lore, and when its treasures are duly arranged and analysed it will be indispensable to all investigators of comparative popular legend. W. CROOKE. CRADLE TALES OF HINDUISM, by the SISTER NEVEDITA (MARGARET E. NOBLE). London: Longmans, 1907. THIS is a pleasant version of a selection of tales from the older Hindu literature, distributed into eight cycles-Snake Tales; the Story of Siva; Indian Wifehood, including the stories of Savitri and of Nala and Damayanti; Episodes from the Ramayana; Krishna; the Devotees; Tales of Great Kings; and, lastly, a cycle from the Mahabharata. For those who are unacquainted with the original authorities they furnish a useful introduction to the study of Hindu mythology, which may tempt the reader to study the vast body of sacred literature now for the most part available in English translations. Unfortunately English scholars have as yet done little to classify and popularize the Hindu traditional religious literature. Books like Moor's Hindu Pantheon, and Coleman's Hindu Mythology are now out of date; and Professor Dowson's Classical Dictionary is in many ways unsatisfactory. Bühler's Grundriss der Indo-Arischen Philologie und Altertumskunde, which promised to fill the gap, is making slow progress. It is quite time that a combination of English scholars attempted to do for India what Preller-Robert, Farnell, and Miss Harrison have supplied for Greek mythology. In particular, there is a crying need for a book giving illustrations of Hindu cult-images, which the Indian Archaeological Survey could readily supply. W. CROOKE. FOLK TALES FROM TIBET, with Illustrations by a Tibetan Artist and some Verses from Tibetan Love-Songs. Collected and Translated by Capt. W. F. O'CONNOR. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1906. THIS is a collection of twenty-two tales and a few verses, made during the British expedition to Tibet in 1903-4, by the Secretary and Interpreter of the Mission. Tales Nos. XV., XVII., and XX. have already appeared, but condensed and evidently in a form much less close to the original, in Mr. Perceval Landon's Lhasa (Appendix G). The last of these three tales is here told of a tortoise and monkey, whereas Landon tells it of a lizard and monkey. The latter version is probably the commoner, as several species of lizards are known and abundant in Tibet. In the present collection the tortoise is said to attempt to climb a coco-nut tree. In the Katilah-wa-Dimnah the tale is told of a tortoise and an ape. Ten of the stories are beast-tales, and the list of animals referred to in the collection as a whole is interesting. The hare and tiger each bear parts in six stories, the hare (the woolly hare or Lepus oiostolus) taking the lead as a clever trickster, as might be expected in a country where it is the symbol of Buddha and the hare-in-the-moon replaces our manin-the-moon. Other animals named and, like the hare, native to Tibet, are the fox, mouse, goat, wolf, sheep, cat, duck, musk deer, kyang, crow, dog, frog, raven, sparrow, and spider. Foreign animals named are, in addition to the tiger, the elephant (of which, however, the Dalai Lama had a single specimen at Lhasa), lion, buffalo doe, tortoise, jackal, baboon, monkey, parrot, and peacock. Knowledge of these is probably derived from India, like the Tibetan Tales derived from Indian Sources translated from Schiefner's German by Ralston in 1882. It is somewhat surprising to find no reference to the most notable animals of Tibet, the yak and the shao or Tibetan stag. Of fabulous beasts, only the dragon and gryphon appear. The first tale, "How the Hare Got his Split Lip," is a "Just-So Story" of tricks played by the hare, who was so amused by the mischief to such an extent that he actually split his upper lip. And it has remained split to this very day." Hare-lip is common in Tibet, and many cases were treated by the surgeon to the Mission. The features peculiarly Tibetan in the stories are less numerous than might have been expected, especially as Capt. O'Connor appears to have omitted many of the best-known stories as having been imported bodily from India or China, and also stories unsuitable for a popular book. It is to be hoped, however, that the latter stories will be made accessible to students, as he states that they are some of the very best and most characteristic. In "The Story of the Homebred Boy," the hero pretends by juggling with a pig's head to find a lost turquoise, after the failure of many famous sorcerers; the fifteenth day of the sixth month is named as very auspicious; a period of three years, three months, and three days is given for mourning; and water is sprinkled on a green cloth and a drum beaten to decoy out, by pretences of spring rains and thunders, spiders which have taken up their abode in a lady's head. In "The Story of the Two Neighbours" the envious neighbour imitates the action of his kind neighbour, and the magic grain brought to him by a sparrow sprouts and ripens, not, as he expects, into jewels, but into a truculent apparition with a bundle of papers who announces himself as a creditor in a former existence and seizes all the envious man's possessions. "The Story of the Foolish Young Mussulman" refers as a Tibetan custom to the bridegroom becoming a member of the bride's family, and to the turning yellow of the soles of the feet as a sure sign of imminent death. The same story has also an incident of the Alnaschar type. In the story of "The Country of the Mice" a multitude of grateful mice destroys the weapons and provisions, etc., of an invading army, and the Tibetan custom of presenting a silk scarf at a ceremonial visit is mentioned. Another story relates to the "country of Room," and Nepal is the scene of "The Story of the Mouse's Three Children," in For other incidents in this story, cf. Stokes, Indian Fairy Tales (The Story of a Foolish Sachúli, and note thereon); Dracott, Simla Village Tales which hairs and feathers are used to summon helpful animal relatives, and an elephant is destroyed by a mouse running up its trunk. Other familiar folktale incidents in the collection are that of the trapped tiger, who proposes to eat his liberator, but is decoyed back into his prison by the chosen arbiter in order to show the original position of affairs; and that of the youth unable to ride, who is tied upon a horse, and terrifies the enemy into surrender by being carried amongst them brandishing a rotten branch at which he has clutched to check his horse.2 In "The Jackals and the Tiger," the tiger, who has been frightened from his own den by hearing the father jackal promise his children hot tiger's meat, is brought back by a baboon, who twists his tail round the tiger's to give him a feeling of support. This is curiously similar to "Why Old Baboon has that Kink in his Tail" in Vaughan's Old Hendrik's Tales (1904). In the Hottentot story the jackal frightens into panic flight the wolf, who comes with his tail tied to that of Old Baboon, by promising wolf meat to his squalling child, and in both stories the jackal greets the baboon as a friend bringing meat.3 In "The Story of the Boy with the Deformed Head" the hero snares a white fairy drake, who is released on promising his middle daughter as the boy's bride. After nine years the fairy wife returns to her father's heaven, but is followed and brought home, to become a mortal thereafter. In "The Prince and the Ogre's Castle," after the failure of the lamas to procure an heir for the king, a disguised black ogre furnishes pills which cause the birth of triplets to the king's wife, horse, and dog. In fulfilment of the king's promise, the youngest prince, horse, and dog are sent to the ogre, and the prince discovers in the castle an enchanted princess, who tells him how to find and destroy the ogre's life-index (Tibetan "la," 1Cf. Frere, Old Deccan Days (The Brahman, The Tiger, and the Six Judges); Robinson, Tales and Poems of South India (A Narrow Escape), p. 372; and Steel and Temple, Wideawake Stories (The Tiger, the Brahman, and the Jackal, and note thereon). 2 Cf. Frere, op. cit. (The Valiant Chattee-Maker); Dracott, op. cit. (The Weaver); and Kingscote and Sástri, Tales of the Sun (The Story of Appayya). which Capt. O'Connor translates "mascot "). The life-index is a boy bearing a goblet of liquid, each drop of which is a man's life. In another story an ogre has a green parrot as his lifeindex, and is destroyed by a boy who chases an enchanted white doe, and is a reincarnation of a very holy lama; the boy changes himself, in the course of the story, into a talking cowrie-shell. The illustrations are very quaint, and throw much light on the stories; in several cases they show the existence of variants of the tales in the text. The folklore student will find in the plots and incidents of these stories many interesting parallels to those of better-known countries, and will get fresh light on Tibetan character from their conspicuous humour and the satire on officials and priests. He will both thank the author for this valuable collection and hope for the early appearance of a second volume containing the other stories, which, it appears from the preface, the author has kept back as requiring further revision or elucidation. A. R. WRIGHT. With 100 THE WELSH FAIRY BOOK. By W. JENKYN THOMAS. IN his preface Mr. Jenkyn Thomas notes "that the practice of narrating fairy stories has certainly almost died out of Wales," and that "when schoolmastering in Wales" he found pupils "with few exceptions, ignorant of the Fair Family and other legends of Wales." To "deprive Welsh school children of the defence put forward by my quondam scholars" (that no Welsh fairy book had been compiled) he has therefore prepared this collection of "Welsh variants of the universal folk-tales." He winds up by saying that "nothing has been inserted that is not genuinely traditional." These statements involve questions of interest for storyologists |