archipelago, interesting because
absolutely nothing certain is known as to its origin and affinities,
interesting because it is, so to speak, almost at its last gasp. I have,
therefore, now collected and classified all the tales that were
communicated to me by Ainos, in Aino, during my last stay in the island,
and more latterly in T[=o]ky[=o], when, by the kind assistance of the
President of the University, Mr. H. Watanabe, an exceptionally
intelligent Aino was procured from the North, and spent a month in my
house. These tales form the paper which I now have the honour to offer
for the acceptance of your learned Society.

It would, no doubt, be possible to treat the subject of Aino folk-lore
in great detail. The gloss might easily be made longer than the text.
Each story might be analysed according to the method proposed by the
Folk-Lore Society; a "survey of incidents" might be appended to each, as
in Messrs. Steel and Temple's charming "Wide-Awake Stories," from the
Punjab and Cashmere. More interesting to the anthropologist than such
mechanical dissection of each tale considered as an independent entity
would be the attempt to unravel the affinities of these Aino tales. How
many of them, what parts of them, are original? How many of them are
borrowed, and whence?

To carry out such an investigation with that completeness which would
alone give it serious value, would necessitate a greater expenditure of
time than my duties will allow of, perhaps also a fund of multifarious
knowledge which I do not possess. I would, therefore, merely suggest in
passing that the probabilities of the case are in favour of the Ainos
having borrowed from their only clever neighbours, the Japanese. (The
advent of the Russians is so recent that they need hardly be counted in
this connection.) The reasons for attributing to the Japanese, rather
than to the Ainos, the prior possession (which, by the way, by no means
implies the invention) of the tales common to both races, are partly
general, partly special. Thus it is _a priori_ likely that the stupid
and barbarous will be taught by the clever and educated, not the clever
and educated by the stupid and barbarous. On the other hand, as I have
elsewhere demonstrated, a comparative study of the languages of the two
peoples shows clearly that this _a priori_ view is fully borne out so
far as far as the linguistic domain is concerned. The same remark
applies to social customs. Even in religion,