lips of peasants versions of Cinderella, for example, quite unaffected by Perrault's version, and rich in archaic features, such as the presence of a miracle-working beast instead of a fairy godmother. That detail is found in Kaffir, and Santhal, and Finnish, as well as in Celtic, and Portuguese, and Scottish variants, and has been preserved in popular French traditions, despite the influence of Perrault. In the same way, M. Carnoy finds only the faintest traces of the influence of a collection so popular as the Arabian Nights. The peasantry regard tales which they read in books as quite apart from their inherited store of legend.[1]
If printed literature has still so little power over popular tradition, the manuscript literature of the Middle Ages must have had much less, though sometimes contes from India were used as parables by preachers. Thus we must beware of over-estimating the effect of importations from India, even where it distinctly existed. Even the versions that were brought in the Middle Ages by oral tradition must have encountered versions long settled in Europe—versions which may have been current before any scribe of Egypt perpetuated a legend on papyrus.
Once more, the Indian theory has to account for the presence of tales in Africa and America among populations which are not known to have had any contact with India at all. Where such examples are urged, it is usual to say that the stories either do not really re-
- ↑ Sébillot's popular Cendrillon is Le Taureau Bleu in Contes de la Haute Bretagne. See also M. Carnoy 's Contes Français, 1885, p. 9.
