Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 4 1886.djvu/279

Rh been called for. From what was said in this Journal of the first edition, our readers will quite understand that this remarkable collection of stories was likely to be widely studied, and the form in which the volume is now presented to us cannot but please those who wish to secure it.

In this particular branch of folk-lore there can be no doubt that the author of this book has laid the basis for future study, and it is satisfactory to see that the labours of this Society in the classification of folk-lore has already been so highly appreciated by students. Folk-songs, fascinating though they are, have been strangely neglected, but the introduction prefixed to this book is a masterly summary of the aims and results of a study of this branch of folk-lore. Each section deals with a separate grouping of the subjects dealt with in folk-song, and contains numerous important hints and conclusions which must be of great utility in future study. They are as follows: the inspiration of death in folk-poetry, nature in folk-songs, Armenian folk-songs, Venetian folk-songs, Sicilian folk-songs, Greek folk-songs of Calabria, folk-songs of Provence, the White Paternoster, the diffusion of ballads, songs for the rite of May, the idea of fate in southern traditions, folk-lullabies, folk-dirges. We cannot do more than thus indicate the scope of this really important work, but would specially draw attention to the essay on the diffusion of ballads. The Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco has much to say that is of great value, and when we note that she says "the folk-song probably preceded the folk-tale," we know quite well that her method of study is along the right lines.

Messrs. William Blackwood and Sons have in the press Popular Tales and Fictions: their Migrations and Transformations, by Mr. W. A. Clouston, editor of The Book of Sindibád, Bakhtyár Náma, Arabian Poetry for English Readers, &c., to be published in two vols., post 8vo.