Page:English Fairy Tales.djvu/269

Rh folk-fancy of some Englishman. Whether we can trust to them to obtain archæological evidence of former customs in this island is a somewhat doubtful question, which I have dealt with in a concrete shape in the notes to Childe Rowland.

In the introduction to the notes of the companion volume, I have made some remarks on the form taken by the English folk-tale. This is essentially colloquial, and hence rarely if ever rises into romance. This is not peculiar to England. Wherever the stories are collected from the folk they almost always partake of this colloquial and unromantic nature. It would seem as if anything of a romantic type was produced by the folk in the form of ballads rather than of tales. Our idea of fairies is derived from literary versions rather than from those that are really folk-tales. Indeed, we may trace it mainly to the Countess d'Aulnoy and the other French contributors to the Bibliothèque des fées, who followed the example of Perrault in giving graceful form to the tales of the folk. In England we get humour rather than romance from the productions of the folk-fancy. Very few of the extant English folk-tales show any signs of constructive plot ability among the folk.

In the present volume there are but few signs of survival of prehistoric custom and belief, which to many folk-lorists form the only source of interest in the folk-tale. I have discussed the chief of these in the note of No. xx.., Childe Rowland. But there are traces of transformation in ii.., i.., xi., xiii., xxix., xxxiii., xl.. Animals or inanimates speak in iii., ix., x., xiv., xvi., xviii., xx., xxii., xxviii., xxxiii., xxxiv., xxxvi., xli., while there are visitants from another world, iii., xv., xxiv., xxxii. Mr. Clodd sees in Tom Tit Tot a trace of the curious superstition current among savages that to know a man's name gives you power over him.

In the following notes I give first the source whence I obtained the various tales. Then come parallels in some fulness for the United Kingdom, but only a single example for foreign countries, with a bibliographical reference where