Page:Transactions of the Second International Folk-Congress.djvu/100

64 ideas. The kind reception given to the tale, and its wide diffusion through the whole world, seem to have been due solely to its power to agreeably impress the fancy of the listener.

In this discussion no attention has been paid to explanation of the elements out of which the tale was composed, such as the tasks and flight. These incidents occur also in other tales; they are not derived from the present story, but existed before the latter was constructed and entered into its composition. Of these elements some are perhaps derived from primitive belief, others from primitive custom; but whether they are explicable by one or the other has no relation to the diffusion of the tale, for reciters and hearers of the latter received these incidents as parts of a complicated whole, having no direct relation to tribal ideas and customs, though naturally and inevitably so altered as to present certain features characteristic of each community in which the story was told.

The origin and history of a folk-tale common to many countries, such as the one which has been the subject of discussion, may be figuratively represented by the illustration of a species of vegetable which has originated in an early civilisation at a time so remote that from the first moment of its discernible history it possesses a cultivated character. This vegetable, again, under the influence of civilisation, is differentiated into new varieties, arising in different localities, each one of which, on account of advantages which it appears to offer, may in its turn be introduced into distant regions, and even supersede the original out of which it was developed, this dissemination following the routes of commerce, and ordinarily proceeding from the more highly organised countries to those inferior in the scale of culture.

[Owing to the necessity of the case, the author of this article has not been able to revise the proof, and therefore requests indulgence for any errors which may in consequence appear in the text.]