The Sacral Kingship. Contributions to the VIIIth International Congress for the History ofReligions, Rome, 1955Review by: E. O. JamesFolklore, Vol. 70, No. 3 (Sep., 1959), pp. 493-494Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of Folklore Enterprises, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1257902 .

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REVIEWS AND NOTICES

and preserved, with or without elaboration, is one of the problems that remain to be worked out against a conspectus of American folklore for which materials are as yet incomplete.

To help in filling one of many gaps in the regional collections on which such general studies must eventually be based, Mr Browne has gathered some 6,ooo Alabaman beliefs and practices, of which 4,340 are here presented. The material is admirably organized under fourteen main

headings, of which 'Medicine and the Human Body' is by far the

largest with ninety-eight pages. 'Birth, Infancy and Childhood' comes next with twenty-five pages; 'The Supernatural' has seven, and 'Fishing and Hunting' only two. The categories are conveniently subdivided, and for each item the informant and the number of occurrences in the full collection are indicated, together with references to any comparable beliefs noted elsewhere. The names and backgrounds of the informants are given in an appendix. This arrangement, and the serial numbering of all the entries, will make the book an extremely useful working tool for comparative research.

The lore recorded ranges from the purely magical to the empirical (to cure 'stretches' in a baby pass it nine times through a horse-collar; to promote sneezing sniff finely sifted tobacco), and even to what looks like fairly sound anthropological observation (Indians have no whiskers because they pluck them out). Some - more perhaps than Mr Browne would imply - of the folk remedies cited, depending on local materia medica, derive ultimately from the now vanished Indians.

In Alabama as in England good luck comes to him who steps on an empty cigarette packet of a given brand. It is intriguing to speculate on which side of the Atlantic this one originated, and whether it is signifi- cant that while our own luck-bringer is the secular Woodbine its American opposite number is Lucky Strike. GEOFFREY TURNER

THE SACRAL KINGSHIP. Contributions to the VIIIth International Con- gress for the History of Religions, Rome, 1955. Brill, Leidon, 1959. Pp. 748, 21 figs. on 8 plates. 55 guilders.

THIS fourth volume of the proceedings of the International Congress for the History of Religions held in Rome in 1955 contains 56 papers read in the nine sections into which the Congress was divided. Most of them are related to the main theme - the sacral kingship - and they are all written in one or other of the four languages in use at the Congress, English, French, German, or Italian. In the first section devoted mainly to the investigation of the structure and significance of religious pheno- mena, commonly known on the continent as Phenomenology, the nature of the sacral character of royal sovereignty, its symbols and priesthood,

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REVIEWS AND NOTICES

are reviewed as an introduction to the regional studies which follow. Dr Radin who opens the series considers the sacral chief among the Ameri- can Indians, and Mr Akoi concentrates attention upon the divine king- ship among the Ashanti on the Gold Coast. In Section III the subject is pursued in Ancient India, Hinduism, Tantric Buddhism in Tibet, in Cambodia and Mongolia, concluding with an arresting discussion of the theme in Iran by Professor Widengran. Dr Bleeker, the Secretary of the Congress, reviews the position of the Queen in Ancient Egypt, and the six papers in Section V on Israel by well-known international scholars are particularly illuminating.

Professor H. J. Rose deals with the evidence for divine kingship in Greece in a characteristically astute paper in which he concludes that the 'Frazerian king' as described in The Golden Bough never existed in ancient or classical times in this region. The Christian conception of the Kingship of Christ and the Kingdom covers a wide range of topics in Section VII, some of which have little or no connexion with either Christ- ology or the main theme of the Congress. Dr Margaret Murray discusses the killing of English kings as examples, as it is contended, of the survivals of the ancient practice of regicide, from the time of Oswald (A.D. 633- 641) and William Rufus (i ioo) until it became obsolescent at the end of the Plantagenet Dynasty, the last substitute victim being put to death, it is said, under Elizabeth I in 16o02. Finally, in Pre-Christian Europe aspects of the kingship in pagan Ireland and Scandinavia are reviewed, and in the concluding essay some points of contact between the Caliph in Islam and the sacral king in the Ancient Near East are examined by Dr H. Ringgren of Uppsala.

In the space available it is only possible to make a very brief survey of the contents of this remarkable collection of authoritative and docu- mented essays, almost each of which would merit separate critical con- sideration in detail. It can be said, however, with confidence that the volume is and will long remain quite indispensable for workers in this particular field of inquiry, whether they will hear or whether they will forbear. E. O. JAMES

POPOLO E LETTERATURA IN ITALIA. By GIUSEPPE COCCHIARA (Professor of History of Popular Traditions and Ethnology in the University of Palermo). Edizioni Scientifiche Einaudi. Paolo Boringhieri, Torino, Via Brofferio 3, 1959. PP. 555- 5000 lire.

THIS attractive volume of 555 pages is well illustrated with fascinating black and white reproductions from old prints and reliefs. It has a com- prehensive introduction giving an account of Italian folklore studies as related to the general picture of Italian and European culture.

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