Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 3 1885.djvu/198

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This second part (for first part see ante, vol. i. p. 229) finishes the section on charming and divination, and completes the following new sections:—Superstitious cures; superstitions concerning animals, birds, insects, plants, the moon, the week, numbers, and dreams; luck and unluck; customs and superstitions concerning birth, marriage, and death, days and seasons. Miss Burne's method of work seems to us to be admirable, considering the absence of any special guide upon the subject. Only very rarely has she employed her text for anything else but purely Shropshire folk-lore, the comparisons she has entered into for illustration or for confirmation being entirely relegated to foot-notes. This enables the student to get at the purely Shropshire items very readily. Miss Burne knows what she is recording and writing about, and evidently appreciates the archaic origin of much of what is called folk-lore, and hence her notes are never too long or irrelevant, but, on the contrary, often very suggestive and useful, though it may be open to question whether it is necessary to annotate local collections. When the work is finished we are sure Miss Burne will not let it go forth without a proper and complete index; but we have something else to ask of her. Shropshire folk-lore has its own lessons to teach, and possesses its own idiosyncracies and special forms. If Miss Burne will add a chapter pointing out how Shropshire folk-lore varies from that of the rest of England, what it contributes that is not known to the rest of England, how much archaic life is preserved therein, she will confer a boon to students not easily estimated, and make her book—what even now it bids fair to be—a standard volume. Perhaps we are anticipating Miss Burne's intentions; but, be this as it may, our suggestion shows that we appreciate this local collection very highly, and are thus anxious that it should be perfect on all standpoints.