Page:Transactions of the Second International Folk-Congress.djvu/62

 26 The details vary as the circumstances and habits of the peoples who tell the story; but the central ideas remain always the same. And alike the central ideas and the details are found to be as much m harmony with the creed, the habits, and the environment of the narrators, whether Karen, Tjame, Zulu, or Yurucare, as were the central idea and the details of the kindred tale of Cupid and Psyche with the creed, the habits, and the environment of the Thessalian crone into whose mouth Apuleius put it in the second century of the Christian era. On the dissemination theory it may not be surprising if the same story, carried from one tribe to another of North American Indians, all in nearly the same stage of civilisation, be found to agree with the customs and beliefs of them all, seeing that their societies are all organised on the same general plan, and the external conditions do not greatly differ. But I have ventured to bring before you two instances in which the family likeness of the variants is quite as great as in Dr. Boas, examples. In the one case, where there had been contact with a foreign nation known to possess the tale, the foreign influence was indeed traceable, but only in details not essential. In other respects the story contained nothing alien to the native mind; on the contrary, it reflected aboriginal ideas and habits. In the other case, the story is found in remote continents divided by many thousand miles of land and ocean. Whether it was really transported over these vast spaces, or, if so, from what centre, we have at present no means of knowing. What we do know is that the several versions of the story reflect the culture of the Zulu kraal, the Karen long-house, the open shed of the Yurucares (is the kinship of Cupid and Psyche close enough for me to add — and the classic city?), with the accuracy of entirely indigenous growths. I have not chosen these instances because I deemed them favourable illustrations of my argument. I think I could have alighted easily on many at least as favourable. But, having come across them in my recent reading undertaken for another purpose, they were really the most readily at hand. And I would claim that if widely diffused stories, thus taken as it were at random, yield upon examination just those traits of civilisation which mark the peoples among whom they are known, the probability is that a similar examination of other stories would give us parallel results. If so, then we may hereafter safely use a tradition