10 s. xii. AUG. 21, 1909.] NOTES AND QUERIES.
159
NOTES ON BOOKS, &c.
Folk-lore and Folk-stories of Wales. Trevelyan . (Elliot Stock. )
By Marie
GENUINE folk-lore is every day becoming more
difficult of attainment in civilized countries ;
it is supposed to be " unfit," and therefore un-
worthy of survival. We are the more indebted,
consequently to first-hand collectors like Mrs.
Trevelyan, who go among the people and gather
Baal or any other Oriental deity. Discredit has-
often been thrown upon gossip Aubrey's ' sin-
eater," but contemporary evidence is here
adduced for this strange funeral custom (p. 270)
which places it beyond dispute. As a bit of folk-
medicine we are told that the cure of convulsions
in children can be wrought by placing a horseshoe
under their pillow (p. 225). Grimm long ago-
noted this identical custom as existing in Germany,
The spirit Margan, who conducts the disembodied
soul to its place in the other world (p. 274), stands
up the dwindling fragments before they have
quite perished. In folk-lore, as in other branches
of knowledge, there is no lack of study-chair
compilers who are content to serve up a crambe
rcpeiita culled from printed books. But Mrs.
Trevelyan, besides being well qualified DV in-
herited stories of information, brings freshness
to her task in a keen personal interest in the folk
and their ways of thinking, and has something
to tell which has not been told before. Her
comely volume is a veritable storehouse of the
quaint lore about Nature and the invisible world
which lingers amidst the hills and valleys of Wales ;
if it is disjointed and scrappy, probably it could
hardly have been otherwise when the items are
so multifarious. She has had the invaluable
advice and direction of Mr. Sidney Hartland, a
folk-lorist of wide experience, who has contributed
an appreciative introduction and otherwise
enriched her work.
Renan observed how deeply tinged with melancholy were the folk-beliefs of his native Brittany, for they always seemed to centre round the churchyard. In a measure this is equally true of their Welsh cousins, and it is characteristic of the Keltic temperament wherever it is found. " Sombre mysticism," says Mr. Hartland, " is the dominant note of the Welsh beliefs." Driven to his last resort on the extreme shores of Western Europe by the ever -pressing tide of Aryan migration, the Kelt, it may be supposed, naturally adopted that sad minor note which is characteristic of defeated nationalities.
One of the most striking of the gloomy super stitions recorded here is that of the Cwn Annwn, Dogs of the Underworld, which may be heard hunting the souls of the lost at the dead of night with unearthly howlings, foreboding disaster or death to the hearer (p. 50). These, as well as the Cwn Wybyr, or Sky Dogs, may be correlated with the Dandy Dogs of Cornwall and the Gabble "Ratchets of the Northern counties, as a mytho- logizing of the same phenomenon, which has often been explained. But comparative mytho- logy does not enter into the author's plan, nor does she make any attempt to rationalize her CUTIOUB stories. She might fairly have noted, however, that Prof. Rhys has plausibly explained the word Annwn, the Welsh name of Hades, as a personification of the Latin animce, souls ; and as every one does not know Cymric, we should have been glad if she had always translated the incidental Welsh phrases that occur. Andras, e.g., is given as a curious popular name for the Devil. Is this susceptible of any explanation in the vernacular ? Much more might surely have been told us about the sun hero Hu Gadarn and his fortunes on English soil.
We turned to Beltane or Baltan as a test word of the author's standpoint, and were grateful to find that it could be lighted without the aid of
isolated and unexplained. As Morgan was a
name given to the sun, i.e. " the sea-born," with
reference to his daily rising out of the water r
and as it was a custom to bury the dead at the
lour of sunset (p. 277), that the parting luminary
might show them the way to the underworld
as in the Egyptian mythology), may it not be
that the psychopomp Margan is only another
phase of Morgan, the sun in his descent to Hades ?
We merely throw out the suggestion for further
consideration .
Mrs. Trevelyan's book is suggestive, and whets our appetite for further information, which she promises in another volume treating of fairy-lore.
The Pronunciation of English : Phonetics and
Phonetic Transcriptions. By Daniel Jones,
(Cambridge, University Press.)
WE are always glad to see scientific work on
phonetics such aa Mr. Jones's, since English
pronunciation is getting into a haphazard style
which confuses everybody, and seems likely
to end only in a slack form of English with no
rules. Mr. Jones mentions that " the Board of
Education has now introduced the subject into
the regular course of training of teachers for
service hi public elementary schools." That
body ought to have seen to the matter long ago,
for any time these ten years we have heard
ludicrous pronunciations from village school-
masters and teachers. Unfortunately, the ex-
planation of sounds is difficult to a beginner,
if not alarming ; but Mr. Jones's methods seem
as simple as they can be in his First Part, con-
cerning phonetics. The Second Part, giving
phonetic transcriptions of passages as pronounced
by various people, is decidedly interesting.
Special stress is laid on London, but we have also*
specimens of Yorkshire, Devonshire, Lancashire,
Scotland and South of England, Hampshire,
Edinburgh, and Glasgow, in some cases modified
by residence in London. Why the Midlands
should be neglected we do not know, for we
always understood that the standard of English
in earlier times was derived from that district.
Even the most cultivated of Londoners is apt,
according to our experience, to fall into uncon-
scious Cockney, and that is a dialect already,,
perhaps, over-advertised by writers of verse and:
prose, as well as the man who comes from London*
to astonish the country village.
MR. ALEYV LYELL READE, of Park Corner,. Blundellsands, near Liverpool, whose name i familiar to readers of ' N. & Q.,' is about to Issue Part I. of his Johnsonian gleanings, under the title ' Notes on Dr. Johnson's Ancestors and Con- nexions and illustrative of his Early Life.' Only 350 copies will be printed. The volume, which has an elaborate index, will also include seven unpublished portraits of members of Dr. Johnson's circle at Lichfield, reproduced by the hand-press collotype process.
