Humanitarian Intervention: Fairy Tale about One Swallow Which Made Summer?

One swallow does not make a summer.

The fable is about a young man who spends all his money on gambling and luxurious living until he has only a cloak to keep off the weather. Seeing an unusually early swallow fly by, the man concludes that spring has come and sells his cloak so as to use the proceeds to mend his fortune with a last bet. Not only does he lose his money but cold weather closes in again. Finding the swallow frozen ...

Pilot studies: one swallow does not make a summer...

What should we expect from pilot studies, done in small series of patients? In the literature there are many examples of small studies with very promising results, that in subsequent larger or better controlled studies proved to be much less promising, or even disastrous. In some instances the initial favourable outcome was due to selection bias. In others the use of nonvalidated methods of mea...

Fairy Tales as a Forerunner of European Children's Literature: Cross-border Fairy Tale Materials and Fairy Tale Motifs

Due to the Romantic movement there was a growing attention for recording oral tradition. Pedagogues advocating an independent literature for children recognized the importance of folktales especially for the mediation of bourgeois virtues and social norms. Influenced by the stilistic model of the Brother Grimm's Household Tales and as a result of the propagation of national literatures, a broad...

Himalayan Folklore and the Fairy Tale Genre

Based on fieldwork by the author conducted in Tibetan cultural areas of the Indian Himalayas, this paper explores Himalayan understandings of what defines a fairy tale, in contrast to the Western understanding. In parts of the Himalayas, a distinction is made between “lakshung” (fairy tales) and “kyakshung”, which are shorter stories, the kind one might tell over tea. In light of the proposals ...

Informed consent--a fairy tale? Law's vision.