Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/129

Rh many English students on that account, as the sources from which they are derived are little known here, and Miss Garnett deserves our thanks for drawing our attention to them. But she has unaccountably failed to name her authority for some of the tales, as for example the tale of the pastourmá and several of the delightful Jewish stories which follow it.

Mr. Gomme has already dealt with Mr. Stuart-Glennie's concluding chapters; and it would be impertinent of me to take up space here in replying to the controversial observations upon statements of mine, which appear incidentally in Mr. Stuart-Glennie's exposition of his theory on Matriarchy. I think it right only to protest against his assumption that "the Hypothesis of Spontaneous Origination", with which he does me the honour to credit me in common with Mr. Andrew Lang, has received "the collective imprimatur of the Folk-lore Society". I am a little in the dark as to what the Society's "collective imprimatur" may be in this connection; but if it be intended to imply that the Society, as such, is committed to what I have ventured to call the Anthropological Theory, and Mr. Jacobs the Casual Theory, of the origin of folk-tales, then let me assure Mr. Stuart-Glennie that he is entirely mistaken. The Society has never expressed any opinion on the subject. It consists of members holding a wide diversity of opinions, most, if not all, of which are represented on the Council; and any expression of a collective opinion on this or any other subject in controversy would in the present state of our scientific knowledge be much to be regretted. Mr. Stuart-Glennie need, therefore, have no hesitation in marshalling the evidence in support of his own hypothesis: the sooner he does so, the sooner he will have the chance of converting us all. But until the evidence be forthcoming he must not blame us for being deaf to the voice of the charmer.

I have left to the last a group of collections of Celtic tales, three of them local collections, and the fourth of a