are we to determine this centre? There are at least three criteria: Grimm's Laws we might call them. Where the story is told in fullest form and largest number of variants is likely to be the original home—that would give the palm to the Celts, among whom nearly a score of variants of the tale have been found. Another criterion is to be found in the nature of the ideas contained in the tale: if we found a tale turning on any peculiarly English custom, that would make England its most likely starting-point. Now Mr. Nutt has observed in the Jason-myth, as given in modern folk-tales, a distinct and vital reference to the Teutonic conceptions of Hades in the mountain, forest, and river which intervenes between the world of everyday-Kfe and the giants' realm. Our second canon, then, would give the origin of this group of stories to some Teutonic land. Again, we cannot neglect to take into consideration that an extremely early appearance of practically the same tale occurs in the Jason-myth. Here, then, by applying these three canons independently we get three different centres of dispersion for this group of stories. How to reconcile these discrepancies I will leave unsolved here, though I have elsewhere made a shot at the solution.[1]
You will observe that throughout this discussion it has never occurred to me to consider the possibility that various versions of Cinderella, of Puss-in-Boots, or of The Master Maid may have cropped up independently in different lands. I think that is the natural course. If I am in Toledo, say, and I see a man with the same appearance as my friend Thomson, I do not say how strange and yet how natural that Toledo and London should have each produced an individual exactly similar! I say, simply, "Hallo! what's Thomson doing in Toledo?" And so, if I meet with a tale in Madagascar that I first knew in Germany, I do not indulge in wonder as to the kaleidoscope of incidents that shaped it independently into the same pattern, but I want to know how it came from Germany. In other words, I assume it to be impossible for a plot of any complication to be invented twice; and I am confirmed in my belief by the fact that, as a rule, throughout Europe there are only about two plots a century that are invented entirely new. Try and think out a plot, and see how your mind insensibly glides into the well-worn channels of the plots you know,
- ↑ Celtic Fairy Tales; notes to No. xxiv.
