This catalog situates Galician folktales within the international research approach of ATU types (Aarne-Thompson-Uther, FFC 284-6). For each Galician type, a summary of the tale is followed by a list of oral sources arranged geographically. A second list covers literary forms, including medieval and other early versions as well as modern published works, which often come from story books or magazines. Additional remarks may explain how the Galician tales differ from the typical form of the international tale type.

Interest in the comparative study of Spanish-language folktales began in the United States with the work of Aurelio M. Espinosa Sr. (Cuentos populares españoles (1923-6, revised 1946-7), which referred to international tradition but used an idiosyncratic system of tale types. Ralph Boggs’s Index of Spanish Folktales (FFC 90, 1930) adhered to the Aarne-Thompson numbering system, as did various indexes of Spanish-American tales. Such work then ceased for decades until a couple of Europeans took charge and Spanish folktales became easily accessible to international researchers through the four-volume anthology and catalog (1995-2003) of Julio Camarena (from Spain) and Maxime Chevalier (a Hispanicist from France). This work includes tales in four languages: Spanish, Catalan, Basque, and Galician.

Galicia is a region in northwest Spain. It has two official languages, Spanish and Galician. In the present book, the subject is defined as the language Galician, which pertains to a slightly larger area. Its history is complicated: in the Middle Ages, Galician and Portuguese belonged to a single literary tradition. While most of the tale types in this catalogue fit ATU numbers, some are not sufficiently international to have been included there. Thus, some types are referenced in Spanish folktale indexes such as those of Boggs and Camarena-Chevalier, the Portuguese indexes of Cardigos and Correia, and other indexes that cover parts of Spanish America and even the Middle East (these extra-ATU types are listed in an appendix). Around forty additional types have been discovered by the author, either newly here or in a previous publication (2010). The bibliography lists about 150 sources, primarily collections of folktales, and also about twenty magazine titles. In addition, beginning in 1992, students at the University of Vigo collected tales that are held in an archive, Arquivo Galego de Narrativa Oral. All told, there are many, many Galician texts that were unknown to Camarena and Chevalier. There is an alphabetical list of tale-type titles and a general index of keywords.

Camiño Noia Campos has come to this project by incremental steps. Early on, she wrote on modern Galician fiction and vocabulary, with the goal of strengthening the prevalence and status of the language. She also published feminist literary interpretations before she settled into folktale research. In 2002-4 she produced three collections of Galician folktales from texts in the archive AGANO, with references to their Spanish tale types. In 2010, she compiled a type catalog, a forerunner of the present book. Having this new reference work in English will make it more accessible to international researchers.

Comparative folktale research is a recurring dialectic between two perspectives: the remote, abstract view (e.g., tale-type summaries based on dozens or hundreds of texts) and the detailed, close-up view (how each separate text is related to the others), with a great variety of intermediate stages and groupings between them. The present catalog, for instance, adds to the supply of texts for many, many tale types, but a researcher still has to go and find the texts to be able to use them. Thus, this book will be invaluable to folktale researchers with access to the collections in the bibliography, people working on Spanish or international tale studies.

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[Review length: 602 words • Review posted on September 30, 2022]