Page:Grimm's Household Tales, vol.1.djvu/47

 Christian records. Thus the Household Tales of the European peasantry occupy a mean position between the savage story, as we find it among African tribes, and the elaborate myth which, according to our theory, poets and priests have evolved out of the original savage data.

To sum up the theory thus briefly stated:

1. The origin of the irrational element in myth and tale is to be found in the qualities of the uncivilised imagination.

2. The process of Diffusion remains uncertain. Much may be due to the identity everywhere of early fancy: something to transmission.

3. Household Tales occupy a middle place between the stories of savages and the myths of early civilisations.

There are probably märchen, however, especially among the tales of modern Greece, which are really the detritus, or worn and battered relics of the old mythologies.

Nothing is easier than to advance new theories. The difficulty begins when we try to support them by argument and evidence. It may be as well to show how the system which we have just explained occurred to the mind of the writer. It was first suggested, years ago, by the study of savage märchen. If Bushmen and Samoyeds, and Zulus, and Maoris, and Eskimo, and Odjibwas, and Basutos have household tales essentially identical with European märchen, how, we asked, is this to be explained? Mr. Max Müller and Sir G. W. Cox had scouted the idea of borrowing. Then, was it to be supposed that all the races with Household Tales had once shared the capacious "cradle of the Aryan Race?" That seemed hard to demonstrate. To account for the identity of savage and