Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 5 1887.djvu/349

 Rh to trace the European languages back to the same root. The fairy-tales are, more or less, entirely the same, the changes being relatively slight, when compared with those which differentiate one language from another.

Unless we admit a remarkable stability for tales and mythology alone (amidst the great and sweeping revolutions the nations of Europe underwent in the course of centuries), and unless this unity of mythology is accounted for, the similarity, or, better, identity of fairy tales remains a puzzle.

But even admitting the unity of mythology, this could only serve to explain the fairy tales of the ancients, if we had any, which is not the case; whilst new nations arose in Europe out of the mixture and amalgamation during the great migration period and throughout the Middle Ages.

How could these new nations quite different in creed, as also in race (Turanians and Aryans) come by amalgamation to just the same mythological results and to the same system of mythology possessed by their predecessors?

To say again, as some do, that fairy tales are the primitive property of mankind is now impossible, since apart from the undeniable fact that, except two or three Asiatic tales (as Amor and Psyche, &c.), no old tale is mentioned in classical literature. I do not now speak of the Egyptian, as I am confining myself to the origin of European tales, which perhaps, when the mechanism of their development is shown, may throw some light also upon oriental tales. As I have said, we have no trace of ancient tales in Europe; on the other hand, the great similarity between the tales compels us to dismiss theories as to their primitive origin; and, instead of seeing in fairy tales remnants of old, forgotten mythology, I see in them the last and modern development of folk-lore. The modern origin explains why they are so much like each other, as in the case with the fabliaux, novels, and jests, current in Europe from a fixed date, and now common property of all nations, although brought to Europe at a well ascertained period and dispersed only during the last five or six centuries.

In fairy tales we not seldom come across supernatural personages,