The Traditional Games of England, Scotland, and Ireland, with Tunes,
Singing Rhymes, and Methods of Playing according to the Variants Extant and Recorded in Different Parts of the Kingdom. Collected and annotated by Alice Bertha Gomme. Vol. II., "Oats
and Beans "—" Would You Know?" together with a Memoir on the Study of Children's G-ames. (D. Nutt. 12s. 6d. net.)— This is the second volume of Mr. and Mrs. Gomme's "Dictionary of British Folk-lore," and concludes the "Children's Games." The third volume will commence a work on the "Marriage Rites and Customs of the British Isles," and perhaps the most interesting portions of the volume now before us are those relating to games connected with love and marriage, some of which are treated at great length, and apparently throw much light on old customs. The compilation of records of this kind will soon become impos- sible, in our country at least, for the present century has witnessed such vast changes,in the manners and customs of all classes, as to form almost as complete a break with the past as the introduc- tion of Christianity, or the Reformation; and in a few years' time, when all those whose parents remembered the introduction of railways, &c, have passed away, those traditions of earlier times in which folk-lorists are most interested will have almost entirely disappeared. Mrs. Gomme's concluding memoir calls for special notice. It includes a classification of games under various head- ings, which may be useful to future compilers of similar works ; for much may still be done in the same direction in other countries, though Mrs. Gomme claims, perhaps with justice, to have almost exhausted the subject as far as the British Islands are concerned. With most of her observations we can cordially agree, though she sometimes appears to take too one-sided a view of certain details. For instance, she says (p. 472) :—" I do not think that the cumulative reckoning, and its accompanying ideas, would occur to modern boys, unless they had inherited the con- ception of the virtue of a conquered enemy's weapon being trans- ferred to the conqueror's." Here Mrs. Gomme seems to attach
rather too much importance to transmission, and too little, to the probability of similar ideas arising spontaneously, not only in similar grades of cultivation, but at ages corresponding to earlier
grades of civilisation, on the lines indicated in Dr. Temple's famous essay on" The Education of the World." As regards the supposed supernatural power of "guessing" (p. 512), we may suggest that unconscious thought-reading and similar intuitions, which are doubtless closely connected with the magic of earlier times, probably play a much greater part in such matters, even at the present day, than is commonly supposed.
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