Cornish Feasts and Folk - Lore. By Miss M. A. Courtney. (Beare
and Son, Penzance.)—Miss Courtney has reprinted a number of very interesting papers from the Folk-Lore Society Journals of 1886-87. We cannot pretend to give any analysis or sketch of the contents of the volumes, so varied are these. Entertaining as such books are, their real value is as materials for the science of folk-lore. A local observer collects facts, some of them peculiar, some common to many other countries. The more difficult the task of drawing the proper inferences from what is and what is not shared by one locality with another, is one that has yet, in a great measure, to be performed. Meanwhile, such contributions as Miss Courtney has here given us are valuable, even indispensable. — Along with this book may be mentioned a new volume of the "Camelot Series," edited by Ernest Rhys (Walter Scott). This is English Fairy and other Folk Tales. Selected and edited, with an Introduction, by Edwin Hartland. " Human Tales," " Sagas " (with the subdivisions of " Historical and Local," " Giants," "Fairies," " Devil and other Goblins," " Witchcraft," " Ghosts "), and "Drolls " are the divisions of Mr. Hartland's book. Here, too, is a mass of materials which might, however, have been a little more sifted. Some of the stories, the ghost-stories especially, are of very little value indeed.
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