I. The Material.
The starting-point and foundation of a tale-study is in the first line all the variants we possess from the different regions the tale has passed during its long lifetime. Therefore a tale-investigation to begin with must display this rich popular material. But its extension, as more than three hundred different records exist, forbids us for want of space to print the tales even in very short abstracts. Following the procceding shown in Bolte—Polivka’s commentaries, I have attempted in numbers and letters to give an idea of the content of each tale, but this again demands a key, i. e. a register over the most common motives and their indications. Here then the Roman numbers indicate the main sections of the tales corresponding to Chapter I, and under every single section the motives are indicated with single letters. To the group-classification too, it is nessesary to add an explanation. The main groups according to the parts of the world: Asia, Africa and Europe is a matter of course, but in this last group a new classification is needed. If the nationalities are taken as basis of classification the objection arises that nearly related types are separated, as for instance the Hungarian tales from those belonging to adjacent peoples. Here therefore we have attended to put them together in groups, circles, according to the geographic position. While some of such groups is a matter of course, a doubt will sometimes arise as where to place groups with points of contact to different sides, as for instance the Finnish tales. In each
