n frame.

The present paper, on the contrary, is intended for the sole perusal of
the anthropologist and ethnologist, who would be deprived of one of the
best means of judging of the state of the Aino mind if the hideous
indecencies of the original were omitted, or its occasional ineptitude
furbished up. Aino mothers, lulling their babies to sleep, as they rock
them in the cradle hung over the kitchen fire, use words, touch on
subjects which we never mention; and that precisely is a noteworthy
characteristic. The innocent savage is not found in Aino-land, if indeed
he is to be found anywhere. The Aino's imagination is as prurient as
that of any Zola, and far more outspoken. Pray, therefore, put the blame
on him, if much of the language of the present collection is such as it
is not usual to see in print. Aino stories and Aino conversation are the
intellectual counterpart of the dirt, the lice, and the skin-diseases
which cover Aino bodies.

For the four-fold classification of the stories, no importance is
claimed. It was necessary to arrange them somehow; and the division into
"Tales Accounting for the Origin of Phenomena," "Moral Tales," "Tales of
the Panaumbe and Penaumbe Cycle," and "Miscellaneous Tales," suggested
itself as a convenient working arrangement. The "Scraps of Folk-Lore,"
which have been added at the end, may perhaps be considered out of
place in a collection of tales. But I thought it better to err on the
side of inclusion than on that of exclusion. For it may be presumed that
the object of any such investigation is rather to gain as minute an
acquaintance as possible with the mental products of the people studied,
than scrupulously to conform to any system.

There must be a large number of Aino fairy-tales besides those here
given, as the chief tellers of stories, in Aino-land as in Europe, are
the women, and I had mine from men only, the Aino women being much too
shy of male foreigners for it to be possible to have much conversation
with them. Even of the tales I myself heard, several were lost through
the destruction of certain papers,--among others at least three of the
Panaumbe and Penaumbe Cycle, which I do not trust myself to reconstruct
from memory at this distance of time. Many precious hours were likewise
wasted, and much material rendered useless, by the national vice of
drunkenness. A whole month at Hakodate was spoilt in this way, and
nothing obtained from an Aino named Tomtare, who had b