Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 5 1887.djvu/356

 348 as medical cures and charms and amulets come on the crest of a mighty cultural wave, and the study of the decisions of the various councils in Orient and afterwards in Occident show us clearly their steady spread over the vast area occupied now by them, and the means employed to eradicate them, the lecturing and prohibiting from the pulpit have done more to propagate them, as they were thus brought continually to the knowledge of the masses.

I could easily increase the number of sources for the second and accidental element which enters in the composition of a fairy tale, showing clearly that it is independent of the former and is only afterwards used, when the change from tale (conte) to fairy-tale is undertaken.

This reveals to us the mechanism of how the construction is performed, and enables us now to study and pursue the origin of the fairy-tales from a point of view totally different to those accepted hitherto.

The proof of this historical theory as I term it would be to show that the facts correspond entirely with the hypothetical and theoretical statement.

We have at hand not only the positive, but also the negative proof, viz., that whenever the fairy-tale is divested of its array, it turns back to its original plot. I begin with this as it is, it does not want an elaborate development, and it gives us the clue for the assertion uttered now very often and not explained, that the fairy-tales are fast vanishing. Do they vanish indeed, or are they undergoing a change which can be detected only by an exact comparison between fairy-tales gathered from less cultured countries, with those gathered in countries where modern critical knowledge and better judgment as to the causes of natural phenomena is much mr>re general? The difference to be observed between the two is, that we witness just the change noticed above. The accessorial element based upon medieval knowledge and vague poetical ideas gives way to more accurate and less fanciful descriptions. The fairy-tale loses its supernatural character and becomes again the fable it has been before. We need only compare the Contes Lorraines with Russian or Albanian fairy-tales to mark this decided and distinct difference.