Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 4, 1893.djvu/278

 270 to show what rich harvests still remain to be gleaned from the folk-memory.

Again, Cinderella has proved not so desirable a choice for the exercise of Miss Cox's industry and skill as might have been desired. Among the most pressing problems that we should like to solve by means of such a collection are: (1) Has there been continued existence of folktales from pre-historic times to the present? (2) Are folktales with "savage" elements necessarily prior to the same without those elements, or have those elements been introduced? (3) Is India the sole or chief source of folktelling?

Now with regard to (1), Cinderella does not happen to be a good type of story to be used as a test. The essence of the tale is the rise in social position of a girl who makes a fortunate marriage. Possibly there are such cases in savage or in pre-historic societies; but the whole conception strikes one as mediaeval, almost as feudal. It would therefore be idle to look for its origin in societies where there was little variation of social position. Dr. Westermarck has indeed shown that girls have more freedom of choice in savage or semi-savage society than we had previously thought. But the monogamous condition which is at the root of the slipper-test does away with the probability that Cinderella arose in any but a tolerably advanced state of civilisation, and consequently its variants do not form a good subject for dealing with, or deciding our first question as to the comparative age and longevity of fairy tales.

Then as regards the vexed question of an Indian origin, Cinderella is specially unfortunate as a test case, since India is essentially a shoeless country, and the characteristic incident of the tale in its present form is the shoe test. We need not therefore be surprised that Miss Cox's collection gives a negative result as regards India. I, for one, have never contended that all fairy tales come from India; and M, Cosquin, in a private communication