Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/436

128 very useful analysis of the beliefs and superstitions throughout the world on the subject of sneezing and yawning. He considers it under the headings of the causes (usually traceable to animism), the origin of the exclamation of blessing which in Europe and Asia the act of sneezing calls forth from bystanders, the omens deduced from it, the view taken of it in the course of the progress of civilization and the softening of manners, tracing its way from being regarded as an omen to being looked upon in a more scientific light as a symptom of something else, and finally adding some observations on its real causes as determined by modern investigation. He gives a valuable bibliographical appendix, containing in full the passages from various authors, ancient and modern, on which he has drawn. This appendix discloses the width of his reading and gives confidence to his readers in the accuracy of his citations.

It need hardly be said that he has no new theories to advance. That was impossible. But what he has done is to present a methodical statement of facts which will be of value to future enquirers on the folk-lore and the attitude of comparatively enlightened men at different stages of history. The utterances of such men, placed as they are in juxtaposition to the superstitions of peoples in the lower culture, are sometimes surprising in the advance they disclose on primitive superstitions, at other times in the servitude they manifest to the puerilities of their surroundings. One reads, for example, of Aristotle and Plutarch ascribing a sneeze to a divine manifestation on the one hand, and the Buddha on the other trying in vain to repress the custom of saluting one who sneezed, or Alcuin and John of Salisbury condemning divination by sneezing.

M. Nourry's pages are not only learned but very instructive to students of the course of human civilization. The use he has made of British authors is a testimony to the volume of our literature in more departments than one of folk-lore.