A SAMPLER OF BRITISH FOLK-TALES by Briggs, Katharine M

London: Routledge and Kegan Paul: This selection with new introductions first published in 1977) hard bound in dust jacket, 6 1/2 x 9 1/2, VG/VG CONDITION ( very light dj sunning), xii, 315 pages .............................................................. Katharine Briggs, leading folklorist in Britain and author of numerous works on British fairy tales and folklore, now brings together in a single volume some of the more popular folk-tales from her A Dictionary of British Folk-tales in the English Language, which was published in four volumes. The first book to attempt anything like a complete collection of British folk-tales, the Dictionary was an immense undertaking and one of great value to the increasing study of and interest in folk traditions, including as it did what Geoffrey Grigson in the Guardian called 'a mort of diversely entertaining material'. The Sampler includes some of the liveliest and most enchanting folk-tales in the British tradition. It brings together a selection of the best-known and best-loved tales as well as some of the more unusual, lesser-known ones. It includes a specially written preface by the author..................................................................................................The Folk Narratives in the Sampler are divided into five groups : Fables and Exempla, Fairy Tales, Jocular Tales, Novelle, and Nursery Tales. The Fables are animal stories, after the manner of Aesop, that point a moral or satirize human frailties, and Exempla are also tales used for moral illustration. The Fairy Tales are narratives containing supernatural elements, while the Jocular Tales form a great body of drolls, noodle stories, bawdy tales, and so on. The Novelle are narratives in which there is no explicitly supernatural element, and the Nursery Tales include tales obviously invented for small children, some of them horrific.Folk Legends are much commoner in Britain than Folk Narratives and include stories about Black Dogs, Bogies, Devils, Dragons, Fairies, Ghosts, Giants, Historical Legends, Local Legends, Origin Myths, Saints, The Supernatural and Witches.