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NOTES ON BOOKS &c.

Canon Pietro Cawla's Pilgrimage to Jeriisalem. Edited by M. M. Newett. (Manchester, Univer- sity Press.)

THIS itinerary of Pietro Casola, an Italian who made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1494, has been translated by Miss Newett from a unique MS. in the Trivulzian Library at Milan. A small impres- sion of the work was printed in 1855, and one of these copies, which have now become exceedingly rare, has been collated with the original, and set out in a handsome volume furnished with an Intro- duction, notes, and appendixes.

Canon Casola, who came of a noble family at Milan, seems to have been a sensible and judicious gentleman, with little appetite for the silly legends and prodigies connected with the sacred sites which most mediaeval pilgrims swallowed with avidity. A shrewd man of the world, and not too much of a ddvot, he kept his eyes open and saw things for himself. As one instance of his keen observation it may be mentioned that he noticed the stumps of the pillars of the five porches in the Probatic Pool (John v. 2), to which Robinson drew attention in the last century. He possessed, moreover, a certain sense of humour which helped to carry him through the no small hardships and discomforts of his journey. His favourite dictum was that " every one wlio goes on the voyage to the Sepulchre of our Lord has need of three sacks a sack of patience, a sack of money, and a sack of faith." On the first two of these essentials of his equipment he had to make large and frequent demands, as he playfully reminds us on certain critical occasions in his travels ; while as to the last he seems to have exercised a judicious economy.

The pilgrims on their return voyage were com- pelled to cast into the sea some Jordan water which they had brought with them (p. 300), because the vessel was not making satisfactory progress, as this was always thought to bring bad luck to those on board ship. The explanation of this bit of folk- lore no doubt is that the sacred element provoked the hostility of the devil, who is always busy on the sea, and who consequently thwarted the course of .the ship, just as, for a similar reason, sailors still consider the presence of a clergyman on board to be unlucky.

Miss Newett in her introduction, which shows much careful research, gives the results of her in- vestigations with regard to the legislation of the Venetian Republic on the pilgrim traffic from early times. Some comparison of Casola's diary with those kept by our own countrymen Sir Richard Guylforde and Sir Richard Torkington, who made the same pilgrimage at a slightly later date, would have afforded matter of interest. May we hint our dislike in a learned volume, emanating from the University of Manchester, to the modern slack use of " like '' for " as "? " They were seated on their legs, like the tailors sit at home " (p. 258). Either the Index is at fault or the pilgrim saw nothing of Calvary or Golgotha, which seems incredible. As a matter of fact, it is referred to on p. 260.

Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society. New Series Vol. I. No. 1. (Liverpool, 6, Hope Place, The Society.)

THE resuscitation of the Gypsy Lore Society after a slumber that bade fair to rival that of Rip Van Winkle is a matter of congratulation not only to- ethnologists, but also to all who wish to rescue from oblivion a fast - decaying feature of English and Scottish country life. It may be conceded that the individual gipsy is not a peculiarly interesting figure, and that the romance which in the minds of many persons attached to him arose chiefly from his surroundings. Writers like George Borrow,. Francis Hindes Groome.and Edward Henry Palmer,, to whom life was hardly endurable unless it were spent in wandering amidst the freedom of the open common, were naturally attracted by those to whom a similar mode of existence was a necessity. To- another class of minds the mysterious origin of the gipsy race, and the pursuit of the various clues- which the advance of Oriental scholarship from time to time discovered, afforded an enthralling object of interest. From different points of view, therefore, the gipsy has found his place in English literature ; and while the race itself is gradually^ being merged in the general mass of the population^ interest is as keen as ever in its history and the position which it occupies in the philological system. The wonder is not so much that a society for the elucidation of the difficult problems which, surround the gipsy question should have been, revived as that it should ever have been allowed to- go to sleep.

The opening part of the New Series does not yield in interest or value to those which the mem- bers of the Society were accustomed to expect fifteen or sixteen years ago. Many of the writers who then lent distinction to the pages of the Journal have unhappily passed away. Others fortunately remain, and there is evidence that amongst the newer recruits to the ranks of the Society there is no deficiency in zeal and scholar- ship. In a Prefatory Note the President of the Society, Mr. David MacRitchie, bridges over the interval between 1892 and 1907, and notes the losses which gipsy lore has sustained. Mr. John Sampson follows with a suggestive re view of the position held! by Romani learning at the present day. In discuss- ing the origin of the gipsies he confines himself to- the philological side of the question. But there- is another, and a not less important one, if data could only be found for its elucidation. The religion of the Romani has never been system- atically investigated. It is a prevalent idea that the gipsy has no religion, and that as a general rule he is willing to accommodate himself, so far as out- ward observances are concerned, to the creed of the country in which, for the time being, he is domi- ciled. If this is the case, he cannot have sprung from the higher levels of the Aryan race, and, in all probability, has not sprung from the Aryan race at all. Any one who has lived in India knows the tenacity with which their religious principles are held by all those who are comprised witnin the recognized caste - system of that country. The anomaly therefore presents itself that while the ancestors of the Romani lived sufficiently long under the Aryan domination to acquire a language belonging to the Prakrit group, iri religious matters they were kept outside the charmed ring that encircled the members of the Aryan family. The