Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/100

76 an accurate knowledge of so many branches of scientific inquiry, to say nothing of the varied gifts which go to make up an ideal expositor. That Dr. Windle should in this little book have attained so large a measure of success is due to his wide interests and versatile intellect. He has contrived to pack into the short space of some 200 pages a remarkable amount of information respecting the early inhabitants of these islands, and has illustrated it both pictorially and by reference to analogous superstitions, practices, and material remains in other parts of the world. The volume thus forms an attractive and useful handbook for those who want to acquire merely a general notion of the subject. To them it is particularly addressed; but it is to be hoped that its pleasant style and the intrinsic interest of its subject will lead not a few to pursue the study in detail.

To the pioneers of scientific folklore it has a special interest; for, as might be anticipated, the author has made use of their speculations and discoveries to complete the account of the life and culture of our remote predecessors. If we cannot appeal to folklore for this purpose we can learn but little of the social organisation, the customs and beliefs of those who were presumably our forefathers. And the justice of the appeal is becoming increasingly recognised by archæological students; so that we may hope ere long that such references "even (!) to folklore " as a means of investigating the past, as that of Dr. Seebohm in his Tribal System in Wales, will themselves very speedily become archæological curiosities.

Dr. Windle has done much of the work so well that we feel at a loss to account for some of its shortcomings. If we refer to these, it is not for want of appreciation of the positive merits of the book. We venture to hope that its popularity may be such as to afford its writer an opportunity of considering improvements and corrections, and feel sure he will welcome any suggestions for that purpose. Why, for instance, is there no mention of the Celtic Iron Age? It may have been short in comparison with the Ages of Stone and Bronze that preceded it; but it is an important epoch; its evidences are scattered over the whole south-east of England; and its productions, comprising many of the most beautiful objects of Celtic workmanship, raise most interesting problems concerning British intercourse with the Continent. We doubt, moreover, that Druidism, which was a species of Shamanism