The Brown Fairy Book. Edited by Andrew Lang. (Longmans and
Co. 6s.)—Mr. Lang has to go far afield when he wishes to add a new volume to his many-coloured library of fairy-stories. But he does not go in vain. Fortunately for him, folk-lore, for this is the dignified name by which the fairy-tale is now known, has become a recognised object of research, and no one has followed it with more energy and intelligence than Mr. Lang. It is, indeed, now classed as a science. What used half-a-century ago to be thought fit only for children—though, of course, there- were even then serious students—is now made the subject of academic memoirs. So we find among the sources to which the editor acknowledges his obligations, not only our old friend the " Contes Populaires," but the Journal of the Anthropological Institute, the United States Bureau of Ethnology, and regular collections of Marcher,. from Lapland (a fertile source, as one might expect), from Iceland, &c. The New World is scarcely less abundant in these survivals of primitive thought and belief than the Old. They come from both North and South America. One of the finest, the tale of " Wali-Dild the Simple-hearted," after the best type of the "Arabian Nights," a story of how a poor man grew rich through and in spite of his generosity, is described as "told to the author by an Indian." It is a story of Islam and Central Asia, if we may judge from such names as Nekabad and Khaistan. Now "Indian," as used in the present day, is applied to a North or, South American aboriginal. How did he come to talk about Allah and the Paris ? We need hardly say that this is a delightful book, and admirably illustrated.—The New World Fairy Book, by Howard Angus Kennedy (J. M. Dent and Co., 4s. ficl. net), is drawn wholly from one of the sources indicated above, the legends of the North American Indians. Reginald, commonly called, a white boy, son of the teacher in an Indian reserve, coaxes a number of stories out of Ossawippi, the Chief of the reserve. They are like other fairy-stories, like and unlike. Rennie, for instance, tells "Cinderella" to his Indian friends ; and Ossawippi tells him, in return, the Indian variant. But one curious thing about the variant is that so much in it is modern. The lover is sent to get red cloth, and he buys it with beavers' skins from the white men's store. Mr. Kennedy does not tell us where he gets his "New World" tales ; if they, or any con- siderable proportion of them, are of his own contriving, they do him great credit. We must not forget to mention Mr. H. R. Millais's excellent illustrations.—Yet another book which may be classed with the two noticed above is Kr. Wind and Madam Rain, by Paul de Musset, Translated by Emily Makepeace (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 6s.) The stories come, we are told, from a Breton nurse ; M. de Musset has himself heard them in Brittany, where, as he rightly says, these two personages are still frequent visitors. "I will not say," he truthfully goes on, "that I have added nothing to the unconnected recitals of the Breton peasants." Very properly, he leaves it to the higher critics to determine
Previous page
