Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/77

 REVIEWS.

descriptive title which I have transcribed in full indicates at once the importance of this great work to all engaged in our studies. The archæologist will find here by far the most complete and most accurate account of the rude stone monuments of Ireland, and not alone of Ireland, but of Britain, and of Northern, Central, and Western Europe. The folklorist will find far more: the legends which have gathered around these monuments, the rites and practices connected with them, are carefully noted. As far as Ireland is concerned, this information has not only been laboriously excerpted from extant literature, it is also derived in a large measure from the author's persevering researches among the enormous mass of material accumulated by O'Donovan and his fellow-workers on the Ordnance Survey of Ireland, still lying in MS. at Dublin, as well as from minute and lengthened personal exploration of the chief monuments and the districts in which they are situated. As far as the Continent is concerned, Mr. Borlase has not only examined much himself, but he opens up sources of information, e.g. Spanish local archaeological research, and German antiquarian literature of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, of which even wellinformed students in this country have been completely ignorant. Thus, viewed as a simple collection of facts, and as a guide to a vast, scattered, and, save for the habitué of the British Museum or corresponding continental libraries, inaccessible literature, this work is, and must always remain, one of first-rate importance.

Regarding the work in this aspect, and solely from the