Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 2 1884.djvu/231

Rh are having recourse to supernatural remedies. Having chartered a special steamer, they have brought from one of the monasteries of Mount Athos a miracle-working girdle of the Virgin, and a grand procession, headed by the Orthodox Metropolitan, is bearing the sacred relic through the orchards.—Yorkshire Gazette, 14 June, 1884.

Mr. Geldart presents the lover of fairy tales with a very acceptable book; and if the publishers could have been induced to put it into suitable covers we should have been all the better pleased. But if the covers please the children the stories will be acceptable to many who have long passed the stage of childhood. They are translations from the Greek text of Von Hahn's collections. Modern Greek folk-lore is interesting and valuable in many ways. Primarily it would show us the relics of old classical beliefs and be of infinite service in elucidating the popular life of märchen. Secondarily it would show signs of the non-Greek element which has absorbed so much of later Greek life. In this last subject it appears to us that these Greek stories are particularly valuable. Several story-incidents unmistakeably belong to some other origin than the classical sources with which most of us are familiar. One or two are identical with incidents in the mediaeval collection of stories known as the Seven Wise Masters, the literary history of which has been so thoroughly traced. But beyond these accidental parallels, if we may thus qualify them, there are also plain indications of that wide-spread class of belief in Rackshasis, the cannibal demons, which takes us back to pre-Aryan life, and which abounds so greatly in Hindu folk-tales. Altogether we should think few more generally interesting collections of tales have been issued for some considerable time. One question we would ask Mr. Geldart is, Whether the word "dragon" is the correct translation of the Greek original; should it not rather be "ogre"? The story list is as follows: