Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 5 1887.djvu/348

 340 migration; thirdly, the prehistoric, and I could add as many theories more as there are collectors of fairy-tales, each of whom has his own explanation and view of the matter.

In order to decide this controversial point, I will for once adopt the methods of chemistry, and ask: Can we now-a-days make a fairy-tale? Or, as the result obtained in this way might appear doubtful to some who would detect its artificial nature, I will put the question thus: Can we watch the rise and growth of a fairy or popular tale in modern times, and pursue it from the time when it was no popular tale through all the vicissitudes and changes it underwent, till it became a genuine popular tale, gathered afterwards from the lips of the illiterate? If we are able to do this, then I think we may well attempt to explain in a similar way all, or nearly all, other fairy-tales, especially when the conditions are the same as those of the tale studied.

The next step would be to ascertain how this change was effected? what parts were eliminated in this process, and what elements were introduced? The last question would then be: Is the story a genuine, national, aboriginal, or a foreign story, one introduced in historical times? and further, whence are the elements derived? Are they genuine, or do they owe their existence also to some other influence, which can be traced back to its origin and cradle? Before I enter upon the fuller development of this my view, I will first meet the other now prevailing mythological or prehistoric one, which sees in the fairy tales chips from old mythology, preserved under this disguise, and thus helping us to reconstruct the forgotten faith of—of whom? Here begins the real difficulty, for nearly all the European fairy tales and some of their counterparts in different countries and amongst different races of mankind bear such a striking similarity that we must admit an absolute mythological unity for all mankind,—a thing which nobody can take seriously, seeing that the older an element is, the more it differs from primitive elements, in another country or at any distance of time. I take as a best example language, which, even in the different branches of the Indo-European race, offers such variety that the primitive unity passed unobserved for centuries, and only the philologist is able