Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 4, 1893.djvu/338

 330 ought to find in their traditions, customs, beliefs, etc., the old Hungarian or pre-Hungarian mythology.

Without prejudicing the case, it is, however, noteworthy that, as far as fairy tales are concerned, the stock of the Székely is almost the same as that which is known to exist among the other nationalities inhabiting Transylvania. True, they are all tinged with a national colouring, but the substance is the same.

This fact is prominently brought out by the fairy tales which are published here by Miss Gaye, who has translated them from the collection of Benedek. A number of Székely fairy tales are included in the valuable publications of Messrs. Jones and Kropf, of Magyar folk-tales. They are taken from Erdely's and Kriza's collections; whilst those published here for the first time in English translation are told by Benedek Elek, himself a Székely, like Kriza. In these the original form seems to have been better preserved than in those two collections named above. None of the heroes has any special modern name; they are either anonymous or bear popular names.

Some of Miss Gaye's collection are variants of the usual folk-tales, and it has been thought unnecessary to reproduce them here again; others are either totally different or vary in essential points. Of these the following have been selected for publication.

The importance of this similarity is by no means to be undervalued. It affords a powerful aid to the theory of migration of fairy tales. If fairy tales resemble one another among nations that are known to be totally different from one another, racially and historically, who have nothing in common with the other nations, neither language nor religion, who trace their descent from a source entirely remote from any of the other nations, nay, who may be the result of an amalgamation of various nationalities—how could these fairy tales be the heirlooms of a hoary antiquity or the residue of an ancient mythology?

In the notes which accompany these tales special