me axious to have kiled the viper, to further wing passage from the Sporang Magosine, EDWARD PEACOCK. SOUTH INDIAN FOLKLORE of me Society who has time and will to add acts available for the student, but is not in lect directly from the folk, can render great aretly examining crficial reports and binebooks re he auggets of icicre which will be found ere and there. For example, the following will i ne report on the Madras Government Museum ycemara Library for the year 19c6-7 GO, No. 464. Sapiam in Madras recently dismissed a servant for cheating saurt ame afterwards he found mailed to a teapoy a paper ...a asmine dower zed up with cicured threads. On the ascribed in Tamil the myste svilacie Om, and Nama Siva a Sanibu Avergai padama hunan, or "I seek for help at Masthan Sanic" a Micammadan sunt, ne actions to the etanciogical section of the Museum, the wooden kivadis, which are carried by pilgrims to the shrine 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. 2 H 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. The 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. 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 out their narratives to great length, they are not given to digression or the display of fancy and emotion. Their tales are told in the fewest possible words; and the general knowledge possessed by the audience of the course and meaning of the tale facilitates frequent ellipses. The effect is sometimes to render it unintelligible without some expansion. The translations are, however, made as literal as such difficulties permit, and expansions are kept within the fewest words capable of rendering the sense. The contents of the tales are in general similar to those of the tribes in a similar stage of culture. The personage usually called Culture Hero or Transformer is, of course, a prominent hero. Neither of these titles is very happy as applied to one who is by turns buffoon, fool, knave, and a wise, beneficent, and even altruistic hero, now held up to ridicule and contempt for his greed and stupidity, now triumphant over all the machinations of his enemies. Among the Foxes he is a Transformer only on a very limited scale, and can hardly be reckoned a Culture Hero at all. But he is, in spite of all his faults and . shortcomings, the national hero, regarded with religious reverence. In the stories here brought together he is always in human form, and not, as among some other tribes, a Coyote. His death is not told, but a story is given of how six men went to seek him in a far distant place to which he had departed, and how those who succeeded in reaching him obtained supernatural gifts. In the stories of the Foxes, as in other American collections, we come upon parallels to European tales which are the despair of those who seek to account for resemblances by borrowing. It would be difficult to account for the migration of the story of the pigmies warred on by cranes from Greece to the region of the Great Lakes of North America, or of the incident from Scandinavia of the astonishing appetite of Thor disguised as bride. The Russian heroine, Marya Morevna, whom the hero is required to subdue before he can marry her, is duplicated by the Foxes; and the marriages are followed by the Magical Flight from the heroine's brothers. Other incidents well known in tales from the eastern hemisphere are that of the innocent Persecuted Wife, Hospitality to Travelling Deities, the Man tied up in a |