a Japanese gentleman living in Oxford, Mr.
Tsneta Mori, that this belongs to the tale of the Wager of the
Phoenix, known to all Japanese children, and in which the Phoenix is
plainly derived from China. On the other hand, there is much genuine
Aino matter in the present collection. For instance, we learn from
Professor Chamberlain's above-mentioned treatise why it is that Panaumbe
("on the lower course of the river") does the clever things, while
Penaumbe ("on the upper course of the river") is the stupid imitator who
comes to grief. It is simply the expression of the dislike and contempt
of the coast Ainos, who tell the stories, for the hill Ainos further up
the rivers. It is needless to mention here the many touches of Aino
ideas, morals, and customs, which their stories disclose, for it is in
noticing these that much of the interest consists which the reader will
feel in perusing them. Their most important characteristic indeed is
insisted on by Professor Chamberlain, in remarks of which the value must
not be overlooked. Of all the difficulties felt by the student of
folk-lore the greatest is that of judging how far those who tell and
listen really believe their childish wonder-tales of talking beasts and
the like, or how far they make and take them as conscious fun. We
ourselves are at the latter sceptical end, and many peoples we can
examine are in a halfway state, not altogether disbelieving that big
stones may once have been giants, or that it is a proper incident in a
hero's career to be swallowed by a monster and get out again, but at the
same time admitting that after all these may be only old wives' tales.
Even savage tribes under contact with civilised men are mostly in this
intermediate state, and thus Professor Chamberlain's statement as to the
place of folk-lore in the Aino mind, made, as it has been, under his
personal scrutiny, is a document of real consequence. He satisfied
himself that his Ainos were not making believe, like Europeans with
nursery tales, but that the explanatory myths of natural phenomena are
to them theorems of physical science, and the wonder-tales are told
under the impression that they really happened. Those who maintain the
serious value of folk-lore, as embodying early but quite real stages of
philosophy among mankind, will be grateful for this collection, in spite
of its repulsive features, as furnishing the clearest evidence that the
basis of their argument is not only theoretic