Folklore is always interesting but seldom so gracefully and competently
handled as in Miss Eleanor Hall's Folklore of the British Isles (Methuen, 7s. 6d.). Her chapters on such themes as " The Worship of Stones," The Worship of Trees," " Animal Cults," and the winter and summer festivals are compounded of many curious tales and :traditions drawn largely from Scottish and Irish Gaelic and Welsh sources and fortified not seldom by modem instances. The boar's head is still borne in state at Queen's College, Oxford, every Christmas ; but the hunting of the boar or the Black Pig was an important theme in many a Gaelic legend. Miss Hall says that not fifteen years ago a Highland farmer sacrificed one cow out of an afflicted herd to save the rest from murrain by propitiating the unseen powers. Old beliefs die hard.
* * * *
Previous page
