Character of Aryan folklore.It is scarcely necessary to go further. If we do, we shall only be confronted by the same astonishing parallelism which is exhibited by
the several versions of the stories already cited. The hypothesis of conscious borrowing is either superfluous or dangerous. It is unnecessary, if adduced to explain the distant or vague resemblances in
one story, while they who so apply it admit that it cannot account for the far more striking points of likeness seen in many others. It
is dangerous because it may lead us to infer an amount of intercourse between the separated Aryan tribes for which we shall vainly seek any actual evidence. It is inadequate, because in a vast number
of instances the point to be, explained is not a similarity of ideas, but
a substantial identity in the method of working them out, extending
to the most unexpected devices and the subtlest turns of thought and
expression. That the great mass of popular tradition has been thus
imported from the East into the West, or from the West into the
East, has never been maintained ; and any such theory would rest
on the assumption that the folk-lore of a country may be created by
a few scholars sitting over their books, and deliberately determining
the form in which their stories shall be presented to the people. It
would be safer to affirm, and easier to prove, that no popular stories
have thus found their way from learned men to the common people
The ear of the people has in all ages been deaf to the charming of
the scholars, charm they never so wisely. Bookmen may, if they
please, take up and adapt the stories of the people ; but the legend
of "the Carter, the Dog, and the Sparrow" would never have found
Its way into the nurseries of German peasants if written by Grimm
himself in imitation of some other Aryan tale. The importation of
one or two stories by means of written books is therefore a matter of
very slight moment, so long as it is admitted that legends, displaying
the most astonishing parallelism in the most distant countries of
Europe and Asia, cannot be traced to any intercourse of the tribes
subsequent to their dispersion from a common home. We thus have
before us a vast mass of myths, fables, legends, stories, or by what-
ever name they are to be called, some in a form not much advanced
beyond the proverbial saying which was their kernel, others existing
apparently only as nursery tales, others containing the germs of the
great epics of the Eastern and the Western world. All these may be
placed together in one class, as springing from phrases which at first
denoted physical phenomena ; and enough has perhaps been already
said to show that this class includes a very large proportion of strictly
popular stories which seem at first sight to be in no way connected
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MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARYAN NATIONS.
BOOK I.