[5] Austrian consul Johann Georg von Hahn devised a preliminary analysis of some 40 tale "formulae" as introduction to his book of Greek and Albanian folktales, published in 1864.
[6][7] Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould, in 1866, translated von Hahn's list and extended it to 52 tale types, which he called "story radicals".
This catalogue consisted of 134 types, mostly based on Danish folktale compilations in comparison to international collections available at the time by other folklorists, such as the Brothers Grimm's and Emmanuel Cosquin's.
To remedy these shortcomings Uther developed the Aarne–Thompson–Uther (ATU) classification system and included more tales from eastern and southern Europe as well as "smaller narrative forms" in this expanded listing.
As an example, the entry for 510A in the ATU index (with cross-references to motifs in Thompson's Motif-Index of Folk Literature in square brackets, and variants in parentheses) reads: 510A Cinderella.
When the sisters and the stepmother go to a ball (church), they give Cinderella an impossible task (e.g. sorting peas from ashes), which she accomplishes with the help of birds [B450].
Remarks: Documented by Basile, Pentamerone (I,6) in the 17th century.The entry concludes, like others in the catalogue, with a long list of references to secondary literature on the tale, and variants of it.
He points out that Thompson's focus on oral tradition sometimes neglects older versions of stories, even when written records exist, and that some included folktale types have dubious importance.
Central Asian examples include: Yuri Berezkin [ru]'s The captive Khan and the clever daughter-in-law (and variants);[20] The travelling girl and her helpful siblings;[21] and Woman's magical horse, as named by researcher Veronica Muskheli of the University of Washington.
[23] Similarly, folklorist Joseph P. Goodwin states that Thompson omitted "much of the extensive body of sexual and 'obscene' material", and that – as of 1995 – "topics like homosexuality are still largely excluded from the type and motif indexes.
"[24] In a 2002 essay, Alan Dundes also criticized Thompson's handling of the folkloric subject material, which he considered to be "excessive prudery" and a form of censorship.
[25][26] A quantitative study published by folklorist S. Graça da Silva and anthropologist J.J. Tehrani in 2016, tried to evaluate the time of emergence for the "Tales of Magic" (ATU 300–ATU 749), based on a phylogenetic model.