Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 4 1886.djvu/97



Merely as a story-book, this work must take a high place among the best and most popular collections of its class which have been issued of late years, and they are tolerably numerous. But as a scholarly piece of work it would certainly be very difficult to overrate its value to English students of comparative folk-lore, a branch of study and research the importance of which we are gratified to see now being more recognised in this country. This is not a new selection from the early Italian novelists; it does not reproduce the literary tales of Italy. "The stories," says Professor Crane, "which, with few exceptions, are here presented for the first time in English, have been translated from recent Italian collections, and are given exactly as they were taken down from the mouths of the people; and it is in this sense—belonging to the people—that the word 'popular' is used in the title of this work." The value of the collection is thus very obvious, since we have herein the means of ascertaining the ideas, superstitions, manners and customs, and modes of thought of the common people of Italy of the present day, which stories in a literary form Could not possibly furnish. Miss Busk's specimens of the folk-lore of Rome, interesting and valuable as they are undoubtedly, yet left the rich folk-lore of the Italian provinces, and especially of Sicily, unknown to the merely English reader. Mr. Crane's object in this work, he tells us, has been "to present to the reader unacquainted with the dialects of Italy a tolerably complete collection of Italian popular tales." With theories of the origin and diffusion of these