NOTES AND REFERENCES
IT may be as well to give the reader some account of the extent of the
Celtic folk-tales in existence. I reckon these to 2000, though only about 250 are in print. The form exceeds that known in France, Italy, Germany, and Russia, where collection has been most active, and is only exceeded by the selection of Finnish folk-tales at Helsingfors, said to exceed 12,000. As will be seen. this superiority of the Celts is due to the phenomenal and patriotic activity of one man, the late J. F. C ampbell, of Islay whose Popular Tales and MS. collections (partly described by Mr. Alfred Nutt in Folk-Lore, i. 369—83) contain references to no less than 1281 tales (many of them, of course, variants and scraps). Celtic folktales, while more numerous, are also the oldest of the moder
