Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 3 1885.djvu/103

The Algonquin Legends of New England, or Myths and Folk-Lore of the Micmac, Passamaquoddy, and Penobscot Tribes. By Charles G. Leland. London, 1884 (Sampson Low). 8vo. Pp. xvii. 379.

These stories have all been collected from the native Indians, the names of all the narrators being known, except one. Mr. Leland divides them into stories connected with Glooskap the divinity, the merry tales of Lox the mischief-maker, the Chenoo legends, thunder stories, At-o-sis the serpent, the Partridge, the Invisible One, story of the Three Strong Men, the Weewillmekq’, tales of magic. This grouping is not a native one—it is entirely due to the literary arrangement of the compiler. Mr. Leland gives some very important facts to prove that the Glooskap legends are borrowed by historical transmission from the Norse epics, and in some instances he notes how the Indian story has become degraded in form from the original. But in dealing with the parallel incidents of folk-tales a wider range is needed than two different groups. For instance, Mr. Leland makes a great deal of the birth of Glooskap from his mother's side being an incident exactly similar to the Edda legend; and yet if he would turn to other folk-tales, such as the Malagasy, given by Mr. Sibree on page 50, Folk-Lore Journal, vol. ii. he will find the same incident. But still, Mr. Leland's view of the stories is remarkably instructive to the students of comparative storyology, and ought to be examined with care; but we are not at all prepared to accept Mr. Leland's theory without further consideration. It is important to observe that Mr. Leland does not allow his own explanation to dominate the interest of the book, which presents itself to the reader in the shape of an acceptable collection of freshly-gathered material; and Mr. Leland is earnest, though not any too much so, in pointing out the extreme importance these books will be to the future inquirer when archæology and anthropology will have become sciences of the first magnitude, and when to know the history of man will be as necessary to civilised thought as other subjects are now considered to be. Every folk-lorist will welcome this volume for the new matter it contains illustrative of the Indians of America—matter which might have perished irretrievably but for the timely aid of Mr. Leland.