migrated to the towns and thus broke their direct contact with the land — yet it failed to affect to any great extent their religious and national outlook. But the changes in their individual and social life, due to emigration abroad, are far deeper. Hence a comparative study of the peasant at home and abroad is interesting as a means of observing the influence of change of environment. Here it must be remembered, however, that only the first generation of emigrants can be studied for this purpose, and also it must be taken into account that with the exception of political exiles it is usually one type — and that a highly commercialised one — which emigrated. When dealing with the emigration to the United States particularly (for the Polish peasant emigrates also to Germany, France, Siberia and Brazil) it is most interesting to watch the contact between the least educated members of a nation, conscious of its ancient traditions, and members of the American nation, advanced in culture among all classes but whose traditions are now in the making. Naturally mutual understanding can only arise with the loss of the Polish peasant's original character.

The joint authors of the volumes under consideration have realised the immensity of the subject since on the very first page they say : " The present study was not, in fact, undertaken exclusively or even primarily as an expression of interest in the Polish peasant . . . but the Polish peasant was selected rather as a convenient object."

In the same preface, p. 8, the authors give us the contents of the five volumes, which they call " largely documentary in their character."

" Volumes I. and II. comprise a study of the organisation of the peasant primary groups (family and community), and of the partial evolution of this system of organisation under the