Page:Journal of American Folklore vol. 12.djvu/410

78 another the struggle of angels and devils. It is natural that Mexican children perform mimic bull-fights. Popular celebrations furnish a valuable and curious series of illustrations. The clay of the three kings is generally celebrated; these personages are believed to represent three races, Caucasian, Negro, and Mongolian. Cascarones, made of empty eggshells, often filled with square bits of bright-colored paper called "amores," are broken, and masked figures promenade with all sorts of antics. During Holy Week, from Thursday to Saturday, matracas, or rattles, where a cogged wheel is made to strike against a narrow projecting strip by whirling in such manner as to produce a loud rattling sound, are employed; the church bells cease ringing, and great matracas take their place. The figures of Judas sold at this season are illustrated in the catalogue. The Feast of the Dead survives in full vigor; at Tezontepec, for example, offerings are set out, consisting of an abundance of bread, fruit, dulces, wax candles, flowers, and liquors for grown persons, the doors being left open to give admittance to spirits. On the last day of the feast, the family and neighbors meet, and eat and drink the offerings. Popular medicine survives in the fullest force; the stock of the woman who sells remedios may include two hundred remedies, embracing materials from the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms. The illustrations show an interesting collection of votive offerings in silver and wax. Under the head of religious pictures is exhibited the manner in which old pagan shrines have been adopted by the new religion; thus Our Lady of Guadalupe, the patron saint of Mexico, takes the place of the Mother of the Gods, the Aztec Tonantzin. Professor Starr has shown how excellent an idea of the richness of Mexican folk-life may be given by a collection of objects representing, not the pure Indians of the South, but only the Mestizos of northern and central Mexico.

Professor Karl Knortz, an industrious collator of traditional material, has gathered a number of discursive essays in a volume called "Folkloristische Streifzüge" (G. Maske: Oppeln and Leipzig, 1900, pp. 431). The subjects of the several papers exhibit a wide range of literary as well as traditional themes, such as Low-German American literature, American proverbs and expressions, usages of the New Year and of first of April, together with notes on saliva, salt, games, the evil eye, and signs. In a paper on the schoolmaster in literature and folk-lore, the writer shows, from popular rhyme as well as literary allusion, how generally our fathers believed that the principal ability required in a teacher was a talent for wielding the rod. In an account of the White Stag, offered as commentary on a song of Uhland's, Dr. Knortz explains the fabulous creature, supposed to be single in his kind and supernatural, as a survival of a solar myth setting forth the uninterrupted course of the sun. A notice of surnames and nicknames (Bei- und Spitznamen) offers for the amusement of Germans a number of American epithets applied to nationalities or to political parties.