Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/101

Rh was originally the exclusive possession of the Neolithic occupants of the soil. Shamanism is a note, not of race, but of the stage of culture; and it is quite improbable that the Celts had risen above that stage at the time of their invasion, or that they degraded to it while in all other respects they were advancing. To say, therefore, as Dr. Windle does, that "the Celt seems to have in some measure adopted the Druidism of the Neolithic peoples," implies an imperfect apprehension of the position, though he may perhaps plead that he has authority upon his side. Nor is the author's account (short though it be) of the Christian Church in Roman times susceptible of historical proof. He has not quite got rid of the fables of mediæval chroniclers. We know nothing of the organization and spread of the British Church, save the solitary fact that three bishops attended the Synod of Arles, one of them coming from York, one from London, and the third from a place not yet identified with certainty. But what was the position or authority of those bishops, what place they had in the Church, or whether they had sees at all in the mediæval and modern sense, we do not know; and nothing is clearer than that Christianity, if widespread, was sporadic and had but little hold of the people.

In any future edition opportunity should be taken also to add to the bibliographical list and to give real bibliographical details, and to correct obvious oversights like those on page 32 of metres for millimetres, and on page 143, where there is some confusion in the account of the basilica. The proper name of the dolmen in Gower is "Arthur's Stone"; "Arthur's Quoit" is quite unknown locally, and seems to owe its existence to the imagination of some antiquary. The inquiries of the Ethnographical Survey Committee appointed by the British Association might also be appropriately referred to in the final chapter.

little treatise ought to be very useful, bringing together as