Italian Popular Tales

a, the Pentamerone, and the Italian novelists, given by way of illustration. The stories are accompanied by copious references to the rest of Italy, and Liebrecht's references to other European parallels. It is an admirable work, but one on which we have drawn but seldom, restricting ourselves to the stories in the various dialects as much as possible. The Milanese stories are in general very poor versions of the typical tales, being distorted and fragmentary. In 1873 Dr. Giuseppe Pitrè, of Palermo, well known for his collection of popular Sicilian songs, published three specimens of a collection of Sicilian popular tales, and two years later gave to the world his admirable work, Fiabe, Novelle e Racconti, forming vols. IV.-VII. of the Biblioteca delle Tradizioni populari Siciliane per cura di Giuseppe Pitrè. It is not, however, numerically that Pitrè's collection surpasses all that has previously been done in this field. It is a monument of patient, thorough re