THE SCIENCE OF FOLK-TALES AND THE
PROBLEM OF DIFFUSION.
By JOSEPH JACOBS.
The Folk-tale has hitherto suffered somewhat the same fate as one of her own heroines. On the way to join her spouse, she has been put aside by an envious sister who usurps her place and causes the true bride to perform menial tasks for her. At first it was Mythology that played the rôle of the Substituted Bride. The tale of Cinderella was studied in order to find traces of the dewy dawn, or of the rising moon, or the setting sun. The sun of that theory is for ever set, thanks in large measure to the genial wit and gentle irony of our versatile President. But while getting rid of one substituted bride, Mr. Lang has, in my opinion, only succeeded in introducing another false claimant. Anthropology takes the place nowadays that Mythology once usurped, and the poor Folk-tale is set the task of finding "survivals" for her envious sister Anthropology. We are to study Cinderella on this method in order to discover traces of the old manorial custom of Borough English, in which the youngest child, and not the eldest, succeeds, or to find traces of animal metamorphosis, or to find other things interesting enough in their way, but having extremely little to do with Cinderella as a tale. Now, all these "survivals" are of interest in their way; I am even guilty myself of having written something on Borough English in some of the most ancient of folk-tales.[1] But to study them is not to study the tale, and the first thing to do, in my opinion, is to study the tale itself, and to get what instruction we can for anthropology or for mythology afterwards. It is as if we were studying chemistry for the light it may throw on physiology: we have to get our chemical facts and theories
- ↑ "Junior Right in Genesis," Archæaological Review, vol. i.
