Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 6 1888.djvu/220

212 coming this feeling and in inducing the men to work. But each year there was a serious accident, and now all the men keep at a distance from the quarries on Ascension-day.—Shrewsbury Chronicle, May 18th, 1888.

NOTICES AND NEWS.

The same. 8vo. same pagination.

The value of popular tales must have advanced very much in the opinion of the literary and scientific world for the Clarendon Press to have considered them proper for one of their publications, and, of course, we gladly welcome such evidence of the progress of our study. Mr. Lang's introduction is, he says, "intended partly as an introduction to the study of popular tales in general Each prose story has been made the subject of a special comparative research; its wanderings and changes of form have been observed, and it is hoped that this part of the work may be serviceable to students of folk-lore and mythology." Mr. Lang first traces the bibliographical history of Perrault's tales, how they made their way from the peasant's cottage to the palace at Versailles, how in the transition the peasant heroes and heroines of the tales became princes and princesses, and how above all the genius of Perrault won for them a place in "the land of matters unforgot." How very real the history and fortunes of books seem to "be when the details are once for all set forth by the true bibliographer: they seem to have a life of their own quite apart from the wishes of any reader; they live because, like the gods, they are deathless. It is pleasant to think that long before Mr. Lang and Professor Max Müller began to fight their battles over the interpretation of fairy tales there was a very pretty quarrel between Perrault and Boileau about Peau d'Âne.

The tales which Mr. Lang examines are the following:—"The