Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/131



's volume would deserve notice, if for nothing else, as the work of the most learned English student of the Folk-tale. He has at command the whole literature of a subject which nowadays ranges over all languages, and makes its appearance in the most unexpected quarters. One consequence of this is, that, in his study of any particular tale or group of tales, Mr. Hartland deals with the whole mass of ascertainable facts; his inductions are of the widest, and consequently his inferences, according to the logician, should be of the soundest. Another point, too, which should be noticed in his method, is the constant criticism to which he submits his materials. No tale is allowed to rank as a genuine folk-tale that cannot give date and place for its existence among the folk. We poor caterers for the depraved taste of the juvenile public, who write at home at ease, are warned off from the very threshold of the inquiry. This is indeed as it should be: this is in truth a science of folk-tales.

It is, however, only with one department of that science that Mr. Hartland deals on the present occasion. When he speaks of fairy tales, he, strange to say, means what he says, and does not use the term in that vague and unscientific way that the aforesaid popular caterers indulge in. By fairy tales our writer means tales about fairies, and his work treats of five groups of tales that deal with the manners and ways of the fairy people as conceived by the folk Fairies love their lords, and require the assistance of