Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 2 1884.djvu/244

236 M. Philemon, the editor of these Transactions, states in the Prologos that the object of the Society is to investigate Hellenic life in all its long ages. We are therefore not surprised to find, as we do, that folk-lore has taken its place among the contents of this volume. And as it is avowedly our own subject, we naturally turn more exclusively to the pages which the Transactions have devoted to it.

The first paper agreeably reminds us of our Mr. Black's learned and interesting work on "Folk Medicine," published by the Folk-Lore Society. This paper, written by the distinguished archæologist, M. Polites, treats of "illnesses according to the myths of the Greek people." A perusal of it shows that the resemblance between the curative theories of English bumpkins and Greek peasants is identity itself, due probably to the parent theories having existed at epochs of immeasurable antiquity in the great Aryan race, which was the progenitrix of the theorists as we now know them. There is the same fond conviction in Greece as in England that a disease can be induced, by processes far from difficult, to pass from the human subject into trees, or men, or animals, nay even into inanimate nature; the Greeks believing also that epidemics, like plague and cholera, may be conveniently relegated into desert places, there to explode their noxious activity without injury to the community.

M. Mariannes supplies a short collection of Athenian Paramythia (fairy tales), collected by himself. The first, entitled Tolpetsa (a proper name), is chiefly interesting for containing the western mediæval incident of an old king being treated for his leprosy by means of a bath of child's blood.

No. 2, entitled "The much exalted Ogre", is interesting as being a rendering probably antique, and taking its origin in Byzantine times of the Homeric story of Polyphemus, whose name is played upon in the epithet given to him. He is not unnaturally represented as a drunken ogre (dracos) living with his sheep in a lonely cave.

No. 3, The Fay, is an interesting narrative of a prince who refuses marriage, though the queen mother introduces into his chamber at separate times three beautiful damsels, whom however he