Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/160

 152 Reviews.

like Straparola, who takes up nearly fifty items by himself. It would have been advisable, I should say, to have sum- marised this information in bibliographical notes and lists at the end of the transcription of the first edition ; but, as Cavaliere Pitre observes in his Preface, Italy has no Kayser or even Brunet, and many of these entries doubtless give exact bibliographical details for the first time. Our author is careful to mark with an asterisk those entries which have not passed through his own hands. We are thus able to understand how he could have included Mr. Andrews' Ananci Stories from Antigna in his list. Ananci stories, ^

of course, relate to the Fairy Spider of the negroes, and 1

have nothing to do with Italy. I am surprised to find that Cavaliere Pitre has not included Doni's version of the Fables of Bidpai in his list : La Morale Philosophia de JDoni is an important link in the spread of these Fables, being, for example, the original source from which Sir Thomas North translated them for the first time into English. Similarly, I notice the absence in this section of any account of the many Italian versions of the " Barlaam Josaphat Legends'. Both these items come home to my own business and bosom, and it is doubtless only owing to this that I am able to point to any lacunse in Pitre's collections.

The second section, on Folk-Songs, is even richer than the preceding, running to some twelve hundred and fifty numbers. In both sections, Pitre himself is the largest individual contributor. The next two sections, " Games and Riddles," need not detain us long ; though the refer- ence to Floss's Das Kind in the former section, and to Mr. Newell in the latter, would have been helpful, as both writers deal, at any rate incidentally, with Italy. Pitr^ has devoted considerable and minute attention to the bibliography of Italian Proverbs, which fills up nearly as much space as Tales and Songs, over eleven hundred items being devoted to this subject, in which, perhaps,