religion and cult. But perhaps when his work is finished, Dr. Farnell will consider this and other questions of principle. It is strange that this chapter does not include a plate of the remarkable snake-goddess, (or priestess in character-costume), found in Crete.

The manifold character of Poseidon's cult is recognized by Dr. Farnell; but he seems to be a little prejudiced, as most people are, by finding the god as master of the sea in the earliest literature. To our mind, this can hardly have been his original power. He does not even seem to us to have been originally a fresh-water god, developing into a sea-god by the accident of migration. Taking into account not only his association with the horse, and perhaps with war (for was not the trident a war-weapon?) his ancient cult in Corinth points to a more comprehensive power than this. There we see him appealed to by warriors and traders as others might appeal to Athena elsewhere, or to Apollo; there is no hint in the actual remains, the wívakes, of a special sea-function. His name may be connected with πόσις, ποτόν, ποταμός, but it may be connected with πόσις, δεσπότης. The complicated question of Poseidon's place in Attica is skilfully analyzed at the end of the chapter. Dr. Farnell suggests that Poseidon is a late-comer, brought from Troizen with some Ionic immigration, and it must be admitted that he gives reasons for his view; he holds also that Poseidon is not identical with Erechtheus, and that Aigeus may be a name for Poseidon derived from the town of Aigai, which was "an asylum for immigrant cults." We do not feel satisfied, however, that the last word has been said on Poseidon; in particular, no one seems to have noticed how old-fashioned people in Aristophanes swear by him, and the conservatism of the countryman is well known. A good deal of suspicion, in our opinion, must also rest on a theory that assumes Poseidon's original function to have been that of a water-god.

The worship of Apollo furnishes important evidence as to early Greek ethnology. Dr. Farnell sees his earliest home in the North, whence down to historic times a religious pilgrimage used to take place, certain messengers bringing offerings of cereals to Delos. These seem first to have been brought to

Delphi, whence Apollo was long before he got a seat in Delos. The messengers came from the Hyperboreans, and were called according to Herodotus Teppepées; Dr. Farnell accepts Ahrens's brilliant explanation of 'Υπερβόρειοι as a variant of ὑπερβερέται, which he considers to be a North Greek form of ὑπερφερέται, the 'porters' who carried the offerings. Apollo was originally a pastoral or woodland god, in which last capacity he was the Wolf-god AúKetos (Dr. Farnell rightly insists that this adjective cannot come from λύκη, which would make λυκαίος), and the title gave its name to Lycia, which probably had another native name. Here Dr. Farnell comes closest to the anthropological school, in admitting an animal god, to whom his name-animal was occasionally sacrified, into the Greek pantheon. The connexion of Apollo is close also with vegetation and harvest; but his association with the sun is not original but comparatively late. In the end, this god becomes one of the most instructive to the student, as embodying conceptions of high intellectual and moral value.

We have only been able briefly to touch on a few points of interest in these volumes, packed so close with well-ordered evidence and criticism. We have indicated where it seems their plan might have been modified with advantage; but taking them as they stand, they are indispensable to the student, who will nowhere else find so good an account of the subject within its own limits. For those who disagree with this or that conclusion, even for those who may think them wrongly conceived as a whole, their value as a storehouse of learning is very great. They present in convenient form the best results of the study of Greek religion, so far as those studies can be confined within the Greek sphere.

BY GEORGE LAURENCE

FOLK-LORE AS AN HISTORICAL SCIENCE.
GOMME. Methuen & Co., 1908.

THE conductors of Folk-Lore, not long ago, expressed a decided opinion against authors who reply to criticism. I have been doing so all my days, in matters of folklore, history, and so on, and venture to think that discussion clears matters up, and that criticism is really a form of collaboration. In the case of Mr.

Gomme's Folk-Lore as an Historical Science, this critic, at least, would welcome a reply, as he feels by no means certain that he understands exactly what his author would be at. Mr. Gomme seems to think that history and historians are behaving unkindly to their little sister, folklore; yet, as a writer of history, I feel unconvinced of this sin. Mr. Gomme's object in this work is to state "the claims of Folk Lore as a definite section of historical material," and "to shew how pure history is intimately related to folklore at many stages, and yet how this relationship has been ignored by both historian and folk-lorist," (p. xii).

I really do not see that the relation can be ignored by the modern historian. Part of his business is to clear the tower of historic masonry from the picturesque but pernicious ivy of folklore, that is, of erroneous popular and family tradition. For example, there is a place in Scotland called Kinedward, and folklore steps in with her tale of King Edward I., which is only a Volksetymologie. The historian cannot ignore this folklore, but he chops at its root, and so he does in hundreds of cases in which family and popular tradition can be proved by documentary evidence to be nonsense. In the meantime no historian denies, to my knowledge,-that folklore contains valid evidence as to the prehistoric condition of mind and the prehistoric institutions in the past dwellers in these islands for example; and I have known traditions of certain historical events to be very fairly accurate in parts of Scotland. If any historian denies the value of tradition in proto-history, he may fight his own battle. On the other hand, when tradition ascribes to Cromwell a camp of the Early Iron Age, then folklore has

Q

a here was once a window win a puture of a pedar and og ʼn me chudi z lanei, vile there is a wooden figure

at Swatam: the locity of the comy fellow in one

The story may have mached ise to these figures,

sc is the figure sometimes suggests the story.

In the Ele and very ugly town of Douglas, the people tell ou mat Claverhouse cut of the ears of a local Covenanter Maut a pair of scissors. They prove this by showing you a Lude in the wall of a house, on which are incised two letters,— sy I. R-a pair of tailor's scissors, and a tailor's goose. It was common for tradesmen, having no armorial bearings, to grave their initials, and their hammer, shuttle, scissors, or whatever was the chief tool of their craft, on a stone over e door of their houses, or on the wall. The shears have suggested to Douglas folklore the myth of Claverhouse; the ier's goose is left out of account.

As a historian I did not ignore folklore, but hunted for the crop-eared martyr in Wodrow's copious martyrology. His name did not appear among the hundreds of sufferers, and, duly considering the goose, I relegated the tale to the "fictional," in Mr. Gomme's phrase.

To return to the story of the dream, it occurs, with London bridge, in a Breton märchen still current, and in the Heimskringla. Here a cripple dreams that he will be cured at the church of St. Olaf in London. The man crossed London bridge on his way to St. Olaf's church, he met a man (the saint) who led him thither, and who went away while the miracle came off. Very well, there was a bridge in London when the sagaman heard that story. Plenty of other places, from Cairo to Holland, are given in tales as the place of the central incident.

But Mr. Gomme argues that the story of London bridge existed "before the separation of the Breton folk from their Celtic brethren in Britain." I cannot possibly accept this opinion as proved, because Breton folk, often at peace with English fishermen while France and England were at war, kept on dealing with English fishermen, and could pick up the English märchen. Naturally the Northmen knew all about London bridge, and had every opportunity of picking up the märchen, though, in the Heimskringla the story became hagiographic. No more is needed. We have nothing to do here with the Bretons before their migration from Britain, or with human sacrifices accompanying the building of a bridge, or with "the mythical trappings of Arthur," whether he was trapped on London bridge, like Jean sans Peur on the bridge of Montereau, or not. The treasure was not under London bridge, though the Thames bed is full of antiques of many ages. I do not see that the bridge story adds an item to history.

Mr. Gomme gives a case in which a local tradition of a buried treasure was verified by an accidental discovery. Perhaps in this case the tradition was genuine, but the country is full of treasure legends which are not verified. In the Mold ghost-story of a spectre in golden armour, excavation did not find man's armour, but the golden trappings of a horse, as the learned declare. The ghost called the Dhuine Mor, at Ballachulish, has been carefully observed by the late Mr. MacInnes, who correctly described the