Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/79

 Rh the sky cloudless. The bright stars were shining, and it was long before they fell asleep. Gazing at the stars, they were animated by the natural curiosity so beautifully expressed by the poetess,—

and they began to imagine them the eyes of lovers looking down on them; they began speculating at the choice they would make."

What aggravates the offence in this particular instance is that the translator has thought it necessary to repeat two of these magnificent verses in the same connection in another variant of the same story, and to retail the accompanying text in very similar words. Now, setting aside the verses, it is apparent that the narrative is not given in anything like the way the native Indian must have given it. And this fault runs through the whole book, though it is not always so glaring in its bad taste or so divergent from what the Micmac original may be presumed to have been.

But when we turn from the form to the matter of the book, we can only speak of its high value. It comprises a series of eighty-seven stories, taken down from the mouths of native Indians, in whose midst a great part of Dr. Rand's long life was passed, and of whose good faith he had ample means of judging. The collection may be divided into: (1) Stories which appear to be purely aboriginal; (2) Stories which appear to be derived from European sources; (3) Stories which are in their foundation aboriginal, but which have been more or less influenced by contact with Europeans and their civilisation. And in the two latter classes it is most instructive to observe, on the one hand, how the European stories have been adapted to aboriginal culture, moral and material, and, on the other hand, how the aboriginal stories have been warped and changed by