Page:Cinderella, Roalfe Cox.djvu/15

 Rh the origin of many incidents in the early mental habits of mankind, and of a few in early custom.

Being unable to throw any more light on Cinderella, I may take advantage of the opportunity to show what I think about Popular Tales, their origin and diffusion, as, from certain criticisms, my position seems not to be understood. This may be chiefly my fault, partly that of other antiquaries, who, I think, incline to credit me with notions which I do not entertain. These criticisms were expressed at the Folk-lore Congress of 1891, in papers which I was not fortunate enough to hear, and I have only now read them in the records of the Congress. The results at which I arrived, provisionally as it were, have been a good deal criticised, as by Mr. Jacobs and M. Cosquin, the author of the learned and valuable Contes de Lorraine. Perhaps I may now offer a few remarks on their criticisms. It is hardly worth while to answer a suggestion that I am indifferent to the literary merit of the tales, or ignorant of the constructive art which is sometimes, by no means always, displayed in the composition of Cinderella, for example. Ever since I could read, and long before I ever dreamed that fairy-tales might be a matter of curious discussion, those tales have been my delight. I heard them told by other children as a child, I even rescued one or two versions which seem to have died out of oral tradition in Lowland Scots; I confess that I still have a child-like love of a fairy-story for its own sake; and I have done my best to circulate Fairy Books among children. Coming from childhood into the light of common day, I found certain theories of popular tales chiefly current. They were regarded as the detritus of Myths, the last echo of stories of Gods and Heroes, surviving among the people. These myths, again, were explained, by the schools of Schwartz, Kuhn, Max Müller, as myths either of storm, thunder, and lightning, or of the Sun and Dawn. Further, the myths, and also the tales, were believed to be essentially and exclusively Aryan, parts of the common Aryan heritage, brought from the cradle of the Aryan race. The solar