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    Yet the future of the West Coast's ethnic French group is by no means assured. It has been calculated that there are no more than 3,000 people in the area who usually speak French in the home. While this figure is undoubtedly the largest ever in the history of the French in the region, it is nonetheless true that they remain, will always remain, a minority. And one may always be tempted to see the new cultural contributions I have mentioned as efforts of superficial value.

    Hope resides in the fact that despite all the pressures to which the French have been subjected, they have nonetheless been able to sustain their language and culture. It is my intention to demonstrate the richness of these by examining an aspect of traditional life which has long been one of the chief vehicles of Franco-Newfoundland language and culture: the tradition of the folktale or Märchen, through which I hope to illustrate a very human, joyous, indomitable temperament.