The Tale of Cupid and Psyche [antikvár]

Preface When I began this investigation nearly ten years ago, I cannot say that my teacher at that time, the late Professor Carl Wilhelm von Sydow, exactly encouraged me to set to work with it. If anything, he rather warned me against the undertaking — he knew what difficulties would arise and probably attributed to youthful recklessness the fact that I did not listen to his well-meant advice. Since then I have often had cause to regret that I did not desist from an undertaking where the failures of my predecessors were the only guides and where the overwhelming abundance of the material threatened, at times, to drown me completely. At the moment of writing I am well aware that many of the problems have been treated very superficially and that their solutions are only temporary ones which would have caused Carl Wilhelm von Sydow to grasp his red pencil. That I have nevertheless had the temerity to dedicate this thesis to his memory is due to the fact that I have wished to give him my belated thanks, not only for his inspiring guidance but also for his personal interest in my work and for his valuable friendship. I should like also to thank his successor at the University of Lund, Professor Sigfrid Svensson, for a never-failing willingness to help me both by word and deed and I should like to stress that his tuition, though somewhat different as to its subject, has been, methodically, of the greatest importance to my work and a rich source of inspiration. The writing of folktale monographs is a task where the individual scholar is to a very great degree dependent uj)on his colleagues, especially upon the help of foreign tale researchers, and I cannot mention here more than a very few of those to whom I owe a partly immeasurable debt of gratitude. But I should like especially to stress the great help given me by Professor Gottfried Henssen in Marburg, M. Paul Delarue and M™'' Ariane de Félice in Paris, Fil. lie. Laurits B0dker in Copenhagen, Professor Séamus ÓDuilearga and Archivist Sean Ó Súilleabháin in Dublin, Dr Milko Maticetov in Ljubljana, Dr Marian Stojkovic in Zagreb, Professor Jonas Balys in Washington, Professor Beke Ödön in Budapest, Professor Pveidar Th. Christiansen in Oslo, the late Professor Giovanni Crocioni in Reggio Emilia, and Dr. Jouko Hautala in Helsinki.