with immense difficulty, and could not be accomplished for a long time to come. Turning to the particular story which Mr. Newell had told them that morning, Mr. Nutt noted that the lecturer had left out of consideration that feature of the story which was most prominent in the greatest number of variants: the story of the flight, with regard to which he (Mr. Nutt) had endeavoured to trace some connection between its incidents and the material feature of the Teutonic Hades. If any gentleman was present who had special knowledge of Teutonic mythology, he would have liked to hear some criticism on that theory. Mr. Jacobs had told them that he advocated three separate criteria, each one giving a fresh centre of diffusion for the story. He (Mr Nutt) thought that in seeking to determine the special centre of diffusion for a story which they found at all events among poeples speaking European and many non-European languages, they were pursuing a vain task. They could not even determine the Teutonic, Greek, or Latin share in the constitution of a story, and when it became evident that a great proportion of these stories was practically found all the world over, the task became exceedingly difficult. All they could do was to determine the origin of the elementary facts of which the story was composed, and to say whether it was likely that those facts could ever have been spun out in such and such a state of society. It was comparatively unimportant to determine where they were put together in perfect form, and altogether unimportant to follow the subsequent wandering with an absolute degree of scientific certainty. All they could say, as their Chairman had pointed out this morning, was, that to find a home in a strange race, a story must find the soil prepared for it, as seeds could not possibly be planted on rocky ground. Supposing that at the end of the eighteenth century one of the Irish story-tellers, who perambulated the Western Highlands of Scotland, had carried Robinson Crusoe in his pocket and told the story broadcast, he did not believe that five years afterwards a single trace of it could have been gathered there from tradition. His conclusion was this, that the stories still found traditionally in the Western Highlands must have originated in some such state of society as the folk of the district lives in to this day. It seemed to him that the most vital conclusion was this: the more they attempted to definitely fix the origin of a story at any particular period, the more they were likely to rely upon secondary and insufficient evidence.
Professor John Rhys said, having come there without any knowledge on the subject, his mind was now, after what he had heard from the Chair, from Mr. Nutt, and others, and contrasted it with what Mr. Newell and Mr. Jacobs had said, in a state of complete irresolution. He fought very hard to accept the Chairman's doctrine, but Mr. Jacobs
