What’s here?

This repository houses tidy data of key catalogs and collections of mythology and folklore, for use in discovery of patterns using natural language processing and others statistical methods. The following datasets are located in the /data sub-folder:

• tmi, The Motif Index: each row is a single motif from the Thompson Motif Index, and also contains information regarding the chapter,grand division, division, and subdivision(s) under which motifs are nested, as well as the supplementary notes for each motif where these exist.
• atu_df, atu_seq, and atu_combos: the Aarne-Thompson-Uther Tale Type Index: datasets containing types of tales, the motifs which comprise them, and commonly co-occurring tale types.
• aft, Annotated Folktales: each row contains the text of a single tale, as well as an indicator of which ATU tale type the tale exemplifies. This is intended to serve as training data for algorithms to classify tale types and find motifs and motif sequences in unstructured text. The dataset was initially seeded with D.L. Ashliman’s corpus of annotated tales

Additional details regarding these datasets can be found in the data dictionary.

Instructions for Use and Collaboration

Using the Data

To begin using the datasets, please see the Getting Started document for instructions. This repository is licensed under a CC-BY-SA 4.0 open license. Its contents are either in the public domain, or permissions have been granted by the copyright holder for inclusion. To cite the use of this repository or its data in publications, please reference the repository as well as the works from which it derives:

@misc{trilogy_repo,
    title = {trilogy},
    url = {https://github.com/j-hagedorn/trilogy},
    author = {Hagedorn, Joshua},
    abstract = {Reference datasets for myth and folktale motifs}
}

@misc{ashliman_folktexts,
    title = {Folktexts: {A} library of folktales, folklore, fairy tales, and mythology},
    copyright = {© 1996-2021},
    shorttitle = {Ashliman's {Folktexts}},
    url = {http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/folktexts.html},
    author = {Ashliman, D.L.}
}

@book{thompson_motif_index,
    title = {Motif-index of folk-literature; a classification of narrative elements in folktales, ballads, myths, fables, mediaeval romances, exempla, fabliaux, jest-books, and local legends.},
    shorttitle = {Thompson's {Motif} {Index}},
    publisher = {Indiana University Press},
    address = {Bloomington},
    author = {Thompson, Stith},
    year = {1955}
}

Collaboration

We are excited to collaborate. If you find issues with any of the datasets or scripts, please file an issue on this repository. If you make improvements to the scripts, or develop new scripts to incorporate additional motifs, tale types, or tale texts, please submit a pull request. Additional instructions about contributing are available in the Getting Started document.