Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/157

Rh to Mr. Jacobs and Professor Newell I will put the ratio as fifty to one, but I fear that in so doing I am allowing private considerations to unwarrantably influence my scientific judgment.

In the Journal of American Folk-lore for January-March Professor Newell has sketched the development of the story group in accordance with the theory previously adumbrated by him. For him Cinderella starts with Basile in the middle of the seventeenth century. It is well to have the theory stated so definitely and so boldly. I can only repeat that although it undoubtedly solves some of the perplexing elements in the Cinderella problem (supra, IV, p. 140, note), the theory is, as a whole, utterly incredible to me.—A. N.]