Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 5, 1894.djvu/86

 CORRESPONDENCE.

SHOULD FOLK-TALES BE TERMED MODERN?

To the Editor of.

,—In controverting the views of Messrs. Newell and Jacobs with regard to their belief in the modern origin of folk-tales Mr. Nutt seems to have swept away simultaneously the right to term them modern at all. In this I venture to think he has gone too far.

Every tale has a certain individuality of its own, in so far as it consists of a definite number of particular incidents. Eliminate one or more of these, or add a new one, and the tale immediately loses its original personality, and is transformed into a fresh variant with a new form.

It is matter of judgment, varying in each particular case, how long any set form of words can be handed down orally without material change. But certainly the time has a limit. A tale consisting of from ten to fifteen incidents, some of them but loosely attached to the thread of the plot, cannot, it seems to me, have any inordinate length of life without undergoing appreciable alteration. In a hundred years it will have lost or gained somewhat, and so on with each receding century. Should the type it belongs to consist of only two incidents, as in the Cinderella groups, the tale in some form or other might remain a variant for many, perhaps for ten or more, centuries. But here, too, there must be an ultimate limit, though it is impossible to fix it.

Now, if this is true, and the word "modern" is taken to include a period of about 500 years, it appears reasonable and proper to apply the term modern to all tales placed on