Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/396



The Month for October contains an article headed "The alleged Human Sacrifices in Italy," by Mr. James Britten, formerly a member of the Council of the Folk-Lore Society. The objects of his attack are Mr. Clodd, Mr. Grant Allen, the Folk-Lore Society (which he qualifies as "a quasi-learned Society"), and many students of folklore who hold different opinions from those which he has adopted. His apparent object is to defend the Roman Catholic Church from a charge that no one had thought of making. The story to which allusion is made was related by Mr. Clodd in his Presidential Address of 1895, on the authority, ultimately, of Canon Pullen, as an illustration of the persistence among the illiterate peasants of modern Europe of superstitions leading sometimes even to the sacrifice of human lives, and was accompanied by two other examples, one from Russia and the other from Roumania. The Roman Catholic Church was not even hinted at in this connection, either by Mr. Clodd or, so far as I know, by anyone who has since alluded to the story, beside Mr. Britten himself Signor De Nino's letter to Mr. Clodd, denying the statement, was translated and printed in Folk-Lore for last December, and probably everyone who read it regarded it as satisfactory. An offprint of the letter was immediately sent by Mr. Nutt to Signor De Nino. That gentleman afterwards published an article on the subject in the Nuova Antologia, from which it appeared that by some accident this offprint had not reached him. On reading it, I at once sent him two more copies, and, not knowing what the explanation was, I apologised for the delay. The following are extracts from his reply, which I communicated to the Society in May last. Mr. Britten may be invited to note its terms, and will moreover see