Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 5 1887.djvu/176

168 Egyptians. But while we admit so much, and while we are glad to have the facts upon which the theories of Benfey and Burton rest laid before us without any attempt at straining or distortion, we cannot but think that the author would have added to the value of his work had he permitted himself to give a little more consideration to the spreading fields which lie outside the Aryo-Semitic limits, and he would also have found reasons for distrusting the champions alike of India and of Egypt. We have only room to illustrate our meaning by reference to one group of stories. In the paper on Magical Transformations Mr. Clouston says: "There certainly is no cycle of folk-tales, of which the members everywhere present a more striking resemblance to each other, or indicate more clearly a common origin. In this case especially is independent invention of the same incidents in different countries and ages altogether out of the question, as I hope conclusively to prove in the course of the present paper." These words refer primarily, not to the group whereof we are about to speak, but to an allied group. Still we believe we are not wrong in assuming that they indicate the author's attitude towards the group, included in the same paper, "in which the hero is pursued by a fierce giant or demon, and escapes by means of certain objects which, thrown behind him on his track, are instantly transformed into obstacles difficult or impossible to be overcome by the enemy." Mr. Clouston gives in the text three examples of this group, namely, from Campbell's West Highland Stories, from Thorpe's Yule Tide Stories, and from the Kathá Sarit Ságara, and refers to three others in a note. These are quite sufficient to indicate the connection between the various Aryan narratives. But there are some very curious variants found in widely distant regions of this world, for which it seems to us impossible to account on the hypothesis of the Indian or Egyptian origin of folk-tales. A Kaffir story related by Theal, containing certainly much purely native matter, presents us with the ordinary incidents of this group in both forms in which they are found in Europe. The hero and heroine, running away, baffle pursuit by throwing down an egg, which becomes a mist, a millsack which becomes a sheet of water, a pot which becomes a thick darkness, and finally a stone which shoots up into an impassable barrier of rock. Another time the hero and