Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/142

 134 by his brilliant, erudite, and suggestive disquisitions upon it.

I pass now from Mr. Lang to Mr. Nutt, from my friendly opponent to my opposing friend. Here the discussion deals with some remarks of mine about Cinderella, but it gradually extended to much wider issues. Mr. Nutt couples me with Mr. Newell, somewhat in the same fashion as I had coupled Mr. Lang and Mr. Hartland, and I am fitly punished for having set the example, for I have not hitherto laid down any general theory as to the origin and diffusion of folk-tales, whereas Mr. Newell has committed himself to a somewhat peculiar position on this point. In dealing with us together Mr. Nutt could not well avoid confusing the persons and confounding the issues. It so happens that in one of the results of our discussion on Miss Cox’s volume, Mr. Newell and myself arrived at the same conclusion, but I fancy that it is by far different ways. Let me say at once that with regard to the origin of the unnatural incidents in folk-tales I am of the Anthropological School, a disciple of Dr. Tylor and Mr. Lang. That by itself differentiates me, I fancy, from the erudite Secretary of the American Folk-lore Society; but while I grant that when these unnatural incidents were first used they reflected the savage culture and beliefs of the narrator, I cannot allow that they imply the same culture and beliefs whenever they are adopted as a convention of folk-telling, or are transmitted to fresh fields.

Mr. Nutt draws absolutely opposite conclusions from the existence of conventions of the folk-tale. “What is a convention?” he asks, and answers that it is a custom, mode of speech, or a turn of narration that is in full accord with the beliefs of author and audience. Au contraire, I would hold that convention was a dead mechanical form, the meaning of which is entirely absent in the minds of those using it. I may perhaps make my meaning clearer if I refer shortly to the special convention to which I was referring in my article on “Cinderella in Britain”.