Page:The International Folk-Lore Congress of the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, July, 1893.djvu/373

Rh and from there across to the Malay peninsula and the adjacent islands.

But they did not stop there. They swarmed along the coast of what is now Siam and Annam, into the Philippine islands, into Formosa, into the island of Quelpaert, and finally to the shores of southern Korea.

It is not the province of this paper to go into the discussion of the merits of this theory. It has been my privilege to collect and translate the first rare Korean manuscript histories of Korea, and they show, as plainly as words can show, that Korea was colonized from the south. The northern settlers from Manchouria crept southward and the southern colonists crept northward, until the two met at the Han river.

This is the grand fact which divides Korean legendary lore into two distinct branches, the northern and the southern. But in the course of the centuries there has come a blending of the two, so that it is impossible at present to make a clear line of demarkation between them. It is the province of comparative folk-lore to decide which of them show a southern origin, and which show a northern origin.

In Korean folk-lore, there are thirteen principal types, and I desire to illustrate each of them by a characteristic tale; for it is only in this way that we can gain a bird's-eye view of the whole subject. The thirteen types deal with:

1. The miraculous origin of the ancient heroes.

2. Communications between the inhabitants of dry land and mermen.

3. Divine beings walking upon the earth.

4. The changing of men into beasts and of beasts into men.

5. Simple myths.

6. Omens of evil.

7. Aid given by the dead to the living.

8. Fabulous animals.

9. Virtue's reward.

10. Aid given by animals to men.

11. Prophecies fulfilled.

12. Stratagems.

13. Miscellaneous.

Korean tradition mentions three kinds of origin for the