This publication of the Bohemian Slavonic Ethnographical Museum in Prague is devoted to ethnography in a fairly wide sense, and covers many technological matters outside the scope of Folk-Lore.
In the first number for 1910 S. Souček discusses the sources of F. Bartoš’s collection of Moravian national songs, published by the Bohemian Academy in 1901, and at the end, as a supplement, is the second part of the tales from Kladno collected by J. Kubín and commented on by J. Polivka. The latter also reviews at length Sir G. L. Gomme's Folklore as an Historical Science, and summarizes A. Aarne's study of Vergleichende Märchenforschungen (the magic ring, the three enchanted things, the magic fruit, and the magic bird), adding a long list of sources not cited by Aarne. J. Janko scrutinizes carefully Peisker's reply to attacks upon his theory of the double (Turko-Tartaric and Germanic) servitude of the ancient Slavs, pointing out the partial selection of facts from Rostafiński's unpublished work, and suggesting that Peisker has rendered dis-service to the study of Slavonic pre-history by publishing undigested theories in England (in the second volume of the Cambridge Mediæval History).
In the May number J. Horák and O. Zich discuss Bohemian popular songs from both the literary and musical sides, and in June J. Veselý has an article on marionettes and their makers and workers. In the September-October number V. Tille gives an account of the ceremony of beheading the cock at the small Bohemian village of Brná, in which a "Jew" and an "old woman" are characters. There is also a review of V. Flajšhaus's Česká přísloví, a collection of proverbs in Bohemian which will take its place beside Dal's Russian, Frank's Ruthenian, and Zaturecký's Slovene collections. In the November-December number there is a short history, by B. Bušek, of Bílov and its customs, manners, and beliefs, including masques at the end of the Carnival and various practices on Ash Wednesday. Professor Gerould's The Grateful Dead and Lee's The Decameron are among the books reviewed.
In the number for January, 1911, J. Polívka begins a series of articles on tales of faithful wives, and in the February-March number F. Pospišil describes the sword dance on Bohemian soil, with several examples of the words and music, and Mr. Hartland's Primitive Paternity is reviewed at length. In the May number are extracts from a Jesuit's account in Latin of seventeenth-century popular beliefs at Bechyn in Bohemia, and a review of J. Belovic-Bernadzikovska's Erotische Einschlage in den Stickornamenten der Serben. This study of the symbolism of lace breaks new ground; an earlier number of the publication before us notices an exhibition of lace in 1910 in the Ethnographical Museum.
The various numbers also contain many other reviews, articles on pottery, statistics, etc., and bring together valuable contributions to our knowledge.