272 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Sentimentg in Relation to Feeling and Con- 

 duct ") he recognizes tlie belief in a future 

 life as favoring high ideal ends, while dis- 

 belief depresses the mental energies, and 

 fosters selfish enjoyments at the expense of 

 social activities. He condemns theological 

 ci'ganizations which condition their fellow- 

 ship on the acceptance of creeds, and com- 

 mends the constitution of the Free Religious 

 Association as the best platform for a re- 

 ligious organization. " An aesthetic worship 

 guided by truth " is, he thinks, a benefit to 

 the human race. 



The final chapters on " The Education 

 of the Religious Sentiment" have already 

 appeared, in substance, in " The Popular 

 Science Monthly." They present strong ar- 

 guments for unpartisan scientific instruction 

 in the history of religions, and the complete 

 secularization of our public schools as the 

 fairest and most practicable means of pre- 

 serving their integrity and usefulness. The 

 book, as a whole, stimulates thought and 

 holds the attention of the reader. In con- 

 nection with " A System of Psychology " 

 and " The Problem of Evil," it justifies us 

 in ranking its author among our ablest phil- 

 osophical thinkers. 



The Counting-out Rhymes of Children: 

 Their Antiquity, Origin, and Wipe 

 Distribution. A Study in Folk-Lore. 

 By Henry Carrington Bolton. Lon- 

 don and New York : D. Appleton & Co. 

 1888. Square Svo. Pp. xii-123. Price, 

 $2.50. 



In this handsomely-printed volume the 

 author has collected a large number of the 

 curious doggerels used by children in count- 

 ing-out for the purpose of determining who 

 shall be it in certain games. He details the 

 customs as practiced in Great Britain and 

 America, and gives many examples, such as — 



" One-erzoll two-erzoll zick-erzoll zan, 

 Bobtail vinegar, tickle 'em tan ; 

 Ilarum squarum, virgin marum, 

 Zinctum, zanctum, buck I " 



The autlior then shows that children of all 

 civilized and semi-civilized races have simi- 

 lar practices, and repeat doggerels with 

 common characteristics ; examples are giv- 

 en in twenty languages, including Japa- 

 nese, Hawaii, Mar^thl, Arabic, Turkish, Bul- 

 garian, Basque, and all the modern lan- 

 guages of Europe. The collection of rhymes 



numbers nearly nine hundred, of which 

 about four hundred and seventy-five are in 

 English. This wide distribution of the pro- 

 cess of counting-out, and the fact that in 

 all languages certain features of the dog- 

 gerels are common, point to great antiquity 

 for the custom, which, the author claims, 

 originated in the superstitious practice of 

 divination by lot — sortilege. This view is 

 borne out by many analogies between an- 

 cient methods of divination and the exist- 

 ing children's games. One chapter treats 

 of conjurations, exorcisms, and charms cur- 

 rent in early times ; another discusses the 

 question whether these rhymes are derived 

 from Latin prayers, and points out the ex- 

 traordinary literary fraud perpetrated in 

 1840 by John Bellender Ker. In another 

 chapter the author shows that, to a certain 

 extent, the changes in English rhj-mes are 

 influenced by geographical environment. In 

 a few instances the exact date at which a 

 given doggerel was composed can be ascer- 

 tained by its local coloring. The marked 

 influence of German immigration in Amer- 

 ica is manifest in even these children's 

 rhymes, many of which are of German ori- 

 gin ; for example — 



" Ana, mana, bona, mike, 

 Barcelona, bona, strike, 

 Care, ware, frow, frack, 

 llallico, ballico, wee, wo, wack ! " 



This undergoes a great many variations. A 

 brief chapter relates to the Anglo-Cymric 

 Score, and the second part of the work con- 

 tains eight hundred and seventy - seven 

 rhymes grouped under the various languages. 

 The material for this volume was gathered 

 by correspondence, and orally ; the sources 

 of the rhymes are indicated in nearly every 

 instance by the initials of the contributors. 

 A bibliography of the works consulted is 

 one feature of the work, which is the first 

 to appear on the subject of folk-lore since 

 the establishment of the Society of Ameri- 

 can Folk-Lore. The volume appeals to all 

 who recall the happy hours of their child- 

 hood. Several English literary papers have 

 announced this work as written by Mrs. 

 Carrington Bolton — an absurd blunder. 

 The author is known by his publications on 

 chemistry and bibliography, and was pro- 

 fessor in Trinity College, Hartford, for 

 many years. 



