Page:The tale of two travellers.djvu/3



The comparative study of folk-tales has reached the point where it begins to have a history; where schools and different lines may be traced. The three great theories: The Mythological, the Indian (or Benfey’s) and the Antropological have not given the solution of the tales problem, and now a new working method the Geographic-historic, such as it has grown up and especially has been used in Finnish folklore-researches, will try to settle the mainroads in the heterogenous world of the tale. This method has found its practical application in Kaarle Krohn’s and Antti Aarne’s studies of folk-tales, and it now appears more theoretically developed and fixed in Antti Aarne’s „Leitfaden der vergleichenden Märchenforschung“. Hereby has been formed a fundamental aid in the work, and as we too in Bolte and Polívka’s commentaries to Grimms Märchen have an invaluable help in examining thoroughly the material, it must be expected that the efforts to find out the history of each tale will increase. Much work has been done, and thanks to a series of special-researches we already know the history af some tale-circles pretty well. It is evident that on these the history of Tale will some day be founded. The popular variants is about the only evidence of the tales life that we posses. What more we know about the life of a tale is scattered and occasional so that it alone in addition to the popular tradition can help us to a result. The improvement on the resources at our command creates a better general view over the working-material and the most