Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 6.djvu/531

 ii s. vi. NOV. 30, 1912.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

439

New Poem*. By Dora Sigerson Shorter. (Maunsel

& Co.)

A VOLUME from Mrs. Shorter is always welcome, for we are certain to find some special message. In the present small collection we have a sweet ' Child's Song ' about the starlings ; and a poem, ' Leaves,' which makes us feel the withered leaves of autumn falling all about us. Three of the poems should be read in evening hours : the mother mourning for her little son by his grave, which ' : lies lonely in the sun " ; a vision of visits from the beloved dead, entitled ' Haunted,' which is very restful ; and the poem ' When I Shall Rise,' which is full of pathos : in it the author shows her love for '' Killiney's silver sands, and Wicklow hills." A note of sadness runs through many of the poems, but there is a promise that the night is departing, and the eternal noon is near. ,

Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan. By Clement A. Miles. (Fisher Unwin )

THE author is doubtless right in believing that there is room for a comprehensive study of Christmas in English, and we are glad to con- gratulate him on having furnished what he designed, i.e., an " outline map," which, though it offers nothing original in interpretation or new in discovery, should yet be of interest to the general reader, and also serviceable to the serious student. He divides the work into two parts, keeping these virtually independent. The second treats of pagan survivals, and, in order to illustrate the wealth of tradition and custom which have become more or less concentrated upon Christmas, he deals with all the festivals from All Hallows to Candlemas. The former, or rather the time of year when it falls, is when, in Northern countries, the first snow appears, when in old days the cattle which could not be supported through the winter were slaughtered, and the abundance of victuals gave rise to uni- versal feasting. This was counted the beginning of the year, and interwoven with the strand of tradition thus originating, we have the Southern customs connected with the Kalends, the begin- ning of the year according to astronomical reckoning. To these must be added practices connected with the dead, quasi-sacramental rites intended to ensure prosperity in the coming year, customs connected with divination, and many others. Mr. Miles, as is evident both from his handling of the subject and from the bibliography, has read widely; and if we sometimes think as in the case of the German Christmas tree that he shares with most folk-lorists a tendency to give the generations near our own too little credit in regard to the invention of fresh and expressive customs, we are none the less grateful to him for grouping together in this convenient way, and in so good a connexion, quaint local sur- vivals, of which he can still speak in the present tense, but which must indeed date from a distant past, and be approaching, if they have not already reached, extinction. Thus it is not likely that in the Vosges it will long continue to be the custom, while the bells are ringing on All Souls' Eve, for the beds to be uncovered and the windows set wide that the poor souls may come in and rest ; and if, in Little Russia, the dish of honey and porridge still symbolizes the Holy Crib (the porridge is for the straw, and a fruit and some

honey poured into a hole in it symbolize the body and the blood of the Babe), even there it seems likely that change will come and custom decay. At the end of the chapter on the ' Twelve Days ' is a pleasant discussion of the mysterious Frau Holle, Berchta, or G-ode who goes her rounds during this season, followed by a notice of the to Westerns less familiar, but more interesting and formidable Kallikantzaroi, who are even yet a terror to the Greek peasantry, and whom the author seems inclined to connect rather with vampires and werwolves i.e., with superstitions concerning the departed than altogether with the winter festival of Dionysius.

The Preface implies that the first part will by many readers be found inferior in interest to the second. In our opinion it is the more valuable. It deals with Christmas as the Christian feast,, and the unity of idea underlying it lends it a vitality, and hence a coherence, missing in the necessarily often scrappy account of decaying and now almost meaningless customs. Moreover, Mr. Miles has here brought together delightful things- in the way of hymns, carols, plays, and rites which illustrate, as we do not remember to have seen it illustrated before in an English book, the many- sidedness of the Christmas appeal, and the different- ways in which different nations and different ages have responded to it. He quotes the Italian- proverb, " Ha piu di fare che i forni di Natale in- Inghilterra," which seems only too appropriate to our modern English notions of keeping Christ- mas, but is a little unjust perhaps to our fore- fathers, at any rate in the Middle Ages. We think that in regard to the austere and " theological "' character of the earlier Christmas hymns, and 1 also in regard to the use of Latin in church, he- tends somewhat to exaggerate the aloofness and incapacity of the common folk, though he has- seized well, and expressed vividly, the literalness of faith in the Middle Ages and the people's^ enjoyment of the human side of the Nativity when once largely through St. Francis it had' been brought home to them by the Crib, and then- later by the various developments in the direction of drama. Readers of the all too brief description here given of Christmas as it is now celebrated in the poor Italian colony in London might do worse than repair thither this year, and contrast what they observe with our Dickensian festivities.

The illustrations are well chosen, but not happily reproduced ; the most interesting are the ' S. Francis instituting the " Presepio " at Greccio,' the ' Neapolitan Presepio,' and the. photograph of the famous Bambino of Ara Coeli.

At Prior Park. By Austin Dobson. (Chatto &-

Windus. )

MR. AUSTIN DOBSOX, in his collection of papers ' At Prior Park,' discourses of eighteenth-century life and manners, country-houses, men of letters, artists, and of one sea-hero the Bailli de Suffren, who, had he been better served, might have given an ill-turn to English affairs in Eastern waters. A very interesting paper is concerned with the amiable artist Carmontelle, who as " Ordonnateur des fetes en general " to the Duke of Orleans, father of Egalite, provided the ducal circle with amusement for more than twenty years, and while many of the originals of his sketches ended their days at the guillotine, died peacefully in Paris in 1806 at the age ot