Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/15

 Rh be shown to be derived from modern travellers acquainted with Herodotus? Turning from this to a kindred topic, it would be pleasant to discuss Mr. Clodd’s theory of Rumpelstiltzkin. Wherever we find a form of this tale, the result hangs on the discovery of the name of a supernatural being. Mr. Clodd, if I understand his article in our Journal, explains this as a survival of the world-wide belief that to know a man’s name gives you power over the man a belief shown in the dislike of savages to reveal their own or their neighbours’ names. Rome, as we all know, had a secret name, for similar reasons. To myself, the story of Whuppity Stourie or Rumpelstiltzkin seems not necessarily to have so archaic an origin. The elf or fairy simply relies on possessing a name so unusual and odd that nobody is likely to guess it. It answers to the anecdote of Mr. R. L. Stevenson and the curious American, who met him on the plains, found a mystery in him, and did everything to know what his name was. Mr. Stevenson mystified him till he met him in San Francisco, and then disappointed him horribly by saying that Stevenson, plain Stevenson, was his name. There is no more than a jest of that sort, to my mind, in Rumpelstiltzkin. The heroine gets no magical hold over the elf by knowing the name, no hold at all beyond what the elf has himself given by way of a wager on a kind of riddle. Wagering on divinettes or riddles is itself a savage amusement, and we have many examples in the Scotch ballads. Mr. Clodd would have convinced me, if the power secured over the elf was magical, if it was not, in all cases, a wager or bet, the elf being confident in the possession of a very odd name. That of Whuppity Stourie, perhaps, is derived from the stour, or flying dust, in which Scotch and other fairies are believed to fly about.

As to the origin and diffusion of popular tales, it does not seem that we learn much more, with all our labour. Other members of the Society no doubt understand better than I do the theories of a White Archaian Race, which, it