Along with Francis Peabody Magoun, he was the first translator of folktales collected by the Brothers Grimm into the English language.
He was also a linguist, teacher, translator of scientific and other materials, a Roman philologist, a comparative mythologist, a classicist and Scandinavianist.
Edith would go on to describe her husband as "brilliant, but deeply troubled and enigmatic man when all of the sources are combined, it is the picture that emerges."
The most significant of these, and only one published, was a translation of Grimm's Collected Fairy Tales in conjunction with Francis Peabody Magoun.
The American Kentucky Home, though it is supposed to have originated in circle of a somewhat darker hue than is popular in certain sections of the country, is a genuine folksong of both colored and white people[2]"This also serves as a prime example of Krappe's unpopularity among Folklorists and anthropologists, as Krappe's work many times shows him to be racist and sexist.