Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/283

Rh aggravated, if not caused, by the happy-go-lucky methods of our administration. And the most important lesson they convey is one of the necessity of a great change in our policy, by abandoning the carelessness and indifference with which we have been accustomed to regard other creeds and social arrangements than our own, and applying ourselves with thorough determination to a real comprehension of the prejudices and ideals of our fellow-subjects.

M. Löwenstimm's weighty words are illustrated by numerous examples of crime, in which the motive is traced in directions where our detectives rarely pry. Professor Kohler has rendered a service alike to scientific students and to persons occupied with the problem of government in translating the work into a western tongue. And the price, which is only two marks and a half, ought to put it within the reach of all to whom the subject is of interest.

modest little work must be regarded as a supplement to the vast encyclopedia of Sicilian folklore which we owe to the unwearied labours of Dr. Pitrè. It is limited to traditions appearing to the author to be indigenous to the province of Catania. He has of set purpose put aside all such as he believed to be common to the entire island. Catania was from early times the seat of a Greek colony; and we must expect to find, therefore, traditions of Greek origin among the folklore of Catania. Such probably is the curious tale that Saint Agatha was beloved by a proconsul, whose name is given as Quintian. Having vowed herself to God, the maiden put him off until she had completed a web she had begun to weave; but what she wove in the day she unravelled at night. This looks like a reminiscence of the wooing of Penelope. Saint Agatha is a saint highly honoured at Catania; and her festival, which used to extend from the 17th to the 22nd August, and even now is celebrated from the 18th to the 21st, is one of those municipal functions, like that of Gubbio, so common in Italy, and so well deserving of close and careful study.