THIS PAPER PRESENTS AN ANALYSIS of some of the order relations that may be found within a corpus of Nez Perce myths. Factors influencing the production of sequencing in the determination of individual series are assigned to categories. To use a linguistic analogy, this is an attempt to describe the syntax of content and to explain it, as well, in order to demonstrate the utility of an approach to folklore that focuses on the importance of serial order.' The sequence in which we order words, phrases, and sentences in our everyday speech as well as in carefully planned literature is probably never a random one. The grammatical structure of the language provides obvious restrictions on the possible relative positions of elements within utterances. Moreover, some grammatically well-formed sentences are generally excluded from occurrence due to collocational semantic incongruity (Colorless green ideas sleep furiously). Within the framework of these initial constraints on form, the obviously grammatical and semantic, there would appear to be considerable room for alternative relative placements of coordinated items within a sequence. For example, in the sentence Mary's favorite foods are corn, beans, and squash, the three vegetable terms can be arranged in any one of six possible ways. This is particularly true if Mary likes the three foods equally. Other groups of three coordinated items are less susceptible of rearrangement (for example, Tom, Dick, and Harry), and some groups of two coordinated items are absolutely irreversible (such as, odds and ends).2 The internal ordering of a sequence can be very rigidly maintained or it can be quite loose. The degree of rigidity is related to the kind of sequence involved, the formality of the occasion calling for the sequence, and the forces operating to crystallize individual sequences, among other things. The order itself is usually seen to be related to the content of the ordered items, although the stylistic conventions of any particular society are theoretically quite arbitrary. Such things as chronological priorities, social structural priorities, formal preferences, and other