Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 2 1884.djvu/251

Rh Cenerentola, which is both Greek and Italian, being one only of the more striking of these affinities. This general fact, once established, raises a question of some interest to folk-lorists. Of these and other sister tales which are the prototypes, the Greek or the Italian? Both cannot be original. The question has already been mooted in Dr. Pitre's Arcliivio, where it has attracted deserved attention, in the case more particularly of La Cenerentola, the Greek Stachte. The whole question deserves the best attention of our Englisli folk-lorists also, the more especially as abundant material is now perfectly accessible to all of them who have mastered the modern idiom of Hellas, and the study of this really graceful language will probably, besides leading to a solution of an important literary crux^ induce our countrymen to abandon in the pronunciation of ancient Greek the abhorrent superstition descended to our times from the day when Sir John Cheke initiated his audacious vocal reformation, which, like many other alterations, nobody asked for.

AMERICAN SONGS AND GAMES.

THE "existence of any children's tradition in America, independently of print, has hitherto been scarcely noticed." This opening remark of the editor of the collection to which I wish to call attention has been fully confirmed by my own experience. Some years ago, when engaged in writing an article on "Folk -Lullabies" (Fraser's Magazine, No. 613), I asked many American friends if they could put me in the way of obtaining the inedited songs of American nurseries, but the answers were vague and inconclusive. The most interesting piece of information then received was from Mr. Bret Harte, who said that he had heard at Crefield on the Khine a Dutch mother singing her child to sleep with a song that struck him as strangely familiar, and which after listening for a moment he recognized as one he had often heard sung amongst