The Minor Tradition of British Mythology. By Lewis Spence. (Rider.
16s.)
MR. SPENCE has a vast store of knowledge about monsters, mermaids, seal-folk, giants, ogres, laidly worms, lake-ladies, hobs and boggetts. Something (which is not style) gives this book a most engaging quality. Perhaps it is that the reader feels that its author half believes the legends that he recreates here in a tantalisingly brief form. Modern anthropologists of the school of Radcliffe Brown hazard that the beliefs and traditions of a people always have a definite " social purpose," and have been handed down because they uphold something without which a given society might fail to hold together. What can be the " social purpose" of these " minor traditions " ? Sometimes an awful warning, sometimes a heroic example ? It is fascinating to read this summary of a vast mass of familiar and not so familiar legend with this idea in mind. Mr. Spence would be the first to agree that the quality of British folk- tales must not be judged entirely from his pages. For of tales that need art, detail and deployment in the telling he' usually gives only a reminding summary. Parents and guardians might note that some of the best of them are to be found in their best versions in Jacob's English.Fairy Tales and More English Fairy Tales, now fortunately in print again. Mr. Spence, however, recalls to us many more than Jacob tells.
Previous page
