Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 8, 1897.djvu/184

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be a thief," is the gist of the proverbs of all nations on the sub- ject. In the case of some trades the popular detestation is carried into action, and intermarriage is discouraged or forbidden between the families of the craftsman and the agricultural peasant. This is so in the case of the woodcutters, the charcoal-burners, and all the smaller trades which find a home within the bounds of a French forest. The ropemakers form almost an outcast trade, especially in Brittany, where even in the present century they were even obliged to bury their dead apart. One would at once jump to the conclusion that this is a relic of racial hatred and of an ancient tribal trade, were it not for the former frequent em- ployment of colonies of lepers in ropemaking. But, on the other hand, may not the lepers, as outcasts from society, have been driven to resort to outcast colonies of ropemakers ? The rope- makers are in Brittany classed together with the knackers or offal butchers, under the name of caqueux, caqui/is, or cacoiis^ which at once suggests the name of the pariahs of the Pyrenees, the Cagots. It is curious, too, to recollect the reputation of the gipsies for eating unwholesome meat ; and again, to find that in at least two English counties (Shropshire and Lincolnshire) a buyer of diseased beasts is called a m^-butcher, and unwholesome meat cag-mag. Were these two trades originally practised by gipsies, or by some wandering tribe resembling them ?

This is a mere sample of the many interesting and curious questions that suggest themselves from a study of M. Sebillot's pages. We must not omit, in conclusion, to draw attention to his preface, and to the stress he everywhere lays on the conditions under which the craftsman laboured, as a main factor in the formation of his folklore; nor to mention the numerous reproduc- tions of early prints of the various crafts, by which the value of the work is greatly enhanced.

Der Textus Ornatior der Cukasapt.vti : ein Beitrag zur Marchenkunde. Von Richard Schmidt. Stuttgart : W. Kohlhammer, 1896.

This pamphlet is a translation, with textual comments, of two imperfect manuscripts (of which the one is a copy, sometimes careless, of the other), or at least a translation of so much of them