Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/182



is not much more than two years since the Archduke Ludwig Salvator of Austria published, in the Majorcan dialect and in German, a dainty and interesting collection of Majorcan folktales. And now we have from Señor Alcover, a priest of the island, a further harvest. Señor Alcover several years ago gave the world, first in local periodicals and afterwards in a volume of sketches, some seven tales. Since then the happy idea of forming a collection of folktales has occurred to him; and we have in these two volumes the first instalment. Unlike the Archduke Ludwig Salvator's collection, which consisted partly of sagas and partly of märchen, Señor Alcover has given only märchen, with one or two drolls. They are well selected and well told, comprising variants of many of the European stock, and are worth the attention of students of folktales. The example of the best collectors has been followed in noting the names and residences of the original narrators, and generally the places and dates of the telling. It affords us much pleasure to bid God-speed to the author in this pious work of preserving the traditional lore of the islanders. If we may make one suggestion, a glossary appended to any further volumes would assist foreign readers to whom the dialect is unfamiliar, but who may be able to read ordinary Spanish.

most fascinating of all subjects to the anthropologist is that which traces the primitive religious ideas of the human race.