Mr. Lang’s, which he has never reprinted; but having now seen it I willingly concede the claims of priority on Mr. Lang’s part with regard to this matter. I trust he will manage to make that article, which I venture to regard as an epoch-making one, in some form more accessible to students of folk-lore. We really cannot be expected to follow Mr. Lang through all the periodicals of the English-speaking world. At the same time, from the cordial tone in which Mr. Lang refers to Mr. Farrer’s independent researches, I am glad to observe he agrees with me in regretting the undeserved oblivion into which they have fallen.
For the rest there is little to add on my part to Mr. Lang’s interesting autobiography of his gradual conversion to the Transmission Theory of the resemblance in folk-tales. I am too delighted with the adherence of such a great authority to the position which I have for some time contended, to quarrel with the terms in which that adherence is expressed. I venture to think he has wasted a certain amount of indignation upon those of us who have been careless enough not to notice this gradual conversion. No doubt he was right to dissemble his love for the Transmission Theory, but why does he kick us downstairs? When Mr. Lang, e.g., writes in Custom and Myth (p. 24), “The slow filtration of tales is not absolutely out of the question”, we who hold that filtration of tales is almost the sole source of their resemblance, can surely be excused for regarding him rather as an opponent than an adherent of our views. Again, Mr. Lang writes in his admirable and remarkable Introduction to Mrs. Hunt’s translation of Grimm (p. xiv): “Allied to the theory of borrowing, but not manifestly absurd, is the theory of slow transmission.” I think MM. Bédier, Cosquin, Gaidoz, and Krohn were a little to be forgiven if, reading such a sentence as that, they did not hold Mr. Lang to be an advocate of the theory of slow transmission. But, as I pointed out before, it is not so much his obiter dicta on the subject which caused us to think of
