Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 1 1883.djvu/278

270 very abusive. It was stated that defendant was endeavouring to carry out an old Cheshire custom. The men lifted women on Easter Monday, and women lifted men on Easter Tuesday. The magistrates informed defendant he must apologise and pay the costs.—Yorkshire Gazette, April 7th, 1883.

Can any Member of the Folk-Lore Society tell me if any graves of the Vikings have been found in New England, and, if so, when? X.

The above-named work is a most important contribution to the study of old Northern law as well as to the settlement of the vexed question of the date and composition of the Njalssaga. It is well known that the tendency of modern criticism has been to date this, in common with the majority of the Icelandic sagas, from a much later period than that to which it had been ascribed by earlier writers. But it is evident that if the date (latter half of the thirteenth century) which now commends itself to the most competent scholars be the correct one, the evidence afforded by the saga as to the principle of jurisprudence, and the forms of procedure in the Icelandic republican period, is seriously diminished in value. The authors resolved to test the saga exclusively from the legal standpoint. It is well known that the whole action of the story passes, as one may say, in the Courts; that the motives of the different personages are dealt chiefly in their legal aspect, and that the saga is full of legal learning and technical details.