Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 1 1883.djvu/279

Rh The author's task has been to compare the mass of legal facts with the old Northern codes, and as the result of a most searching and laborious comparison the saga-writer is shown to be in the highest degree inaccurate and fanciful in his statement. He evidently lived at a time when the procedure he describes with such minuteness was no longer in use, and when the meaning of many of the legal terms which he employs with such profusion had been lost or altered. The results of other scholars as to his late date are thus confirmed, and the saga as a whole is proved to be no trustworthy guide to the jurisprudence and the procedure of republican Iceland, but merely an ingenious reconstruction of forms of law which had for some time ceased to be in force. The authors present their case with true German minuteness and conscientiousness, and all interested in the law and literature of mediæval Scandinavia should buy their work.

Dr. M. Gaster, of Bucharest, is employed on a collection of Roumanian folk-riddles. He has collected about five hundred of them. They are to be given with all their variants in Roumanian and arranged in the alphabetical order of their solutions without any translation, and without comparison with the riddles of other peoples. The book is thus similar to that on Spanish riddles published by Demofils. The author hopes to be able to issue it during this year. It will prove an interesting addition to folk-lore.

Sir Arthur Gordon, says the Athenæum, has brought back from Fiji a quantity of materials regarding the habits, folk-lore, &c., of the islanders. A valuable book will probably be the result.

It is not unlikely a Folk-Lore Society may be started in America, for the purpose of collecting the myths and customs of the American Indians. We sincerely trust this may come about.

Mr. Black's book, Folk-Medicine, has been issued to the members of the Society. Any member not having received his copy is requested to communicate with the Honorary Secretary.

The Fifth Annual Meeting of the Society was held on Thursday, July 5th, at the residence of the President, 13, Belgrave Square, at 3·30 p.m. The Right Hon. Earl Beauchamp, F.S.A., President, took the chair. The Hon. Secretary read the fifth Report of