Europa’s Fairy Book (Illustrated)

Ever since—almost exactly a hundred years ago—the Grimms produced their Fairy Tale Book, folk-lorists have been engaged in making similar collections for all the other countries of Europe, outside Germany, till there is scarcely a nook or a corner in the whole continent that has not been ransacked for these products of the popular fancy. The Grimms themselves and most of their followers have pointed out the similarity or, one might even say, the identity of plot and incident of many of these tales throughout the European Folk-Lore field. Von Hahn, when collecting the Greek and Albanian Fairy Tales in , brought together these common "formulæ" of the European Folk-Tale. These were supplemented by Mr. S. Baring-Gould in , and I myself in contributed an even fuller list to the Hand Book of Folk-Lore. Most, if not all of these formulæ, have been found in all the countries of Europe where folk-tales have been collected. In Miss M. Roalfe Cox brought together, in a volume of the Folk-Lore Society, no less than variants of "Cinderella" and kindred stories showing how widespread this particular formula was throughout Europe and how substantially identical the various incidents as reproduced in each particular country.