Reviews. 333
I have noticed only a few trifling misprints. The date of Ganander's Mythologica Femiica on p. xv. should of course be 1789. On page 151 (vol. i.), "slow" appears to be a misprint for " low." On page 363 (vol. i.), the reference to the Para should be i32d not 153d.
In conclusion, let me heartily congratulate Mr. Abercromby upon the completion of these admirable volumes, which must remain for many a day the standard English work on the subjects with which they deal.
Charles J. Billson.
LiTTERATURE Orale de l'x-Yuvergne. Par Paul Sebillot. Paris : J. Maisonneuve. 1898.
This collection of traditions, songs, riddles, and sayings, which forms the thirty-fifth volume of the Litteratures Populaires de toutes les Nations, shows once again how rarely any legend stands isolated in folklore. Nearly every story in the book is a variant of some well-known conte adapted to local circumstances. The Wicked Stepmother, the Lad who did not know how to Tremble, the Lost Children, the Serpents guarding a Treasure, the Bird of Paradise and the Monk, all have a place in its pages, with other equally familiar characters. In England, St. Mark's-eve is often the time for " watching the church-porch," but M. Sebillot's story, entitled La mort prcdife, affords evidence that, according to the natives of Aurillac, it is at All-Souls the spectres of those who are to die within the year pass through the abbatial porch of St. Geraud.
The folklore of many English counties represents the white rabbit as a phantom of ill-omen, it is therefore interesting to find that in Puy-de-D6me a goblin appears in the same form. The behef that a pigeon often comes to a house as a death-warning seems general throughout the British Isles, and an instance of a parting soul assuming the form of a white dove is mentioned by M. Sebillot in connection with the chateau of Baffie. The story of The Devil, The Wind, and Lincoln Minster, lately published in Folk-Lore, finds an analogue in a legend of Cantal.
