92. The Magic Flight
There is one folk-lore plot with a distribution that leaves little doubt as to its diffusion from a single source. This is the incident known as the Magic Flight or Obstacle Pursuit. It recounts how the hero, when pursued, throws behind him successively a whetstone, a comb, and a vessel of oil or other liquid. The stone turns into a mountain or precipice; the comb into a forest or thicket; the liquid into a lake or river. Each of these obstacles impedes the pursuer and contributes to the hero’s final escape. This incident has been found in stories told by the inhabitants of every continent except South America. Its distribution and probable spread are shown in [Fig. 27].
While no two of the tales or myths containing the episode of the Magic Flight are identical, there can be no serious doubt as to a common source of the incident because of the co-existence of the three separate items that make it up. If a people in Asia and one in America each knew a story of a person who to impede a pursuer spilt water on the ground which magically grew into a vast lake, it would be dogmatic to insist on this as proof of a historical connection between the two far separated stories. Belief in the virtue of magic is world-wide, and it is entirely conceivable that from this common soil of magical beliefs the same episode might repeatedly have sprouted quite independently. The same reasoning would apply to the incident of the transformation of the stone and of the comb, as long as they occurred separately. The linking of the three items, however, enormously decreases the possibility of any two peoples having hit upon them separately. It would be stretching coincidence pretty far to believe that each people independently invented the triple complex. It is also significant that the number of impeding obstacles is almost always three. In the region of western Asia and Europe where the tale presumably originated, three is the number most frequently employed in magic, ritual, and folk-lore. Among the American Indians, however, three is scarcely ever thus used, either four or five replacing it according to the custom pattern of the particular tribe. Nevertheless, several American tribes depart from their usual pattern and mention only three obstacles in telling this story.
This instance introduces a consideration that is of growing importance in culture history determinations. If a trait is composed of several elements which stand in no necessary relation to each other, and these several elements recur among distinct or remote peoples in the same combination, whereas on the basis of mere accident it could be expected that the several elements would at times combine and at other times crop out separately, one can be reasonably sure of the real identity and common origin of the complex trait. When a trait is simple, it is more difficult to be positive that the apparent resemblance amounts to identity. Such doubt applies for instance to isolated magical practices. A custom found among separate nations, such as sprinkling water to produce rain, may be the result of an importation of the idea from one people to another. Or again it may represent nothing more than a specific application of the assumed principle that an act similar to a desired effect will produce that effect. This magical belief is so broad, and so ramifying in its exemplifications, as to become almost impossible to use as a criterion. The essential basis of magic may conceivably have been developed at a single culture center in the far distant past and have been disseminated thence over the whole world. Or again, for all that it is possible to prove, magic beliefs may really be rooted instinctively in the human mind and grow thence over and over again with inevitability. There seems no present way of determining which interpretation is correct.