ill wander along flowery paths, where every winding will bring him
fresh surprises, and every step discover new sources of enjoyment.

The stories with which we shall deal in the following pages are vaguely
called Fairy Tales. These we may define to be: Traditionary narratives
not in their present form relating to beings held to be divine, nor to
cosmological or national events, but in which the supernatural plays an
essential part. It will be seen that literary tales, such as those of
Hans Andersen and Lord Brabourne, based though they often are upon
tradition, are excluded from Fairy Tales as thus defined. Much no doubt
might be said both interesting and instructive concerning these
brilliant works. But it would be literary criticism, a thing widely
different from the scientific treatment of Fairy Tales. The Science of
Fairy Tales is concerned with tradition, and not with literature. It
finds its subjects in the stories which have descended from mouth to
mouth from an unknown past; and if reference be occasionally made to
works of conscious literary art, the value of such works is not in the
art they display, but the evidence they yield of the existence of given
tales in certain forms at periods and places approximately capable of
determination: evidence, in a word, which appropriates and fixes a
pre-existing tradition. But even in this they are inferior in importance
to historical or topographical works, where we frequently meet with
records of the utmost importance in considering the origin and meaning
of Folk-tales.

Literature, in short, of whatever kind, is of no value to the student of
Fairy Tales, as that phrase is here used, save as a witness to
Tradition. Tradition itself, however, is variable in value, if regard be
had alone to purity and originality. For a tribe may conceivably be so
isolated that it is improbable that any outside influence can have
affected its traditions for a long series of generations; or on the
other hand it may be in the highway of nations. It may be physically of
a type unique and unalloyed by foreign blood; or it may be the progeny
of a mingling of all the races on the earth. Now it is obvious that if
we desire to reason concerning the wide distribution, or the innate and
necessary character of any idea, or of any story, the testimony of a
given tribe or class of men will vary in proportion to its segregation
from other tribes and classes: where we can with most probability
exclude