Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/93

 Reviews. 69

Deutsche Volkskunde. Von Elard Hugo Meyer. Strassburg : Karl J. Triibner, i8g8.

This work has grown out of academic lectures delivered by Pro- fessor Meyer at Freiburg im Breisgau. Its keynote is sounded in the preface, namely, an increasing sense of the profound import- ance of the study of folklore, not merely for the complete under- standing of the history of civilisation in general and the develop- ment of national life in particular, but for the more directly prac- tical purposes of good government and neighbourly help. As the author wisely says : Folklore has a scientific and also a social mission.

Comprising, as Germany does, a vast area, peopled by inhabit- ants of various descent and various history, a detailed account of its folklore within the limits of a single volume would be impos- sible. The book is therefore intended rather as a guide-book, a book of examples, a book of notes and queries. Its sources are, in the first place, the author's own inquiries and those of his fellow-workers, Professor Kluge and Dr. Pfaff, chiefly in the north- west of Germany and in Baden. Many of his helpers have been teachers in the elementary schools — a class, be it remarked, who might render valuable assistance in this country. Besides these. Professor Meyer has drawn upon manuscript sources, among which he assigns the first place to his master Mannhardt's un- published materials, now in the library at Berlin, and by the authorities there generously put at his disposal. The harvest of Mannhardt's materials is to be found in the section on agricul- ture ; but we gather it is by no means exhausted, and a good deal is held over for another work. The important section dealing with the dwelling-house is illustrated with capital figures in the text, some of which are taken from the published works of Henning and Meitzen. And a very clear dialect-map is borrowed from that made by Maurmann for Meyer's Konversationskxikon, dropping, however, or modifying several of the boundary lines there indicated.

It will thus be seen that, though Professor Meyer goes over, as he must, much of the country already traversed by others, his work is original, and must be regarded as the fruit of independent inquiry. The section most fully treated is that of manners and