Excerpt from Popular Tales and Fictions, Vol. 1 of 2: Their Migrations and Transformations The question Of their origin and diffusion has for more than half a century specially engaged the ener gies of distinguished European scholars, but there still exists very considerable diversity Of opinion on the subject. In Germany, such eminent screams as Ben fey, godeke, kohler, N Oldeke, and Liebrecht maintain that our popular tales, which are current from Norway to Spain, from Italy to the West Highlands of Scot land, are simply secondary forms of Oriental originals, which were imported from Asia in different ways: for the south of Europe this was done through the Turks; for the north, by the Mongolians during their two hun dred years of supremacy. In England, it is contended by Basent, baring-gould, Cox, and other scholars, that they are survivals of primitive myths and legends, the common heritage of the whole Aryan race, and came to Europe with the tribes when they migrated westwards and northwards, at some very remote period - just as the languages of Europe are Aryan. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.