Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 8, 1897.djvu/182

 158 Reviews.

and others, whom the author constantly cites in his footnotes. He has done wisely to confine himself to subjects of which they give us little or nothing. By this means he has exactly filled the blank that was wanting to complete our knowledge of the peasant and peasant-life in the Duchy he loves.

To English students it adds not a little to the interest of the book that Dr. Andree has been able frequently to illustrate from publications of the Folk-Lore Society the customs and supersti- tions of Brunswick by analogies in England, practised and held by men and women of presumably Saxon, or at least Teutonic, descent. And his claims to our gratitude are completed by an index.

Legendes et Curiosit^s des Metiers, par Paul Sebillot. Paris. Ernest Flammarion.

M. Sebillot gives us in twenty quarto numbers the trade super- stitions and customs, the popular nicknames and sayings, con- nected with tailors, bakers, blacksmiths, barbers, sempstresses, lacemakers, milliners, shoemakers, hatters, pastrycooks, butchers, carpenters, cabinet-makers, woodcutters, charcoal-burners, stone- cutters, masons, slaters, millers, tinkers, locksmiths, nailers, spinners, crate-makers, besom-makers, sabot-makers, coopers, laundresses and washerwomen, wheelwrights, turners, painters, weavers, netmakers, ropemakers, printers. Dyers, brewers, potters, tanners, glovers, chimney-sweepers are almost the only leading trades omitted. A more orderly arrangement than the above would have made it a much easier task to estimate the contents of the work, but in any case a very cursory examination of it is all that could be attempted here. M. Sebillot has in fact broken fresh ground — no easy thing to do in folklore-collecting nowa- days — and has brought together a mass of infonnation, chiefly French, which cries aloud for complementary evidence from the rest of Europe, before anything like a complete view of the early artisan-world can be obtained.

No folklore of arts or crafts can date from the very earliest ages of human life : none, for instance, can be so old as super- stitions about fire and water may be. And at first, of course, all