Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 14, 1903.djvu/170

 154 Notes on Ballad Origins

all Mdrchen and Marchcn-\\kQ ballads, where these exist.

Mr. Henderson presently cites my alleged belief about ballads millions of years old, and says that Professor Child's opinion is "exactly the opposite " of mine; that is, of the opinion which Mr. Henderson attributes to me. I can readily believe that Professor Child did not suppose many of our extant ballads to be millions of years old ! No more do I. He is quoted thus : " Some have thought that to explain this phenomenon [the identity of plots] we must go back almost to the cradle of mankind, to a primeval common ancestry of all or most of the nations amongst whom it appears." I am unaware that I ever attributed a common ancestry to Greeks, Samoyeds, IMagyars, Huarochiri, Celts, and so forth. I know nothino- about the matter. Professor Child goes on. " But so stupendous an hypothesis is scarcely necessary." I entirely agree. " The incidents of many ballads are such as might occur anywhere and at any time." Again I agree, and add that, given similarity of custom (say husband and wife taboo), similar events (which never occurred, or could occur) might independently be invented, in tales, such as Cupid and Psyche, to explain or enforce the taboo. Pro- fessor Child then speaks of the opportunities of diffusion of tales, " during the Middle Ages, and the Crusades." Now I have also insisted that captured slaves, and alien wives (under exogamy), and mariners drifted to unknown coasts, and commerce in all ages, must have diffused story-plots.^ Wherein, then, is Professor Child's opinion " exactly the opposite " of mine ? As far as I see, we are of one mind.

Mr. Henderson cites Professor Child from an essay, un- known to me, in Johnson's Universal Cyclopaedia (1893): " As there stated, his opinion is that ballads are the work of individual persons, not of communities, but that they date from a period before the people were distinguished " into

' See "A Far Travelled Tale," in Custom and Myth, and my preface to Miss Cox's Cinderella.