of interest. Their sentiments are commonplace, and the form is that of a hymn. The customs are fully described, but they show little of wider interest except traces of "marriage by capture." We do not say this in disparagement, because we think that all such customs are worth recording before they die out, as these seem to be dying out; but we speak from the standpoint of the student. With the music it is otherwise. These tunes and dances are worth noting for their originality and grace; they are real folk-music.
Chinese Merry Tales. Translated into English by Y. T. Woo. Shanghai: Presbyterian Mission Press, 1909. 8vo, pp. iv. + 58.
Chinese Fables and Folk Stories. By Mary Hayes Davis and Chow-Leung. Introduction by Yin-Chwang Wang Tsen-Zan. New York: American Book Co., 1909. Svo, pp. 214. Illus.
Folk-lore Chinois Moderne. By Léon Wieger, S.J. Paris: E. Guilmoto, 1909. Svo, pp. 422. Illus.
There still survives a collection of twenty-eight jests and jocular anecdotes,[1] representing the life's work of a collector of drolls a thousand years ago. A few additions could be made from Chinese Merry Tales, although the themes of these hundred and one stories are no more varied than those of the Western world. It is true that, as might be expected in China, the mother-in-law jest is missing, but tales of henpecked husbands are numerous. For instance, Nos. I., VI., and IX. are all variants of a story, previously recorded, of a mandarin who announces his intention of ordering a good beating for his secretary's wife as the obvious cause of the scratched face which the secretary explains as due to the falling on him of his garden arbour; the mandarin's own wife, who is listening at the
- ↑ Schier, Hieroclis Philosophi apud Alexandrinos quondam celeberrimi AΣTE~IA Graece et Latine, Lipsiae, 1768.
