Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 14, 2025
In 1899 he published ‘Gypsy Folk-Tales,’ in which he got the aid of the first Romany scholar now living, Mr. John Sampson.
It is the condition of development; it is what makes a science of Folk-tales both necessary and possible. Nor can it be denied that some changes are voluntary. But the voluntary changes are rare; and the involuntary changes are only such as are natural and unavoidable if the story is to continue its existence in the midst of the ever-shifting social organism of humanity.
Accounts of earlier travelers offer undoubted proof that head-hunting was rampant a generation ago; while the folk-tales feature the taking of heads as one of the most important events in Tinguian life. The first incentive for head-taking is in connection with funeral rites.
J. F. Campbell, to whom the science of Folklore owes an incalculable debt, describes a condition of things in the Western Highlands extremely favourable to the cultivation of folk-tales. Quoting from one of his most assiduous collectors, he says that most of the inhabitants of Barra and South Uist are Roman Catholics, unable to speak English or to read or write.
In employing every phase of the external point of view except the one which has been last discussed, the author is free to choose between two very different tones of narrative, the impersonal and the personal. He may either obliterate or emphasize his own personality as a factor in the story. The great epics and folk-tales have all been told impersonally.
Tawney has described a variant found in the Kathakosa which resembles our tale much more closely than any of the European folk-tales in the interesting point that the predestined bride herself finds the fatal letter and makes the satisfactory substitution. In the Indian tale this is done with considerable ingenuity and vraisemblance.
The Clever Lass is of exceptional interest to the student of the Folk-Tale because of its exceptionally wide spread throughout Europe and Asia, and also because it is one of those tales which have been made the basis of the theory of the Eastern origin of all Folk-Tales.
In general it is thought that the after-birth soon disappears and no longer influences the child; yet certain of the folk-tales reflect a firm conviction that a group of spirits, known as alan, sometimes take the placenta, and transform it into a real child, who is then more powerful than ordinary mortals.
Once more, a hollow tree overhanging a pool is known in many places, both in North and South Germany, as the first abode of unborn infants, variations of this primitive belief being found in different localities. Similar stories are very numerous, and under various forms are found in the legendary lore and folk-tales of most countries.
And hitherto I had thought it had been but the nonsense of folk-tales!" said I to myself. Which is what we shall say one day of more things than red-nightcapped heads. But the Little Playmate uttered scream after scream, for the head continued coolly to stare at her, as if fixed alive over the gateway by the craft of some cave-dwelling imp of the Red Axe.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking