[p. 7] With the folktale as with all other products of man's artistic endeavor the scholar runs the risk of too subtle analysis. He may interest himself in studying the entire body of oral narrative of a people so as to divide it neatly into categories according to origin or form or content, but although such a close examination of the stories undoubtedly teaches him much, he must realize that the men and women who tell them neither know nor care about his distinctions. Much hair-splitting has taken place in the past and much useless effort devoted to the establishment of exact terms for the various kinds of' folktale.

Yet some very general terms are not only helpful but necessary. The limitations of human life and the similarity of its basic situations necessarily produce tales everywhere which are much alike in all important structural respects. They have as definite form and substance in human culture as the pot, the hoe, or the bow and arrow, and several of these narrative forms are quite as generally employed. Others are confined to definite areas or belong to particular periods of time. But all of them, whenever they become so well recognized that they are continually referred to, have, in the course of time, been given names. Sometimes these are accurate and sometimes not, but from the very beginning anyone who discusses the folktale inevitably uses them and wishes his reader to be able to use them too. [1]

Perhaps the most frequent of all concepts to be met when one studies the folktale on a world-wide basis is that which the Germans call Märchen. We have nothing in English that is quite satisfactory, though the term is usually translated by "fairy tale," or "household tale." The French use conte populaire. [p. 8] What they are all trying to describe is such tales as "Cinderella," "Snow White," or "Hansel and Gretel." Fairy tale seems to imply the presence of fairies; but the great majority of such tales have no fairies. Household tale and conte populaire are so general that they might be applied to almost any kind of story. The German Märchen is better, and is fairly well agreed on. A Märchen is a tale of some length involving a succession of motifs or episodes. It moves in an unreal world without definite locality or definite characters and is filled with the marvelous. In this never-never land humble heroes kill adversaries, succeed to kingdoms, and marry princesses. Since Märchen deal with such a chimerical world, the name "chimerat" has been suggested for international usage, though it has not yet received wide adoption.

Near to the Märchen in general structure is the novella. Literary examples of this form may be seen in the Arabian Nights or Boccaccio, but such stories are also widely told by the unlettered, especially by the peoples of the Near East. The action occurs in a real world with definite time and place, and though marvels do appear, they are such as apparently call for the hearer's belief in a way that the Märchen does not. The adventures of Sinbad the Sailor form such a novella.

The distinction between novella and Märchen is not always drawn, the former being sometimes referred to as Novellenmärchen. In any case there is much overlapping between the two categories, so that some tales appear in one land with all the characteristics of a novella, in another with those of a Märchen.

Hero tale is a more inclusive term than either Märchen or novella, since a j tale of this kind may move in the frankly fantastic world of the former or the pseudo-realistic world of the latter. Most Märchen and novelle, of course, have heroes, but would hardly be called hero tales unless they recounted a series of adventures of the same hero. Almost everywhere are found such clusters of tales relating the superhuman struggles of men like Hercules or Theseus against a world of adversaries. Stories of this kind are particularly popular with primitive peoples or with those belonging to a heroic age of civilization, like the early Greeks or the Germanic folk in the days of their great migrations.

For another general narrative pattern used all over the world, the German term Sage has been widely adopted. English and French attempts to express the same idea are local tradition, local legend, migratory legend, and tradition populaire. This form of tale purports to be an account of an extraordinary happening believed to have actually occurred. It may recount a legend of something which happened in ancient times at a particular place – a legend which has attached itself to that locality, but which will probably also be told with equal conviction of many other places, even in remote parts of the world. It may tell of an encounter with marvelous creatures which the folk still believe in – fairies, ghosts, water-spirits, the devil, and the like. And it may [p. 9] give what has been handed down as a memory – often fantastic or even absurd – of some historical character. The story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, of the wild horseman encountered by Ichabod Crane, of old Barbarossa sleeping in the mountain, and the dozens of tales of Indian lovers' leaps from cliffs all over America – all these are Sagen. It will be observed that they are nearly always simple in structure, usually containing but a single narrative motif.

Very close to the local tradition is the explanatory tale. Other terms for it are etiological tale, Natursage, pourquoi story. The local legend often explains the existence of some hill or cliff or tells why a certain river meanders over the landscape. There are similar stories explaining the origins and characteristics of various animals and plants, the stars, and mankind and his institutions. Frequently this explanation seems to be the entire reason for the existence of the story, but more often than is usually recognized these explanations are merely added to a story to give an interesting ending. Such explanations may indeed be attached to almost any narrative form, such as the Märchen or the hero tale.

Of all the words used to distinguish the classes of prose narrative, myth is the most confusing. The difficulty is that it has been discussed too long and that it has been used in too many different senses. The history of such discussion is interesting but inconclusive. As used in this book myth will be taken to mean a tale laid in a world supposed to have preceded the present order. It tells of sacred beings and of semi-divine heroes and of the origins of all things, usually through the agency of these sacred beings. Myths are intimately connected with religious beliefs and practices of the people. They may be essentially hero legends or etiological stories, but they are systematized and given religious significance. The hero is somehow related to the rest of the pantheon and the origin story becomes an origin myth by attachment to the adventures of some god or demigod. Whether hero legend and origin story generally preceded myth or whether they became detached from it, the fundamental difference between these forms is reasonably clear.

Animals play a large role in all popular tales. They appear in myths, especially those of primitive peoples where the culture hero often has animal form, though he may be conceived of as acting and thinking like a man or even, on occasion, of having human shape. This tendency toward ascribing human qualities to animals also appears when the tale is clearly not in the mythical cycle. It is such non-mythological stories that we designate by the simple term animal tales. They are designed usually to show the cleverness of one animal and the stupidity of another, and their interest usually lies in the humor of the deceptions or the absurd predicaments the animal's stupidity leads him into. The American Indian series of stories of coyote and the popular European cycle of the fox and the wolf, best known in America as the tales of Uncle Remus, are outstanding examples of this form. [p. 10]

When the animal tale is told with an acknowledged moral purpose, it becomes a fable. The best known are the great literary collections, Aesop and the Panchatantra. They usually attach an actual maxim, though this is not necessary. But the moral purpose is the essential quality which distinguishes the fable from the other animal tales.

Short anecdotes told for humorous purposes are found everywhere. They are variously referred to as jest, humorous anecdote, merry tale, and (German) Schwank. Among some they are usually animal tales, but even where this is true the action is essentially that characteristic of men. Important themes producing these popular jests are the absurd acts of foolish persons (the numskull tale), deceptions of all kinds, and obscene situations. There is a tendency for jests to form cycles, since humorous adventures become attached to some character who thereafter attracts into his orbit all kinds of jests, appropriate and inappropriate. The same hero may be celebrated for his clever ruses, and for his utter stupidity, and obscene tales may often be told about him. But jests frequently detach themselves from cycles and may be encountered in the most unlikely places. They are easily remembered and universally liked, so that they travel with great ease. Some of the funny stories heard today have lived three or four thousand years and have been carried all over the earth.

Because of their possible confusion with terms we have already mentioned, two narrative forms primarily literary deserve a short notice. In some languages the term legend, which we have used above in discussing the local and the explanatory legend, can be used only in the special sense of the life of a saint. In English it is necessary to use the full expression saint's legend if that is meant. Such pious stories are normally handed down in literary collections, though a number have entered the stream of oral tradition, where they are sometimes not to be distinguished from the fairy tale, or Märchen.

Saga is also a misleading term. Its use should be restricted to the literary tales of the heroic age, particularly of Scandinavia and Ireland, and not employed loosely to mean "an experience" or "a story." And it should not be confused with the German Sage, which as we have seen has an entirely different meaning.

Other words for oral narrative forms have been suggested from time to time, but for the practical purpose of examining and discussing actual folk tales as they appear over the world, these few which we have listed will be sufficient. We shall find these forms not so rigid as the theoretician might wish, for they will be blending into each other with amazing facility. Fairy tales become myths, or animal tales, or local legends. As stories transcend differences of age or of place and move from the ancient world to ours, or from ours to a primitive society, they often undergo protean transformations in style and narrative purpose. For the plot structure of the tale is much more stable and more persistent than its form. [p. 11]