Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/98

 86 Correspondence.

ence of a highly-favoured and well-remunerated class of pro- fessional genealogists, did not prevent the introduction and diffu- sion of alien traditions about the early history of the race ; tra- ditions which, as I have said, we know to be absolutely baseless. If the genealogically-minded Celts admitted, and ultimately came firmly to beUeve in, an ahen and baseless theory of racial origins, the Greeks may have done the same.

But in another and a more positive way Celtic tradition illuminates the problems which the investigator of Greek tradi- tions has to solve. In the latter case we have a great body of heroic legend standing, apparently, in some relation to a series of local and tribal traditions. In Celtdom also we have great bodies of heroic legend ; in Wales the Arthur cycle, in Ireland the two great cycles of Cuchulainn and Finn. Now in all these three cases the heroic legend stands outside of, and disconnected from, the main stream of tribal genealogical tradition. So much is this the case in Ireland, that the Four Masters, the last and greatest representatives of the official-historian class, barely allude to the great Cuchulainn cycle which dominates all Irish mediaeval litera- ture, although (significant fact ! ) they fully set forth the alien, baseless tradition of Irish origins invented in the early Middle Ages. In Wales, Cunedda, a fwniinis iifnbra so far as poet and storyteller are concerned, is the source to which the chieftain traces his descent, not that Arthur with whose fame the world is filled. I cannot but think that these facts may be of some signifi- cance to students of the Homeric problem.

Mr. Rouse further remarks that " the conditions (of tradition) are different in a world which has been accustomed to the common use of writing for two thousand years; and in the world of two thou- sand years B.C., when writing was known indeed, but was certainly not common." Here the question, which is precisely whether the Greek traditions relied upon by Professor Ridgeway do go back " two thousand years B.C.," is entirely begged ; not to speak of the fact that many of them cannot ex hypothesi refer to a period ante- rior to 1400 B.C. What, however, I would ask, is, whether there is really any such essential difference, depending upon difference of conditions, between tradition in the Middle Ages, especially in the more barbaric portions of Europe, and tradition in the world of pre-fifth century Greece ? Greek traditions, when we seek their source, prove not infrequently to be reported by Pausanias and