growth of the collections. In some cases the parallels have run into
the hundreds. (See "Reynard and Bruin.") In only one case have
practically all the parallels been brought together in a single volume
by Miss Roalfe Cox on Cinderella (Folk-Lore Society Publication for
1893; see notes on "Cinder-Maid"). These variants of incidents
obviously resemble the _variae lectiones_ of MSS. and naturally suggest
the possibility of getting what may be termed the original readings.
In 1889 the following suggestion was made by Mr. (now Sir) James G.
Frazer in an essay on the "Language of Animals," in the _Archaeological
Review_, i., p. 84:

"In the case of authors who wrote before the invention of printing,
scholars are familiar with the process of comparing the various MSS.
of a single work in order from such a comparison to reconstruct the
archetype or original MS., from which the various existing MSS. are
derived. Similarly in Folk-Lore, by comparing the different versions
of a single tale, it may be possible to arrive, with tolerable
certainty, at the original story, of which the different versions are
more or less imperfect and incorrect representations."

Independently of Sir James Frazer's suggestion, which I have only
recently come across, I have endeavoured in the present book to carry
it out as applied to a considerable number of the common formulas of
European folk-tales, and I hope in a succeeding volume to complete the
task and thus give to the students of the folk-tale as close approach
as possible to the original form of the common folk-tales of Europe as
the materials at our disposal permit.

My procedure has been entirely similar to that of an editor of a text.
Having collected together all the variants, I have reduced them to
families of types and from these families have conjectured the
original concatenation of incidents into plot. I have assumed that the
original teller of the tale was animated by the same artistic logic as
the contemporary writers of _Contes_ (see notes on "Cinder-Maid,"
"Language of Animals"), and have thus occasionally introduced an
incident which seemed vital to the plot, though it occurs only in some
of the families of the variants. My procedure can only be justified by
the success of my versions and their internal coherence. As regards
the actual form of the narrative, this does not profess to be European
but follows the general style of the English fairy tale, of which I
have publish