Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/78

68 the cult of wells, the practice of desuil for ceremonial purposes and of tuathbel (withershins) for magical rites. The cursing stones in the island of Inismurray and elsewhere are of course referred to; but the author has omitted to state that the stones must be turned withershins during the imprecation. In dealing with totemism Colonel Wood-Martin has over-looked one of the strongest arguments in favour of the view of its occurrence in Ireland, and that is the reported seal origin of the sept of Conneeleys, Connollys, etc. The greater part of the book naturally deals with archæological remains; but interspersed with the descriptive portion will be found numerous items of folklore interest. The book forms a valuable and much-needed handbook of Irish archæology; it is sure to be useful, but it cannot be termed luminous, as the problems of origin are untouched and there are no suggestive generalisations. A most excellent feature is the classified bibliography of over a thousand entries. In the section on religion and folklore there is only one entry of a book published in London; all the remainder refer to Irish journals. The publications of our own Society, the books issued by Mr. Nutt, and, indeed, almost all non-Irish productions are omitted. The book is extremely well got up and carefully indexed.

At last the folklore world, which has small Sanskrit and less Pāli, has some prospects of being in a position to judge how far the Jātakas, or former births of the Buddha, can throw light on the origins of fables and folk-tale. The present volume translates the Jātakas contained in the first of the five volumes already edited by Professor Fausböll, and might, therefore, be supposed to be one-fifth of the whole work. But the original text of the first volume contains, besides, the Nidāna-Kathā, a sort of pre-biography of the Buddha. This has already been translated by Professor Rhys Davids, and has been wisely omitted in the present version. By these means no fewer than 150 Jātakas have been included in the present volume. As Professor Rhys Davids' first volume only