149

IV. LEGENDS AND GHOST STORIES 185

V. NURSERY TALES 240

VI. STORIES AND JESTS 275

NOTES 317

LIST OF BOOKS REFERRED TO 384

INDEX 387

INTRODUCTION.

By popular tales we mean the stories that are handed down by word of
mouth from one generation to another of the illiterate people, serving
almost exclusively to amuse and but seldom to instruct. These stories
may be roughly divided into three classes: nursery tales, fairy stories,
and jests. In countries where the people are generally educated, the
first two classes form but one; where, on the other hand, the people
still retain the credulity and simplicity of childhood, the stories
which with us are confined to the nursery amuse the fathers and mothers
as well as the children. These stories were regarded with contempt by
the learned until the famous scholars, the brothers Grimm, went about
Germany some sixty years ago collecting this fast disappearing
literature of the people. The interesting character of these tales, and
the scientific value attributed to them by their collectors, led others
to follow their footsteps, and there is now scarcely a province of
Germany that has not one or more volumes devoted to its local popular
tales. The impulse given by the Grimms was not confined to their own
country, but extended over all Europe, and within the last twenty years
more than fifty volumes have been published containing the popular tales
of Iceland, Greenland, Norway, Sweden, Russia, Germany, England,
Scotland, France, Biscay, Spain, Portugal, and Greece. Asia and Africa
have contributed stories from India, China, Japan, and South Africa. In
addition to these we have now to mention what has been done in this
field in Italy.

From their very nature the stories we are now considering were long
confined to the common people, and were preserved and transmitted solely
by oral tradition. It did not occur to any one to write them down from
the lips of the people until within the present century. The existence
of these stories is, however, revealed by occasional references, and
many of them have been preserved, but not in their original form, in
books designed to entertain more cultivated readers.[1] The earliest
literary collection of stories having a popular origin was made in the
sixteenth century by an Italian, Giovan Francesco Straparola,