Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/527

 9 S. II. DEC. 24, 5 98.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

519

NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.

The Traditional Games of England, Scotland, and Ireland. By Alice Bertha Gomme. Vol.11. (Nutt.) THE second volume of Mrs. Gomme's ' Traditional Games' completes the first part of Mr. Laurence Gomme's ambitious and eminently commendable scheme of 'A Dictionary of British Folk- Lore.' Among the many national schemes now appealing to the public there are few that come before us with credentials better than this. A dictionary of folk-lore carried out on a scheme such as is exhibited in the opening part would be a boon to scholarship such as cannot easily be over-estimated, and a work of reference such as no country can boast. The execution of the scheme depends upon the amount of support upon which the editors and the publisher can build. It is difficult to believe that such will not be adequate. At the same time it must be conceded that the experience derived from concurrent schemes such as the 'Historical English Dictionary,' the 'Dictionary of National Biography,' the ' Dialect Dictionary,' &c. is not. so far as can be judged for we claim no special sources of information wholly encouraging. Still if the task is begun in earnest, and the announce- ment is made that competent and skilled folk-lorists are engaged upon different sections of the promised work, it must be we refuse to believe otherwise that the small amount of individual support necessary to make the whole a success will be forthcoming.

Turning now to the section already presented, we find no reason to retreat from the position we took up on the appearance of the first volume. The work remains, as we then pronounced it (see 8 th S. v. 319), scholarly, valuable, and delightful. We have read through with much pleasure the second volume, and join it gladly to the first. One or two points deserve note. The "Eagle" in the City Road (see p. 64, unde.r ' Pop goes the Weasel ') is now a Salvation Army barracks. Apropos of ' Prisoners' Base or Bars ' verses are given showing that a game between the married and single was played at Ellesmere in which, as at cricket, the members were eleven on a side. We personally remember in the West Riding when the sides abandoned cricket for a game at prisoners' base. Under ' Shuttlefeather ' are some button rimes varying slightly from those with which we are familiar. In t4ie case of one or two children's rimes we recall rather Rabelaisian variants, which it may perhaps be as well to leave un- recorded. A quaint song, p. 363, "When I was a young girl," &c,, is familiar. An earlier and a prettier form we cannot but think is " When I was a maiden." Apropos of ' Godham ' (see p. 412) we have seen the game in comparatively recent times played by men whose names are, to use a hackneyec quotation, " familiar in men's mouths as householc words." Mrs. Gomme's dissertation or, as she chooses to call it, memoir appears at the con elusion of the second volume. We may not ii every case agree with the derivations of games sh< suggests. It is impossible, however, to deny th< value of the memoir any more than that of the book

It. th e "Memoir" was first read during the

present year at an evening meeting of the Folk-Lori Society. The illustrations to the volume and th music add alike to its attractiveness and its value.

Che Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier. Edited by W. Garrett Border. (Frowde.) ^HE approach of Christmas generally brings with it a few delightful gift-books from the Oxford Univer- ity Press, chief favourites among which are the Oxford poets. This year the poems of Whittier are issued in the handsome shape to which the over of these tempting editions nas grown used, ["hree separate forms are before us. One is an 8yo. edition, on that marvellous Oxford paper which allows the entire work, covering over six hundred pages, to be compressed within the thickness of an ordinary education primer. A second is the same edition on ordinary paper, which is perhaps four larison squat, is perhaps more convenient for >erusal in clumsy hands ; while the third, the 'Miniature" edition, is in four dainty and dimi- lutive volumes enclosed in a case. This edition is also on the Oxford paper which alone renders such miracles possible, with pretty covers and gilt edges. The work constitutes the first complete edition of Whittier published this side the Atlantic, and is a reprint of the Cambridge edition, based on the Riverside edition, and issued from Boston in 1894. tt is accompanied by a portrait, a few excellent notes, chronological list, and index of first lines, and puts in definite and permanent shape the writings of a poet who has not yet received in England the recognition to which he is entitled. Mr. Horder does not claim for his subject a place among the immortals on the ground of "pure poetry," and, indeed, Whittier does not possess any very inspired lyrical gifts. He had, However, a self-estimate so modest as hardly to be paralleled among poets, and he was profoundly earnest and convinced. He had, moreover, a very distinct poetical faculty, and many of his poems may be read with pleasure and advantage, even though they do not linger in the memory. After reading the proem which ushers in the collected poems it is impossible to think of the man without admiration and affection. In their
 * imes the thickness, and, though looking by com-

E resent shape the poems constitute charming gift- ooks.

Tom Tit Tot : an Essay on Savage Philosophy in Folk-Tale. By Edward Clodd. (Duckworth & Co.)

TAKING for his text an East Anglian version of the folk-story 'Tom Tit Tot,' Mr. Clodd, one of the best known and most erudite of folk-lorists, supplies a digest of we may not call it a sermon upon some of the most important aspects of primitive belief. Tom Tit Tot is an "impef'who has rendered a service to a peasant girl, on the condition that if in a certain number of guesses she does not hit upon his name he shall carry her off. Only at the last moment, through his own indiscretion and ebul- liency of delight, when she is all but his, in men- tioning his name to the reeds, does she learn it, and send him home with his tail which is long enough to be specially conspicuous between his legs. Variants of the story are given, and we have thus a dissertation, popular as Well as scientific, on the savage beliefs which the story illustrates or suggests. Very much of the matter covered by Mr. Frazer in ' The Golden Bougn ' a new edition of which, we are glad to see, is promised is given, and the opening portion, dealing with the strangely curious and significant worship of the Rex Nemo- rensis, which Mr. Frazer was the first fully to explain, is told afresh. Nothing, indeed, in the application