Excerpt from The Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm The inference is plain that these tales must have had a common origin; but whether the stories were carried from one land to another by early traders, or whether their possession by widely scattered peoples proves these groups to have sprung from one original stock, students of mythology have not yet decided.

Certain it is that many of the tales are very old, having undergone numerous changes in the course of years, with such omissions and additions as were need ful to adapt them to the country using them. A ver sion of the Cinderella story, for instance, as old records show, was current in Iceland at least one thou sand years ago; while the Wolf and Kids story can be traced in Greek mythology antedating the Christian era.

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