520
NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. vn. DEC. 25, 1920.
opening paragraph of the Introduction, which
seemed to indicate that the book was intended
primarily as a " companion " to the study of
Spanish history. If that be so, we have two
serious faults in the stress ; first, the historical
section is stressed at the expense of the general
although the latter is so much richer in poetical
gems that M. Foulche-Delbosc's exquisite
- XV. Romances ' contained not one specimen
from the historical ballads ; second, in the historical ballads themselves, the historical quality is much over-stressed. This quality is a convenient characteristic by whicb to define a section, and is, in itself, nothing more, although the frequently concomitant qualities of dramatic vigour and action give those ballads a flavour of their own.
With regard to the general sections, especially to the first general section, we feel a regret that the editor has not been able to complete the survey, which Men^ndez y Pelayo had begun, of the new material collected by the provincial folk-lorists. The Asturias collection, examined for the ' Primavera,' has furnished ten of the thirty-four ballads of Mr. Le Strange's first section, and on one of these ' El Convite ' (No. 31), Menendez y Pelayo laid special stress. There still remain all Latin America, and half of the Spanish provinces, to contribute to the final enrichment of the " general " ballads, and this contribution may well be important.
Thus in Espinosa's New Mexican collection we find a most happy and more piquant variant of ' La Dama y El Pastor ' (No. 27), where the lady plays Makyn in the end to the shepherd's Robin :
Cuando yo quise, tu no quisiste Y ahora que quieres ....
When we turn to the notes with which the volume closes we see very much in evidence the serious lack of unity which characterizes the whole book. The main part of the book has, it is true, an appearance of unity borrowed from the consecutiveness of the historical sequence in the centre. The notes, w/iich are otherwise most interesting and shew the breadth of the author's reading, have the grave defect that they point in too many directions and diffuse, where they ought to concentrate, the attention of the reader. We get some light on each individual ballad ; of the ballads as a whole we get a blurred impression, or none at all. The piecemeal quality of the notes is illustrated in the note to No. 63, where the comment on No. 27 of the ' Primavera,' although quite in place in FitzMaurice Kelly's
- Chapters,' p. 93, reads curiously, as the rhymed
ballad was not excluded by Mr. Le Strange's own Introduction.
The notes vary greatly in quality and many are unsatisfactory. Under No. 22, is it right to regard, " queens, as such," as a fair interpretation of " la reina, con ser reina " ? Under Nos. 139, 140, 141, the name Gal van might either have been left without comment, or what is probably the real connexion between the instances cited might have been indicated, the name being perhaps a stock name for the villain of the story.
One series of " pointers " in the notes seems to us, however, wholly good, the pointers to '.Don Quixote.' In the ballads before us we see
displayed the crude emotions which preceded, as *
they underlie, modern civilization, and which
become dominant in war periods. In the great
post-war novel of Cervantes we have the post-
war conflicts symbolized in what we may call
post-ballad form. It is fitting that an edition
of the Spanish ballads should be well supplied
with pointers towards Cervantes, who is not
merely the true literary successor of their authors,
but the proper guide to whom to commit the
many whose emotional needs in a post-war
period the ballads will fail to satisfy.
F oik-Lore. Transactions of the Folk-Lore Society
(Glaisher, 6s. Qd.)
THIS is a good number. Prof. Sayce contributes a collection of excellent items of Cairene and Upper Egyptian Folk-Lore ; and Mr. N. W. Thomas gives us thirty-two Folk-Tales from Nigeria. Mr. M. A. Murray has a study of witch- organization in which he gives his reasons for thinking that witches were formed into companies, there being a definite and fixed number thirteen, to wit for each company. The contention, if it proves acceptable, will add something of importance to our knowledge of the true history of witchcraft. The British evidence in favour of the hypothesis is, at present, the best.
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