Scottish Fairy and Polk - Tales. Selected and edited by Sir George
Douglas, Bart. (Walter Scott.)—It is a pity that Sir George Douglas should have prefixed to his excellent and extremely in- teresting collection a portentously long introduction, which is a popular lecture boiled down, and which, besides distinguishing between Scottish fairy-tales and others, gives a bird's-eye view of almost the whole of Northern literature. It would have been much better if he bad plunged in medics res. As things are, he has produced a wonderfully good and large, if not very dis- criminating, thesaurus of stories that are, to use the curious poetical distinction, " baith terrible an' awfu'. " This is barely a book for children, no doubt ; it is calculated to arouse a feeling of "eeriness," and to make the hair stand on end. Some of them are, however, quite the reverse,—such as the truly delicious " Marriage of Robin Redbreast and the Wren." (By the way, should not Sir George Douglas, who takes this story from
Chambers's " Popular Rhymes of Scotland," have mentioned the popular belief in the North that Burns is its author, and that he wrote and recited it for the amusement of the younger members of his family ? ) In such a work as this, there is—as, indeed, there ought to be—almost an infinite variety of stories to suit an almost infinite variety of tastes. But we should not be greatly surprised if the most truly popular section were that en- titled " The Brownie, The Bogle, The Kelpy, Mermen, Demons." The " eeriness " which broods over them has always its special fascinations, as Sir Walter Scott, Robert Chambers, and others discovered before Sir George Douglas. But Sir George has admirably condensed this section, and he has in particular been careful to give as many short legends as possible. It would be no difficult matter to point out sins of omission that Sir George Douglas has committed. But the task would be ungracious. As an elementary work—if not quite a text-book—it deserves to be, and no doubt will be, much read and greatly appreciated.
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