should have been more anxious to have killed the viper, to further prove the case: as it was she escaped."

I quote the following passage from the Sporting Magazine, October, 1809, p. 37. It relates to the neighbourhood of Lewes : "There is a vulgar notion among the peasantry, that if twenty persons were present, at the time an adder is irritated, and one of the twenty only was in a pregnant state, that that one alone would be bitten by the reptile. Of the truth or fallacy of this opinion we will leave our readers to determine."

EDWARD PEACOCK.

SOUTH INDIAN FOLKLORE.

Any member of the Society who has time and will to add to the stores of facts available for the student, but is not in a position to collect directly from the folk, can render great service by carefully examining official reports and bluebooks and disinterring the nuggets of folklore which will be found embedded here and there. For example, the following will be found in the report on the Madras Government Museum and the Connemara Library for the year 1906-7 (G.O., No. 464, 19th July, 1907):

"A British Chaplain in Madras recently dismissed a servant for cheating and lying. A short time afterwards he found nailed to a teapoy a paper scroll containing a jasmine flower tied up with coloured threads. On the scroll were inscribed in Tamil the mystic syllable Om, and Nama Siva R U. Masthān Sāhibu Avergal pādama thunai, or "I seek for help at the feet of Masthan Sāhib" (a Muhammadan saint).

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Among the additions to the ethnological section of the Museum, the following may be noted::

"Carved wooden kāvadis, which are carried by pilgrims to the shrine of the god Subrahmanya at Palni, to whom the kavadi and money collected by begging on the way thither are offered in performance of a vow. Sometimes pots containing fish and milk are attached to the kavadi, and it is believed that, as they are votive offerings, these do not go bad.

"Silver charms made by Akasāles (goldsmiths) for members of various castes in the Mysore Province. Kurubas, and members of some other castes, keep in their houses silver or gold plates, whereon human figures are stamped. Sometimes they are worn by women, and are called in consequence hithārada tāli. The figures are supposed to represent persons who have died. Sometimes, similar plates are stamped with figures of

In the similar Report for the year 1907-8 (G.O., No. 562, 25th July, 1908), will be found, among the additions to the Museum:

“(2) Silver lizard offered at a temple in South Canara, as a lizard falling on some parts of the body, especially the kudumi (hair knot) of a female, is unlucky. A case was cited in which a lizard did so, and the woman lost her husband eight days afterwards, as she had not made an offering. The priest is consulted, when a lizard falls on the body, as to whether the omen is auspicious or the reverse. [It is common in India for lizards to fall suddenly from walls and roofs. In N. India the lizard known as bishkhopra (poison skull) is especially unlucky. It bears a mark like a death'shead on the back of its head; whence the name.-ED.]

"(3) Levelling plank used in the kambla buffalo races in South Canara. A pair of racing buffaloes, which may cost from Rs. 150 to Rs. 500, is harnessed to the plank, at the distal end of which is a small square board on which the driver stands. The races take place in a ploughed field flooded with water. "The racing," Mr. H. O. D. Harding writes, "is for no prize or stakes, and there is no betting, starter, judge or winning-post. Each pair of buffaloes runs the course alone, and is judged by the assembled crowd for pace and style, and, most important of all, the height and breadth of the splash which is made. Rich Bants keep a kambla field consecrated to buffalo racing. The races are a sort of harvest festival." They are held in the autumn before the second or sugge crop is sown. Devils (bhuthas) must be propitiated, and on the previous night the Koragas sit up, and perform a ceremony called panikkuluni, or sitting under the dew. To propitiate various devils, the days following the races are devoted to cock fighting, in which the birds are armed with cunningly devised steel spurs of various sinuous forms. It is believed that the bhutha is appeased, if the blood of a wounded bird falls on the ground. At Udipi, I acquired a replica of a representation in solid brass of a pair of racing buffaloes, with plank and driver, which had been offered at the temple by the owner of a pair of buffaloes which had fallen ill. . . .

“(5) A very interesting example of sympathetic magic in the shape of a wooden representation of a human being, which was washed ashore at Calicut, Malabar. The figure is made of soft wood, and is eleven inches in height. The arms are bent on the chest, and the palms of the hands are placed together as in the act of saluting. A square cavity, closed by a wooden lid, has been cut out of the middle of the abdomen, and contains tobacco, ganja (Indian hemp), and hair. An iron bar has been driven from the back of the head through the body, and terminates in the abdominal cavity. A sharp cutting instrument has been driven into the chest and back in twelve places.

"(g) Bamboo tassels from Kottiyur in Malabar. Pilgrims carry away from this place a span length of green bamboo crushed into fibre and shaped like a tassel. These tassels are considered to be very sacred, and are tied to the roof of the house. It is believed that bamboos from other places are not capable of this transformation." A. R. WRIGHT.

REVIEWS.

2s. 6d.

ENGLISH TRADITIONAL SONGS AND CAROLS. Collected and Edited, with Annotations and Pianoforte Accompaniments, by LUCY E. BROADWOOD. Boosey & Co. MISS BROADWOOD here gives us a selection of thirty-nine traditional songs, most of them collected by herself in Sussex and Surrey, 1893-1901, but in some cases recovered by others elsewhere. The airs, it is needless to say, are noted exactly as sung by the folk-singers: the words are occasionally modified where obvious corruptions could be corrected, or where modern manners required it. But reference is always made to the publications of the Folk Song Society, from which the ipsissima verba of the singers can be ascertained if desired. This is as it should be. The Folk Song Society, as scientific observers, simply record airs and words exactly as they are sung, and their valuable publications form documentary evidence for the folk-lorist, the musical student, and the historian of music, for all time to come, but do not appeal so directly to the general public as do the collections of Miss Broadwood, Mr. Cecil Sharp, and others. In these the skilled musician takes the traditional air as recorded, adds the instrumental accompaniment, corrects the words where necessary, and sends forth the song into the world fitted to begin a new career in a new environment and under other conditions. In addition to this, Miss Broadwood's introductory remarks and notes on both words and music are worth reading even by the unmusical folk-lorist, dealing as they do with facts of development, variation, and survival, which suggest interesting analogies in other departments of

PUBLICATIONS OF THE

AMERICAN ETHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY,

edited by FRANZ BOAS. Vol. I. Fox TEXTS by WILLIAM JONES. Leyden, late E. J. Brill, 1907.

THE Foxes, though a distinct people, more than a century ago united with the Sauks, and the two have together been since known as the Sauks (or Sacs) and Foxes, or Musquaki. Folklore Society already knows something of the Musquaki. It is indebted to Miss M. A. Owen for the unique collection in the Museum at Cambridge representing much of the material culture of the tribe, and also for the monograph and catalogue embodied in a volume issued to the members four or five years ago. The volume before us may be regarded as supplementing Miss Owen's account. It is to be followed by a work dealing with the material culture, and by stories taken down in English.

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The stories here given are in their native dress with a translation on opposite pages. Although we may suppose the collector to be familiar with Fox traditions, it would have been more satisfactory had the texts been dictated by the native story-teller, and, when taken down, read over to and revised by him. This is possible with many peoples in the lower culture. Apparently it is impossible with the Foxes. "Every single piece of text," therefore, "was told but once, and delivered. without thought of the purpose I meant to make of the material." It was often told too fast to permit of the recording of every single word that fell from the lips of a narrator." Consequently it is not entitled to such authority-at least in matters of detailas some other collections, the stories of which have been dictated and revised by natives. The intense conservatism of the Foxes, and the fact that many of the stories are regarded as sacred, are sufficient to account for this. But there is no reason to doubt (and comparison with the stories of other tribes establishes) that on the whole the collection does represent the stories as actually told both in their main lines and in their spirit, while in many cases it embodies the actual words of the narrators.

An interesting characteristic of the Foxes is noted by the author. Unlike the Ojibwas and other tribes they do not spin

REVIEWS.

ENGLISH TRADITIONAL SONGS AND CAROLS. Collected and Edited, with Annotations and Pianoforte Accompaniments, by LUCY E. BROADWOOD. Boosey & Co. 2s. 6d.

MISS BROADWOOD here gives us a selection of thirty-nine traditional songs, most of them collected by herself in Sussex and Surrey, 1893-1901, but in some cases recovered by others elsewhere. The airs, it is needless to say, are noted exactly as sung by the folk-singers: the words are occasionally modified where obvious corruptions could be corrected, or where modern manners required it. But reference is always made to the publications of the Folk Song Society, from which the ipsissima verba of the singers can be ascertained if desired. This is as it should be. The Folk Song Society, as scientific observers, simply record airs and words exactly as they are sung, and their valuable publications form documentary evidence for the folk-lorist, the musical student, and the historian of music, for all time to come, but do not appeal so directly to the general public as do the collections of Miss Broadwood, Mr. Cecil Sharp, and others. In these the skilled musician takes the traditional air as recorded, adds the instrumental accompaniment, corrects the words where necessary, and sends forth the song into the world fitted to begin a new career in a new environment and under other conditions. In addition to this, Miss Broadwood's introductory remarks and notes on both words and music are worth reading even by the unmusical folk-lorist, dealing as they do with facts of development, variation, and survival, which suggest interesting analogies in other departments of