Outi Lauhakangas
Helskinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 2000.

From 1965 to 1974 Matti Kuusi was editor-in-chief of the famous journal Proverbium and invited proverb scholars to contribute to this forum. During this period he began to keep a card index of literature references to proverb types and made his first experiment in the thematic classification of international proverb materials in the 1970s. This volume is a study of the development of this type system. Outi Lauhakangas attempts to show how her father’s practical dream of a common international reference code came to be realised. The reader will find a list of some 700 global or almost global proverb motifs and can access the database via the website of The Finnish Literature Society. FF Communications No. 275 published by the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters.

Maarten Kossmann
Helskinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 2000.

This book studies the structure and style of orally transmitted fairy tales from Eastern Morocco in Berber and dialectal Arabic. Drawing on materials collected in his own fieldwork and other sources, the author pays special attention to the aesthetics of the fairy tale as understood by Max Lüthi and to the analysis of tale-specific formulae. Two hitherto unpublished Figuig Berber fairy tales are appended, as is a comparison of two versions of an Eastern Riffian story which, though collected independently at an interval of 60 years, show remarkable similarities. FF Communications No. 274 published by the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters.