Folktales and Fairy Tales: Traditions and Texts from Around the World (2016) is among the most comprehensive resources in English, packed with illustrations, cross-references, and an extensive bibliography. The older version is even available online here. But the articles are occasionally wrong. One quote demonstrates this: "Fathers do not offer their sons as prizes for tasks rendered" (pp. 336).
Fathers do actually give their sons as rewards to the heroines of numerous stories. "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" has the merchant wed his boy to a slave because she saved them. "Tatterhood" bargains to marry the prince in exchange for letting the king marry her sister. "Hairy Rouchy" and "Maol a Chliobain" steal treasure from giants so that farmers will let them and their sisters marry their sons. The book should've said that fathers rarely offer their sons as prizes.
This mistake is attributable to three people. D.L. Ashliman, who wrote the "Father" article, and the editors Donald Haase and Anne Duggan, who didn't notice the issue originally. Granted, they have mitigating circumstances. The former seems to be an expert on German (1576), so he might've been unfamiliar with Arabic, Celtic, and Norwegian traditions. The latter two had to review hundreds of pages writing so small details might've slipped by. Nevertheless, they presented misinformation to non-experts and failed to correct it for the newest edition. This undermines both their intellectual integrity and the encyclopedia's overall quality.
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