can be looked upon as a
specially characteristic deposit left by the waves of Iberian, Celtic,
and Teutonic population which have successively passed over the face
of the land. This statement does not, of course, hold good in the case
of such legends about national heroes as Mr. J. F. Campbell has found
thriving in Ireland and the West Highlands of Scotland, and which he
justly believes to be "bardic recitations, fast disappearing, and
changing into prose." They belong to a different section of popular
fiction from that to which reference is now made. It is often
difficult to draw the line between these two classes of folk-tales.
But there is a striking difference between the typical representatives
of the two divisions, between cosmopolitan novelettes like Cinderella
or the Sleeping Beauty, on the one hand, and pseudo-historic legends
about local heroes on the other. It is unfortunate that we do not
possess a sufficiency of accurate designations for the numerous
species of the genus folk-tale. Their existence would prevent much
misapprehension. But in their absence, a discusser of popular tales
should take pains to define precisely to what tribe, family, or group
of stories his remarks are intended to apply.

There are to be found, in all European lands, certain tales which are
of a more complex structure than the rest, which appear to have been
constructed by a skilled workman, to be artificial productions rather
than natural growths. It is only with such stories as these that we
have at present to deal. These novelettes or comediettas, as they may
be called, of the European common people, differ but little in their
essential parts, whether they are recited in the cold north or the
balmy south, the rude east or the cultured west. Their openings, it is
true, vary with their localities; but in the main body of the tale,
not only does the same leading idea pervade all the variants, but also
the same sequence of events leads up in almost every case to the same
termination. To this class of stories belong nearly all the tales
which, under considerably modified forms, have naturalized themselves
in the nurseries of Europe. In it are comprised many popular fictions,
on the obscurer parts of which a quite insufficient light is thrown by
researches among the manners and mythologies of old European
heathenism.

It is upon such stories as these that a kindly light beams with the
greatest advantage from Asia. Very similar stori