Page:Transactions of the Second International Folk-Congress.djvu/116

 80 tits are to be found. So if I wished to discover where Tom Tit Tot came from, I also would draw a map showing the distribution of the various species of the tale known variously as Rumpelstiltskin or Tom Tit Tot. And, to facilitate the drawing of such a map, I have compiled a map of Folk-tale Europe, putting the names of authors of collections instead of the names of towns. Thus, where Halle stands in the ordinary maps, in my map stands the name of Grimm; Edinburgh is replaced by Chambers, Copenhagen by Gruntvig, Palermo by Pitré, Rome by Miss Busk, and Dublin by Kennedy. When we folk-lorists have a map like that, giving the locale of the very many collections of folk-tales, we can easily show the distribution of a tale by underlining in red or blue the name of the books in which the tales appear. I have little doubt that many problems of diffusion will solve themselves "by inspection", as the mathematicians say.

One of the uses to which such a map might be applied would be a severe test of the true scientific value of the science of the folk-tale as here conceived. It is possible, I think, that we may be able to place our finger on the map and say, "In this district the story of Cinderella will be found, with such and such an incident omitted, and with such and such added." We could venture on this prediction if, by observation of our map, we saw that the variants of Cinderella found over that district on both sides, one had an additional incident to another. It might be worth while sending a folk-lorist to the said district, to see if our scientific prediction turned out to be true. But before we could do anything like this, we must have very much wider material than we at present possess, and much fuller knowledge of the folk-character of the various European districts. Yet I see nothing improbable in the idea; and even now we could with some certainty, I take it, predict the general character of the folk-tales, and indeed the whole folk-lore of a district, just as we could of Its fauna and flora. I think I could make a tolerably shrewd guess, even with the imperfect knowledge I possess, of the class