No doubt some striking analogies exist between the Indo-European family and the Semitic stock, just as there are remarkable analogies between the Mongolian and Indo-European families; but the ravings of Vallancey, in his effort to connect the Erse with Phœnician, are an awful warning of what unscientific inquiry, based upon casual analogy, may bring itself to believe, and even to fancy it has proved.
These general observations, then, and this rapid bird's-eye view, may suffice to show the common affinity which exists between the Eastern and Western Aryans; between the Hindoo on the one hand, and the nations of Western Europe on the other. That is the fact to keep steadily before our eyes. We all came, Greek, Latin, Celt, Teuton, Slavonian, from the East, as kith and kin, leaving kith and kin behind us; and after thousands of years, the language and traditions of those who went East, and those who went West, bear such an affinity to each other, as to have established, beyond discussion or dispute, the fact of their descent from a common stock.
DIFFUSION.
This general affinity established, we proceed to narrow our subject to its proper limits, and to confine it to the consideration, first, of Popular Tales in general, and, secondly, of those Norse Tales in particular, which form the bulk of this volume.
In the first place, then, the fact which we remarked on setting out, that the groundwork or plot of many of
