Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 1 1883.djvu/133

Rh swallow the contents each time direct from the mouth of the bladder. The poor patient having not experienced any alleviation or relief from his sufferings, it was discovered that the failure of the charm was owing to the fact that the cure was attempted on a Friday, which is well known to be an unlucky day on which to commence any undertaking or business.—Scotsman, April 2, 1881.

QUERIES.

Stallybrass's Grimms "Teutonic Mythology,"—Can anybody say when Vols. ii. and iii. are likely to appear? Many of us must have paid for copies of them well-nigh three years ago.

E. G.

NOTICES AND NEWS.

The fable-problem is by no means the least interesting or the least vexed among the many questions connected with the origin and transmission of popular literature. Differentiated at once from the Märchen by its early reception into written, as contradistinguished from traditional, literature, and from the novel (using the word in the Italian sense) by greater restriction in the choice of a subject-matter, and by a more rigid adherence to a definite number and class of themes, it seems calculated to throw light upon the history and development of either branch of popular fiction. Up to the present, however, the Greek fable (the source of so much that is best in modern European fabulistic literature) has never been dealt with in its entirety in a truly critical spirit. It has been treated of as a whole composed at the same date and of the same materials, instead of the various stages of its development being carefully distinguished. It is only thus that theories which would make the Greek fable an off-shoot from