Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 12.djvu/519

 n s. xii. DEC. 25, i9i5.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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understand they drink it without subjecting it to any treatment. The fine mud in suspension soon settles down when the water is at rest, and in doing so carries with it most of the bacteria, if any are present. ALFRED S. E. ACKERMANN.

CHURCHES USED FOR THE ELECTION OF MUNICIPAL OFFICERS (US. xii. 360, 404, 430, 470). The subjoined cutting taken from The Church Times for 10 Dec. may be of interest to your correspondent :

" In accordance with time-honoured custom the Mayor of Brightlingsea, Essex (Dr. Dickin), was re-elected in the church belfry on Monday last. Dr. Dickin, who is a Captain in the R.A.M.C., is at present on active service at the Front."

W. SHARP.

PARISH REGISTERS : H. T. WAKE (11 S. xi. 397, 501 ; xii. 72). Your correspondent at the last reference has rather under- estimated the time since the Quaker book- seller H. T. Wake left Cockermouth. I clearly remember his weekly visits from Fritchley to Derby in 1891, when he brought into market butter or eggs to sell, and took home in lieu some old books or relics in the same basket. W. JAGGARD, Lieut.

en

Russian Folk - Tales. Translated from the Russian. With Introduction and Notes by Leonard A. Magnus. (Kegan Paul & Co., Is. Qd. net.)

THE stories in this book something over seventy in number have been translated direct from the Russian of Afanasev's great collection formed in the mid-nineteenth century. The translation is eminently satisfactory. The object was to carry over into English not only the naivete the " quaintness," as people like to call itof a series of primitive stories, but also something of the distinctive temper which conceived them, and the theory of life, and emphasis of popular judg- ment as to right and wrong, which are involved in them. Mr. Magnus had, in one respect, an easy task : the work of compilation with which he had to deal learned and careful and copious is free from the warping of original poetic faculty on the part of the compiler. It is not merely in diction that the stories are primitive ; they have the simplicity characteristic of a child's outlook, and they add incident to incident as notes are added to a tune having attained to melody and rhythm, but not, we may say, to harmony.

A large proportion of the tales is composed of elements of universal currency : thus the faithful and suffering servant ; the witch who devours human flesh ; the magic carpet or sword or horse ; the forbidden chamber ; the brush and comb which, thrown in the path of the pursuer, become mountain chains and impenetrable forests ; the third son or daughter, the favourite of fortune

often accounted a fool ; the peasant who comes to a kingdom ; the princess who sets riddles ; the enchanted prince or princess these all occur, and most of them many times. But the treatment of these old themes is often bound up with matters more or less peculiar to the Slav. Thus the prince who breaks into the forbidden room en- counters the terrible magician Koshchey the Deathless, whose being and history have a definite Russian significance ; and Ilya Muromets, the peasant-knight, proves his valour on that strange creation of Russian imagination, the Nightingale- Robber.

The tales, taken as a whole, show a strong feeling for the visible world " the white wo rid, ' as it is called "the grey earth, " and "the dreamy forests " ; mere length of time and extent of space tend to count for more in the total effect of this lore than they do in most masses of legends. The most interesting stories, to the sophisticated Western mind, are those most directly relating to peasant life such as ' The Dream,' where an old wanderer, spending a night in a peasant's cottage, tells his strange homely vision to his host, who interprets it, unfortunate as- much of its presaging is, with the characteristic Russian acquiescence. Tales of this latter sort have good touches of humour, and include the best of the legends of Christ and His disciples r as well as the grimly comic tales of the dead- Interesting features in some of the legends are a short conventional sentence of introduction ,- and another by way of epilogue.

The tales are worthy of a bettor and fuller Introduction and of better notes than they have here received. Mr. Magnus makes a few state- ments about the original forms in which they occur as chronicles, ballads or other kinds oi song, folk-tales. It would have been a good thing to have the material selected grouped under those- headings ; as they stand the stories seem not to be arranged on any plan. The notes, again, are here and there redundant, and, more often, some- what slight, and are thrown together with but an imperfect attempt at order.

Still, Mr. Magnus makes some good points in both parts of his work, and, in particular, he is happy in characterizing the curious perfection of art in detail which, without intending it, these story-tellers attained, as being " so much ... .as a man would remember of an experience." Memo- ries differ widely, as we all know, yet an attention to what would stand out in the memory of the average man is an excellent method of appraising the true consistency of a narrative as a piece of art whether or not the limit of detail is designed to coincide with memory.

WE have before us the November and December numbers of The Antiquary. Three interesting articles run through both numbers : Dr. Clipping- dale's ' Heraldry and Medicine,' Mr. Serjeantson's ' Churchwardens' Accounts of St. John's, Peter- borough,' and Mr. Randolph's ' Recollections of Belgium.' Mr. E. Wyndham Hulme's ' Chapters on the History of Glass-Making and -Painting in England ' is brought to conclusion in the Novcm- ber number, and we have also the two concluding instalments of Mr. Maynard's account of Saffron W.i Men Museum. 'A Journey to Scotland in 1789,' communicated to the November number by Mr. F. W. Bull, and in the December number Mr. W. B. Gerish's paper on ' The School Library