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of the Witch, and is akin to the female companions of Pan and other Satyrs in Greek ancient mythology. It would be an interesting study to compare these female spirits of popular belief in their transition from evil to good spirits, and vice versa. They remind one also of the Jinns of the Orient. This Vila may, then, be a blending on the soil of the Balkans of two streams of beliefs, intermingled there through various influences which held sway over the peoples of that part of the world. I will answer here the question raised hypothetically in the preceding note. Have the Turks exercised any influence upon the nations with whom they came in contact? That the Muhammedans have exercised a direct influence, and that they were the intermediaries in the transmission from East to West, cannot be gainsaid. This is one of the most curious and important results of Dr. Krauss's investigations; nowhere more clearly can it be seen than in this collection how deep the influence of the Turks has been on the poetry as well as on the beliefs and customs of these nationalities. It must be remembered that though the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina and in other parts of European Turkey speak Serbian, a large number of them is Muhammedan. Many centuries ago the most prominent clans and the nobles of the ancient Dalmatian Province embraced Islam voluntarily. It freed them from intolerable religious persecutions. They were the last remnants of the old heresy of Bogomilism; they were the spiritual kinsmen of the Cathars and Albigenses whom the Catholic church persecuted as heretics, and instigated the rulers of Hungary to destroy them. When the Turks conquered the Balkan Peninsula, these so-called heretics embraced Islam and grafted the new teaching, together with its Folklore, on its own, and this has produced an unique blend in that popular literature, a portion of which has been collected and admirably published by Dr. Krauss. The language spoken by the bards is also mixed, in some sentences half of the words are Turkish and half Slavonic; and it is the same in the tales and songs. Already pronounced in the popular customs and beliefs, the Turkish influence is overwhelming in the epical poetry which forms the larger part of this volume. The Guslars, as these bards are

called among the South Slavonians, have then carried these very same heroes, and the recital of their valiant deeds, also across the Danube, and have influenced Rumanian popular poetry, and, possibly, may very likely have helped to mould the epical poetry of the White Russians, and have set the example to the singers of the noble deeds of the heroes of the Russian Bylines.

Dr. Krauss is to be congratulated on the great accuracy with which he has collected and published these poems, and on the scholarly and painstaking manner in which he has worked out the various details. Moreover, he has accompanied his texts with a literal German translation, and has completed the usefulness of his volume by the addition of a copious index. M. G.

A

SHORT NOTICES.

Popular Studies in Mythology, Romance, and Folklore, No. 16.
The Popol Vuh. The Mythic and Heroic Sagas of the
Kichés of Central America. By LEWIS SPENCE. London:
David Nutt, 1908.

A GOOD synopsis of the Popol Vuh is here followed by short
discussions on the cosmogony and the pantheon of the Kichés
as disclosed in the ancient document. This commentary is sane
and generally well informed. The comments on p. 37 on Tepeu,
the Kiché word for king, do not, however, correctly represent
Brinton's view. The opinion there ascribed to Brinton is in fact
attributed by him (Essays of an Americanist, p. 115) to Ximenez,
and so far from endorsing it he says distinctly that "the original
sense of the adjective tep does not seem to bear this out, and
it would rather appear that the employment of the word
as the name of the disease was a later and secondary sense."
Dr. Brinton had few rivals in the knowledge of American
languages; and any opinion expressed by him on such a point
is entitled to great weight. It is the more important that he
should not be misrepresented, even by accident. I regret too
that accurate references to the authorities cited have not in all
cases been given.
E. SIDNEY HARTLAND.

FOLK-LORE IN THE CENTRAL PROVINCES OF INDIA. Indian Folk-Tales, being Side-lights on village Life in Bilaspore, Central Provinces. By E. M. GORDON. London: E. Stock, 1908.

THE title of this pleasant little book inadequately describes its contents. The folk-tales number only seven, and contain little that is novel or interesting. The value of this account of village life lies in the fact that it is written by a well-informed, sympathetic observer, who has lived among the people for many years, learned their language, and studied their life and customs. He describes at first hand the remarkable Satnámi sect which has spread in recent times among the Chamárs or curriers of the Central Provinces, as a protest against idolatry and the ascendancy of the Brahmans. The rural feasts and festivals are described, among which the "Stilt" festival, at which the boys walk about on bamboos for fifteen days, seems peculiar to this part of India. An ailing infant is weighed against cow-dung, which is laid at the cross-roads in the belief that whoever touches it will transfer the weakness to his own child. There is a curious habit of placing five balls of earth on a grave after the corpse is interred, said to be a substitute for the contribution of sticks to the funeral pyre, which everyone is bound to make. Children are buried at the house doorway in the hope that they will be reborn in the family, a practice which the author erroneously regards as peculiar to this district. It is wrong to spill salt, because the offender will have to pick it up, grain by grain, in the lower regions. A dying person is marked with soot or oil, and children born after his decease are examined to see if they bear similar signs as a proof of transmigration. Perforated stones, said to have come down from the Stone Age, are valued for medicinal purposes. Mimetic magic appears in the prohibition against twirling a spindle while the village council is sitting, lest its deliberations should be unduly prolonged. The Swan Maiden cycle appears in the tale of the man who came across a Pretin or female demon. She hid her cloth in a hollow bamboo and lived with him as his wife, until one day he rashly produced the sheet, which she

put on and incontinently disappeared. I hope that the success of this book, the value of which may be judged by these specimens of its contents, will encourage the author to give a further account of his experiences among this interesting people.

W. CROOKE.

Oral Tradition from the Indus. By Major J. A. A. M'NAIR, R.A., C.M.G., and T. L. BARLOW. Brighton. 1908.

THIS is a "revised and corrected" edition of a collection of tales from the Hazara district on the Indus, which originally appeared in the Indian Antiquary, and were reprinted afterwards and edited by Mr. W. Crooke. The present edition is excellently printed and well illustrated with drawings by Miss Fean from sketches by the authors.

The neighbourhood of the village of Ghazi, near Torbela, has already been well worked by Mr. Swynnerton, who had the assistance of Mr. Barlow, one of the contributors to this volume. The intimate knowledge of the people which both Major M'Nair and Mr. Barlow possess ensures the authenticity of these tales and apologues, but the explanatory notes cannot be spoken of so favourably. For instance, Secundur Zulf kar-nain is stated to mean Alexander "with curly locks like horns and fiery eyes," and the authors (p. 48) apparently believe that this bit of popular etymology is correct, and that the Persian word zulf, a curl, and the Hindi nain, an eye, really form part of the Arabic name, Dhu'l-karnain, locally pronounced Zulkarnain, which means simply "having two horns." It is to be regretted, too, that the numerous interesting rhymes and sayings given in the original languages, Western Panjabi and Hindi, are not spelt according to some recognised system of transliterating oriental languages, and not in a haphazard way which renders them barely intelligible.

The collection will, it may be hoped, become more widely known than before in its present attractive form.

M. LONGWORTH DAMES.

Legends and Tales of North Cornwall.

By ENYS TREGARTHEN. The Piskey Purse. BY THE SAME. Wells Gardner, Darton & Co. 3s. each.

ENYS TREGARTHEN is a Cornishwoman by birth and descent, accustomed to intercourse with the peasantry, and altogether in a position to collect whatever local folk-lore has escaped the notice of the many previous writers on Cornwall. Unfortunately, however, she has chosen to put her material into the shape of fiction, dressing it out with characters, dialogues, descriptions, and bits of word-painting, so that it is absolutely valueless as evidence. A few notes at the end of her first volume show that she could, an she would, do good work. A paper from her pen on these lines, if the matter were properly sifted and collated with the work of Mr. R. Hunt, Mr. T. Quiller Couch, Miss Courtney, and other writers, would probably add some useful gleanings to the already rich harvest of Cornish folk-lore.

CHARLOTTE S. BURNE.

Aus Natur und Geisteswelt. Band 7, J. W. BRUINIER, Das deutsche Volkslied. Pp. 151. (Third edition.) Band 214, H. S. REHM, Deutsche Volksfeste und Volkssitten. Pp. 118. Leipzig: Teubner, 1908. Price Is. 3d.

THESE two booklets belong to the same series and deal with two branches of German folklore, but it would be difficult to find in the remainder of the series two works more diverse in style and tone than are these two. Dr. Bruinier has a liking for purple passages which to the English reader seem rather exaggerated; and he has a tendency to go back to primitive times and lay down the law as to primitive conditions on a priori principles which will not stand the touchstone of experience. He asserts, for example, that the Goths alone of all the Germans had at the outset the conditions for the evolution of a caste of bards. It is, however, a matter of common knowledge that peoples in a far lower stage of culture than the Germanic nation, have bards, and it by no means follows that no bards existed because there is no record of them.