Page:Folklore1919.djvu/651

Rh Two preliminary general considerations must be held in mind throughout the whole of our discussion. First, we must realise that the conditions determining the form of the folk story are to be distinguished as definitely as possible from those determining its matter. And, secondly, we must remember that at the same time the treatment of the two sets of conditions is bound to be intermingled.

Now if we are to search for those tendencies which chiefly shape the folk story, the most important thing for us to remember is that the latter is a form of social intercourse. From this two conclusions follow at once. First, as regards its matter the popular tale must be such as to make immediate appeal to a group of auditors; and second, as regards its form it will be determined particularly by those impulses which come into operation when a man becomes the centre of attention of a group of his fellows.

We shall be particularly reminded of the first of these two points if we turn to a consideration of a further article by Paul Hermant. He collects in this paper, Certain Notes on the Social Ethics (la Morale) of Popular Tales. Folk stories, he says, arise and are told in a world in which men are invariably put into opposition to some power which restrains them. Thus they tend to praise sympathy and friendship as the greatest of the virtues. Social solidarity is of all things most excellent. The normal difference between men and the animals disappear: they intermarry; the one helps the other; there is a bond between them.

The outstanding social characteristic of the tales is, in fact, reaction against a grinding constraint, whether of the law, or of any other authority of the powerful. If he should, in his stories, deal with the real world, man waxes satirical at the expense of laws and judges, and often gets the better of them by all kinds of successful trickery; but in the realm wherein his fancy freely roams, he envisages a world where all his social tendencies find unrestrained expression. Yet when love intrudes into the folk tale,