Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 11.djvu/362

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. XL APRIL 10, im

NOTES ON BOOKS, Ac.

Folk - Memory. By Walter Johnson, F.G.S.

(Oxford, Clarendon Press.)

MB. JOHNSON has produced a very interesting and suggestive book, which will prove a worthy supplement to Dr. Tylor's and Lord Avebury's well-known volumes. But we confess we are disappointed with the limitations he has set to the scope of his inquiry. He deals with only one or two phases of a many-sided subject, and restricts himself to " the continuity of British archaeology " as it is preserved in the memory of the people. It is chiefly the material and con- crete remains of the past such as primitive tools and earthworks, stone monuments, dene - holes, old trackways, and the like which engage his attention ; but he takes little account of what our German friends call folk-psychology, folk- medicine, folk-saws, and myths and religious beliefs ; he ignores the curious lore as to popular heroes like Hickathrift, Wade, and Gerrard, which long sur * ived, though Wayland the Smith does come in for some small share of attention. It may be that the author is contemplating another volume which will supply the deficiencies of the present one.

Folk-memory which hitherto we have been content to call popular tradition is a tricksy and uncertain elf, as Mr. Johnson fully admits. If sometimes it tenaciously preserves ancient truth where men of learning go widely astray as the names on many an Ordnance Survey map bear witness on the other hand it often fails or dies out where we might anticipate it would be particularly lively and effective. It is well known that the recollection of the country- folk living on the site of a famous battle-field becomes in a few generations quite a blank, and yields nothing to the historical investigator. And yet the transmission of folk-songs, which have been sedulously gathered up of late years, and the recollection of parochial boundaries main- tained by the old system of perambulations, prove how tenacious the popular memory is in retaining what it has once received. We doubt if it can reach back to a past so distant as the Neolithic period, as Mr. Johnson is sanguine enough to think. Mr. Gomme has given some curious instances of the knowledge of buried treasure of early times being preserved by tradi- tion, and of a Roman enclosure of sepulchral urns being still known to the country people as " Heaven's Walls " (' Folk-lore in Science,' pp. 30 and 43). But people have utterly forgotten the origin of " dene-holes," which Mr. Johnson imagines, without much ground, to have been at first hiding-places from the Danes (p. 262).

In his interesting chapter on barrows and their goblin denizens he fails to notice that the North-Country bar-guest is in all probability a disguised form of " barrow-ghost," as has been shown in our columns, corresponding to the Scandinavian grav-so, which he quotes on p. 165. We observe with surprise that he adopts Cormac's blunder of identifying larn, a name of the old Ivernian language of Ireland, with " iron," as if it meant " the iron language " (p. 56) ; but it is not often he is found so tripping. Mr. Johnson takes credit to himself for relegating to a chapter

at the end of the book the references which usually appear in foot-notes. We assure him that this is not at all to our convenience, as he suggests, - but the contrary.

IN The Fortnightly Mr. J. B. Firth deals with High Licences,' and gives some figures concern- ing present taxation of public-houses and hotels. Prof. Ferrero has a brilliant account of ' The History and Legend of Anthony and Cleopatra,' one of the lectures, we presume, that he has been delivering in the United States. He goes con- trary to tradition, and maintains that there was much more of political arrangement than romance on both sides. In spite of the ingenuity and attractive style of the historian, we are not convinced. The question is really one not of fact, but of deductions from evidence some of which is disregarded as worthless. Mr. Francis Gribble has a very sensible article concerning Edward FitzGerald, free from the uncritical enthusiasm current in many quarters. Mr. Sydney Brooks in ' President Roosevelt's Record ' utters an enthusiastic eulogy, deserved no doubt in the main, but open to criticism in some points of detail. The editor of The Spectator has an article ' Are Journalism and Literature Incom- patible ? ' suggesting that journalists should take more trouble about their style, and cultivate plainness of speech. This is a sound contention, indeed obvious, and we regret that Mr. Strachey does not go further and point to Hazlitt or some other author who tells us what good style is, especially in reference to the vernacular. Prof. Marcus Hartog and a lady deal with ' The Irish Dialect of English,' and give lists of several interesting words and phrases, such as " galore,"'

gossoon," " shanty," and lesser-known forms. There are some survivals which have passed ou of standard English and remain good Irish, e.g. " soil " for fresh-cut herbage.

The Cornhill is opened by an effective short poem by Mr. Thomas Hardy. Lady Bell has ' Some Impressions of Coquelin,' and Mr. A. C. Benson deals with ' Edward FitzGerald at Wood- bridge' rightly admiring the letters which few people wrote so well as the hermit of Woodbridge, and describing in a careful, rather precious style his desultory life. " FitzGerald," he says, " was neither hero nor saint." a fact which seems fairly obvious. We may add that he has no real, claims to be called a great man. ' Did Browning Whistle or Sing ? ' is a criticism of the poet's powers of expression by Prof. Padelford, who does not make an altogether successful defence of the harshness of many deliberate discords in the verse. Mr. W. P. James in ' A Martyr for Style ' has some valuable discussion concerning Flau- bert's elaborate search for the right word. We do not think the quotation of an " insincere " passage of Ruskin is exactly to the point. All English elegies are elaborate, and might therefore be called artificial. Immediate grief and joy are full of incoherence or repetition, as, for instance, the thirty-fifth chapter of Isaiah.

The Nineteenth Century is mainly political. Many people will be eager to see what Lord Hugh Cecil has to say in ' The Unionist Party and its Fiscal Sore,' for his independence is one of the outstanding features of present-day politics. Sir W. Baillie Hamilton shows how work has been increased and elaborated in ' Forty-four Years at the Colonial Office.' Sir Edward Sullivan con-