596 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



A clever writer in The Saturday Review (whom we suspect to 

 be none other than Andrew Lang) begins his book review with 

 two sentences which deserve to be quoted at this place.* He says : 

 " (1) It is not very much to our national credit that an American, 

 Prof. Child, is making far the best edition of our ballads. (2) 

 Nor is it very much to the credit of Ireland that an American 

 has made much the most interesting collections of her old popu- 

 lar tales." Prof. Child's monumental edition of English and 

 Scottish Popular Ballads represents the best years of his life. It 

 is a veritable mine of comparative folk lore, to which scholars 

 will go again and again, and all will come away richer and wiser 

 after their visit. 



The American referred to in the second sentence above quoted 

 is Mr. Jeremiah Curtin, a member of the Folk-lore Society. His 

 collection of the Myths and Folk Lore of Ireland should make 

 every lover of old Ireland his friend. Mr. Curtin gained his 

 training and experience in collection of our Indian myths. He 

 has published recently a collection of Myths and Folk Tales of 

 the Russians, Western Slavs, and Magyars (1890), in which his 

 singular ability as a collector and interpreter of popular tradition 

 is again displayed. Another member of the Folk-lore Society, Mr. 

 James Mooney, went over to Ireland with the purpose of study- 

 ing the traditions of his ancestral county. His account of The 

 Holiday Customs of Ireland is a remarkably fine bit of work.f 

 Mr. Mooney's special work has been under the auspices of the 

 Bureau of Ethnology. His examination of the theory and prac- 

 tice of medicine among the Cherokee Indians is a masterly presen- 

 tation of an obscure and complicated folk practice. J 



The study of negro lore has been the means of making the 

 reputation of at least one American writer. We refer of course 

 to Mr. Joel Chandler Harris, to whom will always be given the 

 credit of making the lore of the plantation interesting alike to 

 the student and the general reader. His Uncle Remus Tales have 

 a scientific worth, aside from a literary value. In his Negro 

 Myths, Colonel Charles C. Jones has done for the dialect and folk 

 lore of the negroes of the Georgia coast what Mr. Harris did so 

 wonderfully well for the legends of the old plantation of middle 

 Georgia. The stories of Daddy Jack and Daddy Sandy are on a 

 par with the tales of Uncle Remus. But there is a difference in 

 the lingo of the negroes ; the darkies of the Georgia rice-fields 

 and swamp region have almost a different language from that of 

 the colored folk of Maryland or of Tennessee. 



* For April 12, 1890. 



■f Published in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 1889. 



% In the Journal of American Folk Lore, 1890; also Bureau of Ethnology, 1885-86. 



