Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 5 1887.djvu/177

Rh his friends, hurrying out of the reach of cannibals, are assisted by "a little man," who turns a big stone into a hut for them, while for their pursuers it remains a stone whereon they break their teeth in vain. Dr. Steere, in a paper read before the Ethnological Society some years ago, made mention of a story current among the Yaos on the east of Africa, in which the hero escapes by setting his pursuer dancing every time he nearly comes up to him, and so getting each time a fresh start. It is explained that the pursuer was one of a number of creatures who are believed unable to resist the inclination to dance when they are played to, and who in dancing gradually come to pieces, every separate piece dancing until the music stops, when the limbs slowly come together again. The Tupis of Brazil have a tale of a youth fleeing from an ogress, but aided and instructed by her daughter. He is warned from time to time of the demon's approach by hearing the birds in the forest sing "Kan, kan, kan, kan," and makes friends, first with apes, and then with serpents, to hide him from her. The Roman Catholic missionary Petitot found among two different tribes of British North America a very interesting variant in which (conversely to the ordinary story) the pursuer raises, by magic, obstacles in front of the fugitives. These obstacles,—a mountain, a great lake, an abyss,—are overcome by the superior magic of the hero. In all these accounts the leading idea is one and the same, but each of them differs according to the circumstances and stage of civilisation of the people among whom they are told. The truth is that folk-tales have their root in nothing less than the nature of the human intellect. They do not owe their existence to one race, or to one climate or state of culture. Certain forms of them may, through special advantages, be transmitted from one country to another; but even they, as a rule, meet with indigenous growths of a similar character, with which they mingle freely, and produce many of the wild varieties we are so familiar with in western Europe.

It will therefore be seen that, while agreeing with Mr. Clouston in asserting a common origin for the group of stories to which we have referred, we can by no means admit that that origin is to be sought for in any one age or land, and still less that one body of literature, however remarkable, contains it. The existence of the variants we