Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/409

Rh In one, Finn is found predicting the coming of Christianity. This trait, a commonplace of the cycle, is easy to explain if, pre-Christian at first, these stories were finally adapted by Christian scribes. On Prof. Zimmer's theory it is well-nigh inexplicable.

I have dwelt at some length on M. Pflugk-Hartung's article, little as its conclusions deserve notice, because it is characteristic of a current tendency to strain archæological evidence beyond its due limits. That much may be hoped, however, from a searching investigation of Irish prehistoric art in all its phases I firmly believe, and I trust that the younger generation of Irish scholars will not suffer the work of Todd and Petrie and Wilde to remain uncompleted.

Comparatively little has been done in regard to the collection and study of modern Gaelic folk-lore. Colonel Wood- Martin, in the third and concluding volume of his great work upon the Antiquities and History of Sligo, devotes chapters to manners and customs, and to legends and superstitions, both of which may be consulted with profit, particularly with regard to well-worship. Mr. Moore's Folk-lore of the Isle of Man is a useful and careful summary of what is known. Volumes iii and iv of Waifs and Strays of Celtic Tradition contain valuable and authentic material for the study of Gaelic folk-fancy. The interest of the late Rev. A. Cameron's Reliquiæ Celticæ (to which I have already drawn attention ante, p. 280) is mainly philological. It is earnestly to be hoped that all Highlanders will welcome this worthy memorial of Scotland's greatest Gaelic scholar. I may be permitted to place on record the claims I have advanced in these pages (ante, March 1892) on behalf of the Gaelic märchen, Gold Tree and Silver Tree, that it is the most faithful representative of the story-root whence have sprung the German märchen of Schneewittchen and the twelfth-century Breton lai of Eliduc.

One point of no small importance has been partly