Page:Cinderella, Roalfe Cox.djvu/14

 x I confess that I see little hope of light from savage lands, unless we can find a race so remote and untouched by Europe that it can hardly have borrowed, or unless we discover märchen recorded by old travellers and missionaries. I have cited a few in various works on the topic. The Zulus can scarcely have imported their large store of märchen recently, but these may have filtered south from old Egypt, or through the Arabs or other builders of the cities in Mashonaland. The cases of Samoa and the Huarochiris seem the most singular; the märchen have long been part of the national divine and heroic myths. Among forms from remote peoples, Miss Cox only gives the Kaffir "Wonderful Horns". Here, with a boy for hero, we have elements of "The Black Bull of Norroway": the Cinderella feature is the winning of a marriage by help of a costly mantle and ornaments magically provided. I do not believe this tale to be of recent importation.

One thing is plain, a naked and shoeless race could not have invented Cinderella. Beyond this I cannot go. As far as the evidence proves, any incident or incidents of the common store may be interwoven in any sequence. But certain sequences have been the fittest, and have therefore survived. The sequence in Perrault has been among the fittest, and I can believe that this particular arrangement was invented once for all. But all the elements appear in other combinations. Jealous stepmother and sisters; magical aid by a beast; a marriage won by gifts magically provided; a bird revealing a secret; a recognition by aid of a ring, or shoe, or what not; a dénouement of punishment; a happy marriage all those things, which, in this sequence, make up Cinderella, may and do occur in an incalculable number of other combinations.

The märchen is a kaleidoscope: the incidents are the bits of coloured glass. Shaken, they fall into a variety of attractive forms; some forms are fitter than others, survive more powerfully, and are more widely spread. This is the limit of my theorising on the affirmative side. On the negative, I see no reason for expecting to find any centre of origin, and no evidence for India as that centre. On the anthropological side, I think that we find