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SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 1889.

CONTENTS.

...

PAGE 173

174

175

176

...

...

178

NOVELS OF THE WEEK
LIBRARY TABLE-LIST OF NEW Books
THE SUMMONS OF THE BRITISH FLEET TO CONSTANTI-
NOPLE IN 1853; AMERICAN PUBLISHERS; GUD-
BRANDE VIGFUSSON; DOUAI COLLEGE AND THE
BRIGHTON PAVILION; 'PICTURESQUE KENSINGTON';
CANTERBURY PARISH REGISTERS; BOOK SALES

178-179

LITERARY GOSSIP

179-182

BCIENCE-DR. CARPENTER'S ESSAYS: ASTRONOMICAL NOTES; OUR RARER BIRDS'; SOCIETIES; MEET

INGS

182

183-185

FINE ARTS-MACGIBBON ON THE ARCHITECTURE OF
PROVENCE; THE ROYAL ACADEMY; "RESTORA-
TION" AT BENTLEY, HANTS; GOSSIP

185-187
MUSIC-NEW ORGAN MUSIC; GOSSIP; CONCERTS NEXT
WEEK
LIBRARY TABLE; LOCAL SHAK-

DRAMA - WEEK;

SPEAREAN NAMES; GOSSIP

LITERATURE

188

188-190

Ferghana, and traversed the Pamir along its eastern borders, and, failing to penetrate into Kanjut, turned towards Wakhan, whence they crossed by the comparatively easy Baroghil Pass into Chitral and so to Kashmir. Some interesting stages of the 177 journey are passed over most summarily, such as the passage into Chitral and the long forced detention of the party there, the region being one of which little is publicly known, though it has been visited both by Major Biddulph and Sir W. Lockhart. These omissions may, however, be due to the fact that some of the localities have been previously visited and described by the author. Meanwhile, the narrative of the Persian journey, far from being tedious, is a steady flow of graphic description, amusing incidents, and characteristic talk with people of all classes: vain, ignorant, tyrannical khans, fever-stricken apathetic peasants, pious pilgrims, and rude fanatics. Passing through Northern Khorassan, the traveller is struck by the signs everywhere of relief from the former ever - present danger of Turkoman raids. These have since the Russian conquest of Turkestan become a thing of the past. The writer, indeed, mentions one such recent raid, but all that he subsequently says goes to disprove it. The people move freely everywhere with their Hocks and herds, and the towers formerly used as refuges are falling into ruin. The activity of the Russians across the frontier also seems to cause a corresponding movement on the Persian side, and Persians or Turkomans were frequently met carrying, instead of sword or musket, a spade in search of work.

Gabriel Bonvalot: Du Caucase aux Indes à travers Le Pamir. Ouvrage orné de 250 Dessins et Croquis par Albert Pépin, avec une Carte Itinéraire du Voyage. (Paris, Plon & Co.)

Through the Heart of Asia over the Pamir to India. By Gabriel Bonvalot. With 250 Illustrations by Albert Pépin. Translated from the French by C. B. Pitman. 2 vols. (Chapman & Hall.)

THE journey of which these volumes contain the record was a very considerable journey, traversing as it did some of the most difficult parts of a region which man and nature have combined to render inaccessible. The writer is a practised traveller, and the various accidents, dangers, and hardships encountered are faced by the party-at all events in the narrative-with all the old traditional French lightness of heart. His descriptions of the many strange specimens of humanity with whom he was brought into close contact, and of the frequently critical positions of the party, are well supplemented (though they are so good as hardly to need it) by the numerous illustrations, which for the most part are clever and artistic, with all the characteristic attractiveness of good French sketching; and the pictures of scenery of a region little known, and rarely traversed by an artist of any skill, have a special interest. M. Bonvalot's style is not only lively and humorous, but clear and incisive, and his views and observations rapid and unhesitating. His somewhat wholesale condemnation of the Persians-founded on a few instances, no doubt bad, of cruelty and oppression, selfishness and indifference will be disputed by many who have a much larger acquaintance with that people. His political remarks, when dealing with the countries further east, and the conversations recorded, are full of interest, and not without value if it be borne in mind that the questions at issue are viewed always through French and strongly philo-Russian spectacles.

It is perhaps to be regretted that more than one-third of the volume is occupied by the journey over the comparatively wellknown ground of Northern Persia and Samarkand, for the subsequent part of the journey is much more important. It comprises an unsuccessful attempt to enter Afghanistan from Samarkand, after which the travellers proceeded eastwards through Southern

Very early in the journey the author begins to call into exercise that great and, in his view, infallible engine of progress in the East, the stick. He employs it frequently, the last instance occurring while travelling under English protection on our frontier; and he describes the performance with a certain cynical simplicity, as for instance :

"We reach the village of Keïchidar very thirsty after nine hours on horseback. Our baggage has not arrived. We see a number of idlers collected under the porch, and, after having duly saluted them, we ask for some skim milk, which we offer to pay for. They tell us that we shall have it at once, but after waiting a quarter of an hour we see no signs of it. We ask again, and are assured that it is coming'; but as, after waiting another ten minutes, we do not get any, I take out my watch and explain to the three principal men in the band that, unless we have the milk in less time than it takes to walk round the fortress, they will be punished. They at once give orders to that effect, and there is a stir like that of an ant-heap upon which one has trodden, the women shouting, the children swarming upon the housetops. But the time appointed has lapsed; so the three men whom we had picked out are flogged, and they at once bring us such large bowls of milk that Capus and myself cannot empty them, though our carriers, who come up just at this moment, are not long in doing so for us. We encamp in a field near the village, and as our baggage no doubt raises us in the esteem of the inhabitants, we

before have left us to die of thirst, while the are beset by the very same men who would just one who got the worst beating comes to beg for presents and for medical remedies, endeavouring to secure our sympathies."

The treatment was applied impartially to

ghiz, Chitralis, and, it must be admitted, with unfailing and immediate effect. We do not, indeed, hear of its application to an Afghan, and probably for very sufficient reasons. The superiority in force of character of the Afghans to all their neighbours, and the consequent fear and respect in which they are held, come out prominently in many passages of the book. Addressed by an Afghan as "barádar" (brother), even the writer quite feels that he is being addressed by an equal, which he certainly would not feel in reference to any other of the neighbouring races. The writer speculates on what might have happened some fifty years ago if the Afghans, when hopelessly repulsed from India, had carried their energies in the other direction and overrun Khiva and Bokhara, where the Usbegs could not have withstood them. The result, M. Bonvalot thinks, would have been to precipitate, along with other questions, the fate of the Afghan people, which must thus have come sooner into contact with the Russian power. But we think he here overestimates their power of cohesion for offensive purposes. The recent victory of the Russians at Penjdeh over these dreaded Afghans has, the author says, added greatly to the Russian prestige. And while the Russians are feared and respected for their warlike qualities, the English only astonish by "the depth of their purse." It is disappointing to learn that no faint echo even of the great battles fought in NorthWestern India within the last half century has found its way across the frontier. To the great question whether the Russians will reach India the author replies, with as much modesty as truth, "Nous n'avons pas compétence pour répondre." He tells us that many of the natives of India expect and desire this advent, but it may be imagined that his "interviewers" in India on this subject would consist almost entirely of the discontented and intriguers.

The great feat of the journey was the passage of the Pamir. Geographers of twenty-five years' standing will remember the controversies waged about this mysterious region, and the first gallant and successful attacks upon its fastnesses by our native Indian explorers and by Fedchenko, Hayward,

and other travellers. Since then the Pamir

region has been traversed in various directions by the Russian surveyors; and for a traveller starting from a well-furnished base such as the chief Russian towns of Ferghana, with Russian influence brought to bear on the neighbouring Kirghiz, the difficulties have been much reduced. Those encountered by M. Bonvalot were due mainly to the fact that he travelled in winter, i.e., towards the end of April, while the country was under snow, and heavy snowstorms were still in progress. This, although we owe to it a stirring narrative of adventure, is to be regretted, because the face of the country being almost everywhere invisible, and the climate terribly severe, the opportunities of observation were reduced to a minimum. After careful consultation with their Russian

friends the route was selected, bodies of Kirghiz were sent forward to clear the snow from the first bad pass, while the baggage was sent a certain distance on horses afterwards brought back, so as to

as possible. Detailed and graphic descriptions, written and pictorial, are given of the costumes and other preparations for the journey, and the reader of the subsequent pages will admit that these were fully required. The worst suffering was, perhaps, the horrible sense of suffocation sometimes experienced at high altitudes even when at rest, and when a gale of wind was blowing.

We observe that the author declares, in accordance certainly with the popular local belief, that meat does not cook well at

these altitudes. This is difficult to explain,

and we are tempted to accept Col. Montgomerie's explanation, viz., that the fault lies with the fuel, and not with the elevation. (See Yule's 'Marco Polo,' i. 187.)

One serious difficulty consisted in the fact that, so far as appears, the only available route lay unpleasantly near the Kashgarian, i. e. Chinese, frontier, and, in fact, the party narrowly escaped being stopped by the Chinese officers; and a similar difficulty met them further south, when, finding the passes into Kanjut blocked by snow, they were obliged to enter Wakhan, now under Afghan control, whence they only escaped into Chitral by a sudden flight. Great was the delight, escaping from these awful snowclad solitudes, at the human prattle in the villages and the signs of reviving nature.

The intimate and often critical relations formed by the traveller with the Kirghiz, Wakhis, Chitralis, and other half-savage inhabitants of the region, incidentally tell a good deal of the respective character and habits of these races. They do not stand very high; still, in their circumstances it would hardly be reasonable to expect more, and we meet, at any rate, with one brilliant and touching exception, an elderly pir or dervish, once a famous ruffian, but now converted, and devoting himself to doing good to his fellows, who saved the travellers most gallantly, often at the imminent risk of his own life. There is a thrilling account, too long to quote in its entirety, of the attempt to cross into Kanjut. The pass was before them, but the precipitous paths were deep in ice and snow, and a heavy storm had begun. The pir volunteers to try if it is feasible (we give our own translation) :

"He pauses an instant on a point of rock, and, turning towards us, exclaims: 'I am going

to proceed as far as my strength will permit.

If I do not come back it is because the path is

good. Put a little bread in my bag and leave it where the horses are. Put my cloak in a sheltered spot so that the wind may not sweep it away.' Rachmed with great difficulty reaches the pir. He gives him some apricots and a little bread, and he returns with the cloak the worthy man has taken off so as to be less weighted on the snow and less fatigued. In a moment the pir has disappeared. The snow whirls more thickly than ever, the wind grows fiercer. The untiring walker, whom we watch from the top of the rocks, reappears on the other side of the

gorge on the right bank. We see him slipping,

tumbling amid the snow, and we see him no more. Suddenly the wind becomes yet more furious, and we are caught in a terrible storm. We have not time to gain cover, for the wind

would throw us down. Rachmed is persuaded

he will never set eyes again on the pir, who, he thinks, will be buried in the snow, and he says as a sort of funeral elegy, 'He was a fine fellow!' and murmurs besides a kind of prayer in which I distinguish the words Allah and Mahomet. We

all remain there crouching under our cloaks...... At five in the afternoon, seeing nothing return, we resolve to retrace our steps. Every now and then we raise a shout; we fail to find our tracks. The wind is so strong that we can scarcely see or breathe. At length we reach our horses. We give them the last six handfuls of barley, a little grass which we had cut at the encampment and brought in a sack, and we slowly return, Rachmed shouting every minute, in the Kirghiz fashion, ‘Pir ôôô ! Pir ôôô! Once in the

valley of Zarzotte, we have the wind in our faces, and we cannot march fifteen paces without stopping and turning our backs to it to recover breath."

Happily the brave pir escapes, and he afterwards defends the party, on his own high principles, against some fanatic countrymen. It is to be regretted that the map given of this important region is quite inadequate and useless as an aid to the itinerary. The illustrations, however, help usefully to elucidate the text by showing the character of the scenery; the views of the Kara Kul, a lake of which the character and outlet were so long a problem, are especially interesting. Detained by the ruler of Chitral, the author pretends to speculate on the chances that the Anglo - Indian Government will order the throats of the party to be cut, or will simply take no notice of them-a course of which the result would probably have been not very different. Even then he exclaims heroically: "Tout espoir ne serait pas perdu. Il nous resterait nous-mêmes, on tenterait l'impossible, et en cas de non-réussite, on passerait du moins quelques journées intéressantes." The prosaic alternative involved in the friendly reply of Lord Dufferin to their application, with a supply of money and order for their protection, is referred to, as is the hospitable reception given them afterwards in India, in the shortest possible terms. The English translation of the work, however, is dedicated to the Viceroy in ac

knowledgment.

Mr. Pitman's translation may be called fairly idiomatic, though the reader seldom loses the sense that he is listening to a Frenchman; but there are many omissions and alterations which are not improvements, and are not unfrequently inaccurate or misleading. There are some unpardonable mistakes, as where bouleaux is translated "larches"; calcaires grisatres, "grey chalk"; grès sableux, "sandy granite"; chez les peuples pasteurs, "among the pastors," and

so on.

he is dealing with.

of a wider margin.

Camelot Series. - Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry. Edited and selected by W. B. Yeats. (Scott.)

MR. YEATS's title promises so much that it is worth inquiring, if only from a spirit of "justice to Ireland," how far the promise is kept, and what are the causes of failure, if failure there be. Otherwise it might only be needful to say that the reader has here a collection of Irish tales drawn from the best sources - in other words, that wherever he opens the book he may count upon pleasant reading -further to commend the power of preg

nant observation and suggestive paradox evidenced in the editor's introduction, and to wish the little volume God speed.

But Mr. Yeats is ambitious, and demands to be taken seriously. He means his collection to give "the very voice of the people, the very pulse of life." He claims for such tales that "they are the literature of a class for whom every incident in the old rut of birth, love, pain, and death, has cropped up unchanged for centuries-to whom everything is a symbol. They have the spade over which man has leant from the beginning. The people of the cities have the machine, which is prose and a parvenu." He praises his friend Mr. Douglas Hyde, who promises a 'Leabhar Sgeulaigheachta, because his work is "simply life." An ideal is here set forth; in how far is it achieved? In the first place the folk-lorist is rated: he is a "scientist"; in his assumed quest "after the primitive religion" or some vague "whatever else " he goes about tabulating tales "like grocer's bills," apparently for the pure pleasure of so doing. This is ominous, for the objects which Mr. Yeats avows are the very objects of the folk-lorists. They-pedants, scientists, grocer's bill compilers-long to reach and grasp the life of the people; but to do that they must know what it is the people really tells and believes; they must sit at its fireside, listen to its every word, watch its every act. Above all, they must beware of picking out only what strikes them as picturesque, or humorous, or profound; they must refrain from any added touch that colours or distorts tradition; they must seek for objective truth, not for the subjective pleasure to be derived from reshaping the rude products of folk-fancy in accordance with a more sophisticated æsthetic sensibility. But this demands labour and patience, and the Irish temperament is impatient; it hankers, too, after mere prettiness, and so the method described above is put aside with a gibe at the scientist, and the plums are picked out of Carleton, and Lever, and the "gentle

Arcadian" Croker.

Such a proceeding effectually belies the title of the book, which has but little of the tone and accent of the peasant. Men of lovable talent all the three writers that have been mentioned were, but when they take in hand the popular utterance they lend to it at least as much as they borrow from it. With the details of a collection thus fundamentally wrong in conception there is little advantage in quarrelling; but it may be doubted if Mr. Yeats has made the best selection from the authors upon whom he draws so largely. Under the title 'Fir Darrig in Donegal' (why this questionbegging title ? - the story says nothing of

a

Fir Darrig as such) he gives from Miss McClintock poor variant of one of Croker's raciest and most nationally weird tales, though that is far inferior to the traditional version we have known from childhood. As a set-off Croker furnishes that dull and pointless narrative 'The Banshee of the McCarthys.' Again, Lady Wilde's version of 'The Horned Women' is printed, though far inferior to that of Mr. Fitzgerald (Revue Celtique, iv. p. 181), of whom no mention is made, by the way, throughout the volume; whilst the tale which follows is a commonplace version, without one distinctive Irish touch, of that specifically English witch story known to all admirers of Ingoldsby as 'The Witches' Frolic.' We should also have liked to see place made for that little masterpiece of creepy horror 'The Dark Man,' or for such a genuinely national fairy story as the one to be found at the end of Nelson's 'Irish Grammar.'

Perhaps these criticisms may induce Mr. Yeats to undertake a really representative collection of those tales which illustrate the

traditional beliefs of the Irish race.

In

making such a collection two things should be borne in mind-firstly, the substantial unity of mythic practice and narrative between the Gael of Ireland and Scotland, so that it is always allowable to illustrate the Highland folk-tales by the older Irish mythic literature, and conversely, where modern Irish tradition has run dry, to turn to the deeper and wider Scotch stream; secondly, that no other European race has such a long and homogeneous mythic record as the Irish. Beliefs and stories of the present day often represent the mass of tradition underlying those heroic sagas which, gradually shaped during the earlier centuries of our era, were finally written down in the period from the eighth century to the tenth; and these sagas can often not be fully understood save by the aid of later folk tradition. That the oldest gods of the race, the Tuatha Dé Danann, live on as the fairies of to-day is a fact of which Mr. Yeats has heard, but which he turns to no account. What interest attaches to his statement that the fairies have three great festivals in the year-May Eve, Midsummer Eve, November Eve-when it is brought into contact with Prof. Rhys's study of the ancient Celtic calendar, and its analogues in Norse and Hellenic mythology! Again, a personality such as that of Angus of the Brugh, the wizard par excellence of the Tuatha Dé, in whom Prof. Rhys sees an adumbration of the Celtic Zeus, can be illustrated from Irish mythic literature throughout its whole range, from the earliest period down to the tales still current on the lips of herds or fisher folk. He is the hero of that delightful tale 'The Story-teller's Perplexity' (why did Mr. Yeats omit it?), and as the Slim Swarthy Champion he is a favourite figure of Highland tradition. But in Celtic myth Mr. Yeats is not far to seek. He commits himself to the statement that one man only came back from Tirnan-Og, the allusion being, of course, to the well-known story of Oisin. This is an entire mistake; journeys to and from Hades are of frequent occurrence in Irish mythology; indeed, one of its most marked characteristics is the close touch between this world and the "Fairy |

Land of Promise." Oisin had but wandered whither Bran son of Febail, and Cormac son of Art, and Cuchullain, and many another hero had preceded him.

It may be imagined that what are in England generally called fairy tales, i.e., Märchen, or folk-tales proper, fare badly at Mr. Yeats's hands. He allows them barely one-eighth of his volume; he further diminishes this narrow space by printing a dull and silly story, 'The Jackdaw, which has no claim to be called a Märchen at all; and he selects them with even less discrimination than he shows in other parts of his book. Any one familiar with Irish Märchen would at once pick out three as deserving a place in preference to all rivalsthe Tory Island tradition of Mackineely noted by O'Donovan (on account of its intrinsic interest; it is detestably told); 'Grey Norris from Warland' (Folk-lore Journal, vol. i. p. 316); and Kennedy's admirable 'Brown Bear of Norway, the most touching and beautiful, to our mind, of the innumerable versions of the Cupid and Psyche story. All three are missing, and their place is indifferently supplied by one of the worst examples of eighteenth century pseudobardic story-telling known to us (ConnEda'), and by the Hibernian Tales' version of 'Hudden and Dudden and Donald O'Nery.' Mr. Yeats has a passing word of praise for the 'Hibernian Tales'-" the fairy literature of the people" he styles them; but the praise is unjustifiable. These chap-book versions are spiritless and flatulent, much as were the chap-book versions of the old English ballads which came into vogue during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, and effectually killed out the genuine traditional forms. Moreover, it is doubtful whether in many cases they are even a Dublin hack's version of a tale really current in Ireland, and not simply adaptations from foreign Märchen which had appeared in book form. To clear up this point it would be necessary to print many more tales actually taken down from the lips of the peasantry than has hitherto been done. It is to be hoped that Mr. Douglas Hyde and Mr. David Fitzgerald may between them give the world a fairly complete corpus of Irish folk-tales. The one story here given from Mr. Hyde's collection, 'Teig O'Kane and the Corpse,' is of firstrate merit, and encourages the reader to expect at his hands a worthy pendant to Campbell's great work. Let us entreat him to follow Campbell's example, and print both Irish and English.

Mr. Yeats has given verse as well as prose, and if once it be understood that this section of his volume is even less popular in tone than the other, we have little but praise for his selection. Mr. Allingham's Fairies' can always be re-read with pleasure; but what Irish peasant ever figured the good folk as

Going up with music
On cold starry nights
To sup with the Queen
Of the gay Northern Lights?

Surely that is the touch of the culture poet! Mr. Yeats's own verses are full of grace, and may make his readers anxious to meet him again as a poet; but it may be doubted if he could give chapter and verse for many of his statements concerning the fairies.

Some slight knowledge of, and a great love for, the traditional belief and fancy of the Irish race have prompted us to deal, it may be, too severely with this collection, which represents them so partially and ineffectually. In especial we believe that conscious literary art is as damaging to the genuine products of folk-fancy from an æsthetic as it is from a scientific point of view. At least it is so in the case of Celtic popular lore. Whether in its moments of grim and grotesque humour or in its more frequent moods of weird horror and unearthly pathos, it is equally remote from our æsthetic canons. When we would transform we only vulgarize it. Mr. Yeats as a good Irishman doubtless puts "mountain dew" even above John Jamieson. So do we; we prefer our tales and legends direct from the soil, with all the smack about them of bog and heather, of grey hillside and brown peatland, to the refined and doctored products of the cleverest literary artist.

English Men of Action. Charles George Gordon. By Sir W. F. Butler. (Macmillan & Co.)

THE publishers of this little volume were wise in their choice of the day of issue. It came out just a fortnight ago, when people of all shades of political opinion were emptying the baskets of the violet-sellers about Charing Cross, and laying their tribute in Trafalgar Square upon the statue of their hero, killed four years ago at Khartoum. Great is the forgetfulness of men, yet there be those who remember. Nothing in the record of half a century is so heroic as the death of Gordon, nothing so full of the spirit of self-abnegation and devotion

or

to mankind. It is no wonder that his memory is cherished in many hearts, and his life retold in many volumes. We have had occasion, not without reason, to bewail the multitude of biographies, more less authentic and more or less tactless, which have been foisted on the world, but we do not regret the present publication. Sir William Butler was a friend, a brother soldier, and a member of the "too late" relief expedition, and he has many qualifications for the enviable task of writing the record of a glorious life. Above all, he is in sympathy with the ideals and chivalrous thoughts that guided his hero. None can read this book without feeling that Gordon's spirit inspires it. As a brief memorial of a career that embraced many momentous spheres of action, that included some of the principal military and colonial crises of the past fifty years, and that ended in a halo of transcendent self-immolation, Sir William Butler's volume is the best we possess.

The principal facts of Gordon's life are so well known that it is not surprising that his latest biographer has little to add. He has, indeed, some curious rumours to record about the exact terms of Gordon's last commission to the Soudan, and here and there a valuable personal note; but as a rule his materials are already published, and his authorities, we think, ought to have been more specifically mentioned. Where Sir W. Butler is more particularly interesting is in those passages where he gives a sort of friendly photograph of Gordon's cha