age of the country, a work of the twelfth century. They attribute the old works to the local hero, Gargantua, who "drank up all the water."[1] No one supposes that this legend is borrowed from Rabelais, and it seems even more improbable that the Huarochiris hastily borrowed märchen from the Spaniards, and converted them before 1600 into national myths.
We have few opportunities of finding examples of remote American märchen recorded so early as this, and generally the hypothesis of recent borrowing from Europeans, or from Negroes influenced by Europeans, is at least possible, and it would be hard to prove a negative. But the case of the Huarochiri throws doubt on the hypothesis of recent borrowing as the invariable cause of the diffusion of märchen in places beyond the reach of historic India.
The only way (outside of direct evidence) to prove borrowing would be to show that ideas and customs peculiarly Indian (for example) occur in the märchen of people destitute of these ideas. But it would be hard to ask believers in the Indian theory to exhibit such survivals. In the first place, if contes have been borrowed, it seems that a new "local colour" was given to them almost at the moment of transference. The Zulu and Kaffir märchen are steeped in Zulu and Kaffir colour, and the life they describe is rich in examples of rather peculiar native rites and ceremonies, seldom if ever essential to the conduct of the tale. Thus, if stories are "adapted" (like French plays) in the moment of borrowing, it will be cruel
- ↑ Revue des Traditions Populaires, April 25, 1887, p. 186.
