Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 5 1887.djvu/178

170 have cited, whatever may be their meaning, cannot be squared with any such theory. And what is true of this group, is true, if not of all, at least of very many of the stories recorded in the volumes under review. Our sample has been chosen at random, and it is one which has been supposed to yield special evidence against independent invention. We would not however be understood as asserting any theory on the subject. This is not the occasion for doing so. All that we are concerned now to do is to point out, with all respect to the memory of that great scholar, that Dr. Benfey's conclusions are founded on too narrow a deduction. To our mind no teaching can be satisfactory which severs folk-tales from other departments of folk-lore and attempts to account for the phenomena of the former on principles inapplicable to those of the latter.

But though we dissent from what, perhaps too rashly, we assume to be Mr. Clouston's opinions, we cordially recommend his book to all students. Many of the stories he gives are elsewhere only to be found in publications inaccessible to ordinary persons. We could indeed occasionally wish that his references to authorities had been more direct and definite; but his workmanship throughout is scholarly and accurate, and in all the thousand pages it would be difficult to find one that is tedious. The work is divided into two parts, the first volume dealing with stories in which the supernatural plays a part, and the second with apologues and comic tales. Of the two the latter is, we think, even more worthy of careful study than the former, since the problems it offers are more difficult of solution.

In July last year we had the pleasure of reviewing the first and second parts of Mr. Natésa Sástrí's Folk-Lore in Southern India, and we have now before us another translation from the Tamil, by the same Pandit, of a work which can be known to very few of our members, and which should possess no little interest for story-comparers, and indeed all who are devoted to the study of the history of fiction. One important result of Mr. Natésa Sástrí's translations