Page:Myths and Folk-Lore of Ireland (Curtin).djvu/26

 few days later it was stated that this cradle was a myth, for the wife of the millionnaire rocked her baby in a wicker basket. This last illustration is an excellent one; the popular idea being that a myth is a nonentity of which an entity is affirmed, a nothing which is said to be something.

Let us examine, not the scientific definition of a myth, for we have none such to examine, but a couple of myth theories put forward by two men in England, each a leader in his own sphere,—Professor Max Müller and Herbert Spencer.

The first of these theories, which might be called "the theory of oblivion," though it is usually called "the linguistic theory," is founded on the hypothesis that men did not and could not make myths till they had forgotten who the chief actors in these myths were; that myth-makers only began to work when they had no means of knowing what they were really working with, or with whom they had to deal in making their stories; Müller's dictum being: It is the essential character of a true myth that it should no longer be intelligible by reference to spoken language.

According to this theory the origin of myths is to be sought in what is called "a disease of language." Now Professor Max Müller's disease of language is