tation, that the present work is primarily a classified list of motifs and that the references appear only to give some preliminary guidance in finding examples of the item concerned. To assume responsibility for bibliographical completeness for so many thousands of motifs has been quite impossible.
SOME SUGGESTIONS AS TO USING THE INDEX
(a). Finding motifs in the Index.
A preliminary glance over the general synopsis at the beginning of the first volume will usually serve to indicate the chapter in which a motif is found. The detailed synopsis preceding the appropriate chapter should next be examined for the special division which lists the motif. If the item is not discovered at the point thus indicated, it will probably be listed in the cross-references which are placed there.
Even with careful search a motif may not immediately be found, for often the fundamental nature of an item may not seem to be the same to the searcher as it has seemed to me. To meet such difficulties a detailed alphabetical index appears at the end of the work.
(b). Using the Index for Cataloguing Tales.
The principal use of the present index, I hope, will be for cataloguing motifs in various collections of tales and traditions. If gradually all the tales, myths, ballads, and traditions were catalogued according to the same system, great progress would be made in rendering possible completer comparative studies than can now be undertaken.
Each worker must, of course, evolve the details of any plan of work. But by some convenient scheme it will be possible with relative ease to place all motifs in the appropriate chapter (often with cross-references to another chapter). Then the items forming these chapters may in turn be distributed into the proper divisions. It is my hope that the list of motifs in the present index may be so extensive that most items will be found already entered and numbered. Frequently a new motif will be a subdivision of one already in the index. If so, the system of subdivision here used may be continued. If such is not the case, it will ordinarily be found that the new motif will easily fall into a particular "ten". Usually many vacant places are left in each "ten".[1] Should the motif clearly belong to the "hundred" in question, but to none of the "tens" listed, it should go in the last "ten" (usually numbered 90—99, and devoted to "miscellaneous").
The additional motifs suggested by workers during the twenty
- ↑ If more items must be put in a "ten" than enough to fill the vacant spaces, the additions can be made to the last number in the "ten", e. g. 19.1, 19.2, 19.3, etc.
