Page:The book of wonder voyages (1919).djvu/243

 of the Argonaut story—the coming of the wooer; the love of the hostile being's daughter; the tasks imposed on the wooer; the aid rendered by her daughter; the flight of the pair; the death, or destruction, of the hostile being—occur among the Greeks, the Lowland Scotch, the Kelts, the Russians, the Poles, the Algonquins, the Finns, the Malagasy and the Samoans. Besides these, some of the incidents, like the obstacles to pursuit, are found in Japan and Zululand, not to mention Norway. The most remarkable coincidence of all is that of the comb which is dropped by the pursued girl and forms an impenetrable thicket, which detains the pursuer. This is found so far away as Italy, Japan, and Samoa. It is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine that this peculiar incident was invented independently. Its occurrence in Samoa is especially noteworthy as this was only discovered by Europeans in 1722, and the form of the story in which it was collected by Turner shows traces of the cannibal period, before any European influence had become predominant. Mr. Lang in his paper does not definitely state that he is of opinion that all these stories emanated from a single center; but I gather from later statements of his that this is now his opinion. He certainly makes no attempt to determine what was that original center, or the roads by which it reached the various termini where variants of the story have been collected.

I will not rush in where Mr. Lang has feared to tread, and must content myself with pointing out the various possibilities of diffusion. After recent controversies, I think most of the English investigators of the Folk tale would agree that the common incidents in their present order were put together by a single imaginative creator. On the old theory of the original unity of the Aryan peoples, it would have been natural to assume that this early artist was an Ur-Aryan, and that all the Aryan peoples took the story with them on their migrations through Europe; but this view is now somewhat discredited by the advance