Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/635

Rh marriage-rites, the treatment of which in the earlier editions was admittedly inadequate. Field-work in Morocco, the fruits of which have been collected in an excellent book, Marriage Ceremonies in Morocco, and the study of books like The Golden Bough and The Mystic Rose, have convinced Dr. Westermarck that the influence of magic on marriage rites is of primary importance. The three long chapters devoted to this branch of the subject form, perhaps, the most interesting part of the work.

He has gained such a thorough knowledge of English that there is little to indicate that it is the work of a foreigner. He is confronted with the difficulty of so arranging his collection of facts as to make the book readable, and he does not possess the grace of style and the magic skill of Sir James Frazer in displaying his facts to the best advantage, and gently helping the reader to advance from one topic to another. Hence the book is rather hard reading, and we sometimes feel that we cannot see the wood for the trees, and that it is best studied in instalments.

It is the best compliment to say that it can be adequately criticised only by a syndicate of experts, and it may be hoped that from time to time writers competent to discuss the subject in its many phases will use the pages of Folk-Lore for this purpose. It is too much to say that all the theories or explanations of the writer will deserve final acceptance, but the collection of facts, drawn from a mass of literature, some of which is fugitive and not generally accessible, forms a treasury of knowledge which anthropologists in the future cannot afford to neglect. 2em Most of the materials of this book were collected forty years ago, and the Introduction, the last work of the Dorset poet, William Barnes, was written soon before his death, which occurred in 1886. Judge Udal explains that a year or two after that date he left England to take up a Government legal appointment, and that this and the outbreak of the Great War made it