Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/427

Rh preciation alike of the literary, historical, and traditional questions arising out of his text. His notes are to the point and useful; and, having regard to the different classes of readers for whom he writes, they cannot be called redundant. The translation is preceded by an introduction containing an account of the Nihongi, which is essential to the understanding of its position in Japanese literature, and in a short compass puts the reader in possession of the main facts regarding it, and regarding the text adopted for the translation and other necessary details. Several native drawings are reproduced, as well as some other elucidatory cuts. Among the latter we may specially note the figure of a clay horse in the museum at Tokio, taken from a barrow. The text records the former sacrifice of men and horses to the spirit of the dead by burying them with the corpse, and the legend which professes to account for the abolition of the ancient custom and the substitution of figures of clay. And it preserves a very curious tradition, not without analogies elsewhere, of a horseman appearing on a fleet red courser, which he exchanges for the piebald steed of a belated traveller, and which the next morning is found to be merely a horse of clay from a neighbouring barrow.

The Japan Society by issuing this volume has earned the thanks of students who are not numbered among its members. We hope that it may be encouraged to give to the western world many more volumes designed like the present, to make known the national character, literature, and traditions of the people of the Sunrise-land.

this pamphlet Dr. Gaster has reprinted, from the Royal Asiatic Society's Journal, a transcript of a curious (and so far as is known, unique) magical Hebrew MS. in his possession, together with a translation and an introduction. The value of documents of this kind lies, of course, in the evidence they afford of the beliefs and customs of mankind at certain stages of civilisation. But, as Dr. Gaster in his learned and interesting introduction points out, a special value attaches to such writings as can be traced to