Page:Folklore1919.djvu/697

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Reviews.
331

the Active Woman, Position and Value of Women, View of Woman's Character, the Woman a Chattel, Woman's Power. It will be seen that there is some confusion in the general arrangement; but under each head the author gives a large collection of instructive examples, which develop in a natural way. A good deal of it is of interest chiefly literary, but our readers will be able to gather from the list given above a fair idea of what may interest them. The list does not, however, show all that may be found; there are for example folk-tales to be found, and a number of customs or superstitions that illustrate other parts of the world. Thus there is a frog-maiden to answer to the western swan-maiden; and students of morality will find much to ponder. It is most satisfactory to have the evidence of those great unwieldy poems gathered together, especially for those who cannot consult the originals. The book may stand beside Ploss's Weib as a fuller study on one special and limited sphere.




Magic in Names and in Other Things, by Edward Clodd. London: Chapman and Hall, Ltd., 1920. 12s. 6d. net.

Mr. Clodd's practised hand here gives us a book that can be read by anyone and will make everyone think. Following the best traditions of our science he deals mainly in facts; and a goodly array of facts they are, being no less racy in themselves than relevant to his argument. But the argument, after all, is the thing that matters. The facts serve merely to test it. What theory of magic, then, does Mr. Clodd uphold? Very soundly, as it seems to me at least, he postulates that primitive magic implies, not a crude idea of physical causation, as is required by the view that magic is simply "pseudo-science," but rather "the sense of a vague, impersonal, ever-acting, universally-diffused power which, borrowing the word for it common to the whole Pacific, is called mana." As Codrington says, "wizards, doctors, weather-mongers, prophets, diviners, dreamers, all alike, everywhere in the islands, work by this