Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/80

72 contact with European civilisation. Want of space compels us to forego illustrations; but there need be no hesitation in saying that to the student of the migration of folk-tales Dr. Rand's collection offers some remarkable evidence.

The historical traditions are less important than they would be if we were furnished with the means of checking the statements they contain with testimony of a more trustworthy character. But they are worth examination, even if regarded as no more than native hypotheses of such events, for example, as the origin of the feud between the Micmacs and the Mohawks, based upon native knowledge of manners and customs. Indeed, all the tales are valuable for the study of native custom and belief In a European märchen we feel at once that we are in a different world from that which we inhabit day by day. But here there is no such feeling. The line between stories told for the pleasure of the telling, and the stories told because they are believed to be true, or at all events possible, is hardly drawn. We are in the same atmosphere in both cases, and there seems no reason why the story of the Magical Dancing Doll—that of Aladdin—should not be to the Indian mind as real as the historical traditions in another part of the volume.

.

" allowance", writes Mr. C. G. Leland, in his Introduction to this book, "should always be made for the first work by a young writer." It was unnecessary to write thus in introducing such a work as Miss Owen's. From the first page to the last there is not a dull page in it. The portraiture of the five old women is admirable, and their talk delicious. Usually, the setting of a work on