Page:FFC90.djvu/8

6 theme fits in very well with religious tales. In mythology some of the Nuberu stories given by Llano Roza de Ampudia include a rewarded hospitality theme which belongs typically to the folktale. It is sometimes rather difficult to distinguish between the riddle and the folktale. Usually whenever a story, a line of action or motivation occurs in a riddle, this story is a folktale. Louseskin (Mt 621) represents the typical riddle tale. This fusion with other types of the folktale, itself a type not well defined, illustrates, with the vague distinction between "literary" texts and texts of "scientific" value, the extreme difficulty of defining folktale material.

A definition of "Spanish" is necessary. The science of folklore is not yet far enough advanced to define what is folkloristically Spanish. Obviously, political boundaries are very little related to folkloristic boundaries. But a science which has fairly definite limits established and which is closely related to folklore is linguistics. This science has divided the Spanish peninsula into four generally accepted language groups: Portuguese-Galician, Spanish, Bask and Catalan-Valencian. I shall adopt the linguistic definition of Spanish. Hence Spanish folktales, in this index, are tales from the Spanish linguistic area, that is, from the regions of Andalusia, Aragon, Asturias, Extremadura, Leon, Mursia, New Castile and Old Castile.

Since this is the first attempt, to my knowledge, ever made to organize Spanish folktale material, errors and omissions will probably abound. In view of this fact I have sought to make the scope of the subject small enough that I might hope fairly well to cover the ground. In my search for Spanish folktales I encountered incidentally many works which may prove of value in the study of Galician, Bask and Catalan tales, and these are included in the bibliography. The Index includes all Spanish references given in BP, even the literary references; and to these I have