to find the primary interment; but it had been removed already. The mound-breakers had been the Romans, and they had left a coin of Constantine and a large fragment of a typical mortarium almost on the bed rock. They had dug straight down the centre of the mound from the highest point, and in doing so had disturbed several other interments, though they had missed the three important finds we made. Many scattered bones had been collected and replaced in the upper part of the refilled pit, and there can be little doubt that the statement as to replacement of the mound refers to this breaking.

The absence of any treasure-legend may be accounted for by the same exploration, as one would suppose that there had been some such belief in a hoard to induce the Romans to dig. Whether a tradition, which we did not hear until we had commenced work, to the effect that harm was sure to happen to anyone who opened that mound, may not refer to what happened to the party of Romans who broke into it is another question.

With this remarkable group of traditions I must conclude, only adding that, except where I have acknowledged their acquisition from other collectors, all the materials for this paper have been gathered by myself from the folk during the past twelve years. One regret I must express; and that is, that I cannot give in print the dialect in which the tales were told. To attempt to do so would involve too lengthy an extension of most of the legends.

C. W. WHISTLER.

SOME NOTES ON HOMERIC FOLK-LORE.

BY W. CROOKE.

(Read at Meeting, 15th May, 1907.)

IN this paper I propose to deal with some of the folklore and folk-tales to be found in the Homeric poems, and it is not my intention to join, except indirectly, the mellay of the Unitarians,-those who, like Mr. Lang, contend that the Iliad and Odyssey are the work of a single writer, and the Separatists, or, as they used to be called, the Chorizontes, represented by Mr. Leaf. But the study of the folk-lore and folk-tales of Homer is so closely connected with the problem of origins that it is impossible to pass by this controversy in silence.

As students of tradition and romance our sympathies are probably on the side of the old-fashioned view which attributes both epics to a single writer. The arguments in its favour have been forcibly stated by Mr. Lang in his recent book.1 In the first place, he has made a well-timed protest against the "analytical reader," "the literary entomologist," as he has recently been profanely called. "The poet," he justly remarks, "is expected to satisfy a minutely critical reader, a personage whom he could not foresee, and whom he did not address." He accepts the statement of Mr. Leaf that the epics were "Court poems. They were composed to be sung in the

1 Homer and his Age, in continuation of his earlier work, Homer and the Epic.

palaces of a ruling aristocracy the poems are aristocratic and courtly"; they are in no sense ballads or folk-song. This fact, as will be suggested later on, tends to explain some curious omissions, and the reticence which the poet displays regarding ideas and traditions which must have been within his knowledge. Any one who has had personal experience of such Court poets, like the Bhâts, who are the singers and panegyrists of the aristocracy of India, will easily understand why the poems contain the inconsistencies on which the Separatists have laid special stress. It is most improbable that the epics were reduced to writing in the age during which they were composed, and it seems quite certain that the audience which heard portions of them recited in the great hall of a palace troubled itself little about the contradictions which impress the modern critic, even if these attracted attention.

Mr. Lang, again, has done good service in showing that the Iliad has a well-developed plot, and he adduces weighty arguments to prove that the Doloneia, or Tenth Book, forms a necessary part of it. He also, with much ingenuity, displays the consistency of the character of Agamemnon throughout the Iliad. He argues that both epics represent the culture, customs, and art of a single age. In particular, the methods of disposal of the dead have supplied large materials for controversy. This question seems to be placed out of court by his remark that the people of Australia and Tasmania practise, or did practise, every conceivable way of disposing of their dead.1 I have lately had occasion to consider this question with special reference to India. Here we find no uniformity of practice. Inhumation, cairn burial, crouched burial, burial in shaft graves, exposure to beasts and birds, disposal on platforms, and various forms of cremation, are some of the many modes which prevail 1 Homer and his Age, 95.

ethnically distinct, and possessing a &gree of culture. Further, we find these under our very eyes-forest tribes who

y their dead adopting cremation when they we der Bahman influence, and Hindus converted INGA IN Christianity replacing cremation by inhumaNes of this kind, in short, seem to be liable

sant modification, and provide no safe criterion eng the relative ages of poems like the epics. the facts thus collected seem to indicate unity of age authorship of the Iliad. The relation of the Iliad the crossy is a much more difficult question. I do pretend to offer an opinion on the arguments based o archaeology and philology; but I am inclined to sank that the linguistic differences in the two poems,

which a catalogue has been prepared by that great wbar, Mr. Munro, have not been fully met by Mr. Lag From the point of view of religion, again, Professor Lewis Campbell has given a long list of the "obvious

ferences" between the standpoint of the two poems;1 And the same view has been adopted by Professor Gilbert Murray, both critics being deeply impressed by the

lendour of Homer's poetry. Mr. Lang's main answer to these arguments seems to be that they do not fit in with Mr. Leaf's scheme of breaking up the Iliad into "Cantos." Another set of arguments against the unity

the two poems has been produced by Mr. Hall, who points out that whereas in the Iliad the Dorians are

no account among the Greek tribes, in the Odyssey they appear to have reached the end of their migrations; that in the Iliad the process of the withdrawal of the Phoenicians from the Aegean seems to have begun, in the yssey they appear to have disappeared from Greece, and

Religion in Greek Literature, 84 ff.

"History of Ancient Greek Literature, 33 ff. 3 Op. cit. 231 f. The Oldest Civilisation of Greece, 42, 236, 246, 258, 269.