In this paper the author considers three methods of approach to the study of the folk tale:—first, the approach through the study of individual psychology (the work of Hermant and Riklin being considered and criticised in this connection); secondly, the approach through sociology. Emphasis is then laid on the importance of the third method of approach—that through social psychology—since the popular tale, being told to a number of people gathered together, must be such as to make an immediate appeal to a group of auditors and must at the same time be determined particularly by those impulses which come into operation when a man (in this case the narrator) becomes the centre of attention. As regards general factors, a general tendency towards phantasy arising in states of fatigue