Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/51

 Rh South-Italian variants of the Snow-White formula. As we have seen, Basile is nearer than is Grimm to Gold-tree, the assumed representative of the oldest type of the narrative. But Italy is farther from Gaeldom than is Low Germany! So the transmissionist may urge. Now, paradoxical as the statement may appear, Italy is closer to Celtdom than is Germany. The "salt estranging sea" is often a surer link than the land. In the 10th and 11th centuries the Norman adventurers overran and founded kingdoms in Sicily and Southern Italy. But Norman and Breton were closely allied; Breton chiefs and soldiers accompanied the descendants of the Vikings. And thus it comes about that in the early 12th century we find numerous traces of the Arthurian romance throughout the Italian peninsula in the shape of personal names taken from the Romance cycle; thus it is that a late 12th century writer localises Avalon near Mount Etna. All the contentions I have striven to establish are, if the transmissionists knew it, in favour of their thesis, if they will only give up the main article of their creed, viz., that stories can be invented nowhere save in the East, and that every example of transmission must be from East to West. The present investigation does not affect the arguments for or against the transmission theory per se, and therefore I shall not pause to expound my reasons for believing that that theory only accounts for a very few of the problems of folk-lore. I am quite satisfied if I can show that even the straitest partisan of that theory may accept my proof without its being necessary for him to revise all the articles of his creed.

Before drawing what are, I think, the legitimate conclusions from the facts I have been considering, I should like to say a few words about the polygamy incident which induced Mr. Jacobs to write his note. I agree with him that the tale as it stands would not be sufficient warrant for the existence of polygamy in early Gaeldom. I may add that the fact of that polygamy, which is as thoroughly established as anything can well be, would not in itself be a sufficient