for his collection of popular
Sicilian songs, published three specimens of a collection of Sicilian
popular tales, and two years later gave to the world his admirable work,
_Fiabe, Novelle e Racconti_, forming vols. IV.-VII. of the _Biblioteca
delle Tradizioni populari Siciliane_ per cura di Giuseppe Pitre. It is
not, however, numerically that Pitre's collection surpasses all that
has previously been done in this field. It is a monument of patient,
thorough research and profound study. Its arrangement is almost
faultless, the explanatory notes full, while the grammar and glossary
constitute valuable contributions to the philology of the Italian
dialects. In the Introduction the author, probably for the first time,
makes the Sicilian public acquainted with the fundamental principles of
comparative mythology and its relation to folk-lore, and gives a good
account of the Oriental sources of the novel. He has, it seems to us,
very properly confined his notes and comparisons entirely to Italy, with
references of course to Gonzenbach and Koehler's notes to Widter-Wolf
when necessary. In other words, his work is a contribution to _Italian_
folk-lore, and the student of comparative Aryan folk-lore must make his
own comparisons: a task no longer difficult, thanks to the works of
Grimm, Hahn, Koehler, Cox, De Gubernatis, etc. The only other collection
that need be mentioned here is the one in the _Canti e Racconti del
Popolo italiano_, consisting of the first volume of the _Novellino pop.
ital._ pub. ed ill. da Dom. Comparetti, and of Visentini's _Fiabe
Mantovane_. The stories in both of the above works are translated into
Italian. In the first there is no arrangement by locality or subject;
and the annotations, instead of being given with each story, are
reserved for one of the future volumes,--an unhandy arrangement, which
detracts from the value of the work.

We will now turn our attention from the collections themselves to the
stories they contain, and examine these first as to their form, and
secondly as to their contents.

The name applied to the popular tale differs in various provinces, being
generally a derivative of the Latin _fabula_. So these stories are
termed _favuli_ and _frauli_ in parts of Sicily, _favole_ in Rome,
_fiabe_ in Venice, _foe_ in Liguria, and _fole_ in Bologna. In Palermo
and Naples they are named _cunti_, _novelle_ and _novelline_ in Tuscany,
_esempi_ in Milan, and _storie_ in Piedmont.[11] There