Page:Journal of American Folklore vol. 12.djvu/409

Catalogue of a Collection of Objects illustrating the Folk-Lore of Mexico. By Frederick Starr. With thirty-two figures. (Published for the Folk-Lore Society.) D. Nutt: London, 1899. Pp. ix, 132.

Notice has already been taken in this Journal (vol. xii, p. 230) of the generous contribution of illustrative objects made to the Folk-Lore Society by Professor Starr, whose assiduity in the investigation of Mexican folk-lore is well-known; the catalogue before us carries out a condition of the gift. In a preface Professor Starr enforces the wide field of study and collection offered to the folk-lorist in Mexico: "Here are dialect developments; here are proverbs, witty and wise; here are folk-songs, sweet and touching; here are folk-tales untouched by skepticism; here are charms and formulæ; here are witches and fairies in the full height of their power; here are popular street celebrations and dramas; here are a hundred Oberammergaus, with passion-plays and miracle-plays unspoiled by the crowds of visitors; here are a thousand strange survivals of pagan barbarism in the midst of Christian civilization." The first section, on "Local Industries," illustrates this richness of custom and conservatism of usage. Such diversity exists even in modes of work. At Aguas Calientes, a missionary, building a schoolhouse, had workmen from the locality and others from a neighboring town. The two parties had to be kept at labor on different walls, as they did their work in different manners, and each considered the other's method inferior. Water-carriers in different cities have characteristic water-jars, differing in form, size, and mode of carrying. The evidence of archæology goes to show that analogous local differences marked the pre-Conquest Mexican life. In the collection, such peculiar industries are illustrated by toys of horsehair, drawn-work, silver figures, inlaid iron, lustred pottery, straw pictures, rag and pottery figures. Among toys for children, the most curious are the naguales. These represent a four-legged animal with no tail, a woolly fleece, and a human face. It is usually supplied with some sort of a cap, and bears upon its back the booty which it has stolen from some house. Children are frightened into good behavior by threats of naguales. From examples of common belief, cited by Professor Starr, it results that these figures are often used as masks by actual robbers, who profit by the superstition. (As the word is known to be connected with ancient ideas of sorcery, it may here be suggested that the practice may be the survival of a habit of masking on the part of ancient medicine-men, who were taken for spirits, and who might thus extend their own influence and inspire terror.) In one section, on children's games, the words are given in detail, the sketch occupying thirty pages. In many cases the formulas recorded correspond to those employed elsewhere in similar amusements. It can hardly be said that they are characterized by extraordinary antiquity of phrase or idea; often the vigor of the survival has itself occasioned a more complicated development. Thus, in the game answering to our Hopscotch, the diagrams employed are more various and intricate than usual in the European game; one figure represents a snail-shell, another the body of a giant. Among the games we find, as in English, one representing different kinds of work,