ABSTRACT
The absence of the supernatural element in merry tales and their frank realism have prevented the type from becoming entangled in the vagaries of the Mythological School. Even half-civilized people who would never grasp a genuine fairy tale of the more complicated sort may enjoy very much a merry tale with its elementary simplicity and its extreme realism. The merry tale is not bound to any definite society but floats freely from country to country. The age of the crusades saw the rise of a peculiar type of compilation embodying multitudes of merry tales, the so-called exempla literature. The Picard fabliau denotes a merry tale in French octo-syllable verse, such as flourished in Northeastern France during the thirteenth century. Having thus glanced, though of necessity rather cursorily, over the historical material, folklorists are in a position to point out the chief characteristics of merry tales.
