I tested the first volume, i-xvi of P. T., in half a dozen places, and I could not find that it contained the full text of the variants which Campbell cites or summarises.
Vols. ii-ix are of the same character, to judge from a very hasty inspection.
Vol. x opens with a cancelled list of fifty-one tales, followed by a new list of 224 tales, with provenance, narrator and brief characterisation of certain stories. These lists differ from the ones at end of P. T. iv. Then comes a very miscellaneous English collection of short tales, proverbs and folk-lore jottings, amongst them the opening of Koisha Kayn (from John Campbell, who had it from a very old man who knew the twenty-four tales making up the cycle). The remainder of the volume is in Gaelic, and may contain the full text of some of the unpublished versions.
Vol. xi, which is of the same character, but with less English, is lettered “Index”, but though I searched carefully I could find none.
Vol. xii contains unpublished Gaelic poems.
Vol. xiii at once attracted my attention. It is lettered “English collection. Published and unpublished, copied out 1860.” A brief description of this volume will show how difficult examination is. The bulk of it is formed by Miss Dempster’s Sutherlandshire collection (since published in these pages, F.-L. J., vol. vi), comprising 120 numbers; but this is interleaved (not interpaged) with two other series, one of which must have consisted of fifty-seven numbers, as there is a MS. list of contents to that effect at the beginning of the volume, but I could only find Nos. 1-18 and Nos. 25-57, whilst of Miss Dempster’s collection, which is in two differently paged series, Nos. 1-79 of one series seem to be missing. The fifty-seven No. list is of much the same character as Miss Dempster’s. At the end of the volume is a miscellaneous assortment of matter, chiefly fairy lore and local tradition, but some tales; amongst them what is apparently the full Gaelic text of a version of the Battle of the Birds, different from the one in P. T. Portions
