seem likely that such a suppression of the latter part of the story has taken place.[1]
Returning to European versions, it is to be remarked that the older form of the folk-tale, that in which the heroine is carried home and afterwards returns to her native heaven, is also represented in Europe; while some versions exhibiting the modified form of the märchen—to which, for example, "Lady Featherflight" belongs—appear also to have incorporated incidents properly belonging to the more ancient type. Such intermixture, in which a later variant takes up some features of an earlier form of the story, might be expected as a natural consequence of the complications arising from continual diffusion and alteration.[2]
If all the versions belonging to our folk-tale in its different types, and all the confused and modernised forms founded upon it were enumerated, the number of variants would run up to many hundreds, and would be found to form no inconsiderable part of the whole volume of modern märchen in Europe.[3]
It remains to be inquired whether anything can be affirmed respecting the date and method of composition of the Hindu tale, which appears to have obtained so wide a circulation.
An early example of a story of bride-winning, having many analogies to that now considered, is supplied by the tale of Medea and Jason. The hero journeys to a far country, probably originally conceived as a giant-land beyond the limits of the world of
- ↑ For example, in the Persian tale contained in the Bakar-Danush, and in Chinese and Samoyede tales, mentioned by Cosquin, our märchen seems to be at the basis, an elision of a section having taken place; on the other hand, in the Nibelungenlied and the Edda, where swan-maidens are mentioned, it is perhaps only a tale-element which is in question.
- ↑ A European variant is the Polish tale given by Töppen, Aberglauben aus Masuren p. 140. The heroine departs, giving the hero directions as to the land in which he is to seek her, in which it is always summer. Other examples could be quoted. In many cases, where the tale is of the usual European type, the incidents of the quest, of the inquiry of birds and beasts, and riding to a remote land on the back of a bird, are introduced; these seem to properly belong to the older story, in which the heroine departs and has to be sought, and to have been engrafted on the later tales; so in the early portion of the Gaelic and Russian tales above mentioned.
- ↑ In the work of Wratislaw cited, seven tales out of the sixty ultimately belong to our märchen; in the Folk-tales of the Magyars (Jones and Kropf Lond., 1889) I reckon the same number, making about one-sixth of the material.
