ed two collections (_English Fairy Tales_, 1890; _More
English Fairy Tales_, 1894).

In the following notes I have not wasted space on proving the European
character of the various tales by enumerating the different variants,
being content for the most part to give references to special
discussions of the story where the requisite bibliography is given.
With the more serious tales I have rather concerned myself with trying
to restore the original formula and to establish its artistic
coherence. Though I have occasionally discussed an incident of
primitive character, I have not made a point of drawing attention to
savage parallels, nor again have I systematically given references to
the appearance of whole tales or separate incidents in mediaeval
literature or in the Indian collections. For the time being I have
concentrated myself on the task of getting back as near as possible to
the original form of the fairy tales common to all Europe. Only when
that has been done satisfactorily can we begin to argue as to the
causes or origin of the separate items in these originals. It must, of
course, always be remembered that, outside this common nucleus, each
country or linguistic area has its own story-store, which is equally
deserving of special investigation by the serious student of the
folk-tale. I have myself dealt with some of these non-European or
national folk-tales for the English, Celtic and Indian areas and hope
in the near future to treat of other folk-tale districts, like the
French, the Scandinavian, the Teutonic or the Slavonian.

I had gone through three-quarters of the tales and notes contained in
the present book before I became acquainted with the modestly named
_Anmerkungen zu Grimm's Maehrchen_, 2 vols., 1913-15, by J. Bolte and
E. Polivka. This is one of those works of colossal erudition of which
German savants alone seem to have the secret. It sums up the enormous
amount of research that has been going on in Europe for the last
hundred years, on the parallelism and provenance of the folk-tales of
Europe, and in a measure does for all the Grimm stories what Miss
Roalfe Cox did for Cinderella. Only two volumes have as yet appeared
dealing with the first 120 numbers of the Grimm collection in over a
thousand pages crammed with references and filled with details as to
variants. The book has obviously been planned and worked out by Dr.
Bolte, who had previously edited the collected works of his chief
predece