Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 6 1888.djvu/221

Rh Three Wishes," "The Sleeping Beauty," "Little Red Riding Hood," "Blue Beard," "Puss in Boots," "Toads and Diamonds," "Cinderella," "Riquet of the Tuft," and "Hop o' my Thumb." Mr. Lang's method is too well-known to need detailing here, but suffice it to say that he applies it successfully to show that the true source of Perrault's tales was tradition. Of all the studies we think that on "Puss in Boots" the least satisfactory. Mr. Lang lays stress upon the arguments that wealth being an element in the tale it could not have originated among people in a savage condition of society; that a moral being found in the majority of instances, particularly the Zanzibar variant, it was originally invented at one place by one author "for a purpose"; that the totemistic evidence which almost accidentally is supplied from Arabia must not argue for the tale being originally "a heroic myth of an Arab tribe with a gazelle for a totem." Against these propositions it may be argued, in the first place, that wealth is a relative, not an absolute term, and there is wealth and success among savage societies as among more civilized, particularly when it is found by the adventurer, not in his own tribe but in a neighbouring one; any one who follows the events in savage politics knows that a little king sometimes rises who promotes his own tribe to a foremost position, amongst its neighbours. Secondly, the evidence as to tales with or without the moral is not complete, as Mr. Hartland has pointed out in the Archæological Review tales overlooked by Mr. Lang which do not contain morals, and on this topic much more evidence is required before accepting even Mr. Lang's cautiously-worded position. Thirdly, there seems much in the animal incidents of the story which may be properly compared with incidents in other tales giving exactly the same class of ideas. But like all Mr. Lang's work in this line this book is a powerful addition to the study of Folk-lore, and its views are not to be lightly rejected or criticised.

The raciest of all the books of Herodotus was Englished by one of the raciest of translators (whoever B. R. of 1584 was), and is now