Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 5 1887.djvu/350

 342 such as dwarfs, hobgoblins, &c. These are the last refuge for the follower of the mythological theory, as these figures are said to be the old gods and goddesses dethroned and changed into satanical personages. As will be shown hereafter in my analysis of the constituent elements of the tales, far from being old or even aboriginal, nearly all are of foreign Christian, and thus also of modern, origin. Perhaps some traits may be older, but these are insignificant, and only a special inquiry made in the line of thought I shall indicate will help us to rescue them out of the surrounding sea of foreign elements

The next system of explaining the origin of fairy-tales is that known under the name of migration, which attempts to derive all fairy tales from India only, where they originated, and whence they wandered unchanged from land to land till they reached the western-most shores of Europe. The time of this migration is supposed to be about the tenth century. The foremost representative of this theory, the late Prof. Benfey, carried it out in his famous introduction to the German translation of the "Pantchatantra." Although I incline so far to the theory of migration as to believe that popular lore is in constant interchange between nations, I cannot accept the wide principle laid down by Benfey and his successors, that everything is imported, and that our European fairy-tales came as such and all of them, entirely developed, from India to Europe.

Benfey fell into the same fault of generalization, as the followers of the above-mentioned theory, of applying, namely, to the whole body of folk-lore the results true only of one branch; here novels and fabliaux can be traced back in historical and literary continuity to the Orient. But what may be true for these is not necessarily true also of tales, customs, superstitions, games of children, or nursery rhymes. For if we compare our fairy-tales with those of the ancient Indian literature, the alleged identity or similarity is far from being so clear as one would assume, accepting what was put forward by the followers of the migration theory. Such identity as exists is only with the modern collections of Indian tales, a fact which has hitherto been overlooked to the great damage of this study.

There might be found two or three old stories which can be compared with our tales; and if we limit the importation to this