Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 4 1886.djvu/73

 Rh No one can read Mr. Ralston's "Notes" without being convinced that the "moral" element must be recognised as a very important one in connection with folk-tales. If we place ourselves in the position of those who originated these stories, we shall see that in many cases at least the incidents related occupy a secondary place. The teller of the tale has usually a motive, a lesson to enforce by it. This "moral" is the kernel or central idea, of which the incidents are the clothing or accompaniments. No doubt, occasionally the object was simply to amuse, but generally it was to teach a truth. The truth may be intellectual, a conclusion arrived at as the result of the observation of nature or of the experiences of every-day life, or it may have a moral or religious character. The author of Bible Folk-Lore, who applies to Semitic myths the principles by which Mr. Max Müller and others explain the myths of the Aryan peoples, says: "The sun and the cloud, the river and the rain, the wind, the storm, the tree, and the star, were to savage man living beings of wonderful nature. The fire was a beast, which crept and devoured, and which might be wounded by a spear. The very stones and woods and hills had living spirits within them, and the most familiar acts of animal-life—growth and reproduction—were conceived to account for the phenomena of the heavens and earth." This may be perfectly true, and those ideas may be embodied in the so-called mythological stories, but I much doubt whether many of these were originally told with the object merely of expressing such ideas. The motive would rather be a prudential one, having for its aim to enforce a lesson of worldly experience or of moral or religious truth. Of course, the vehicle for conveying the lesson must be acceptable to the popular mind, and therefore it would introduce the marvellous incidents with which folkstories generally abound. According to this view we may expect to find in most of the "traditional narratives" to which Mr. Gomme gives the first place in his classification of the subjects of the science of Folk-Lore a motive which at first gave them their practical value, and which probably might often be identified in the popular sayings or proverbs of Folk-Speech. Such tales as those referred to in Mr.