The close resemblances of undeveloped Greek and Mexican and other early artistic work are interesting, but may be accounted for by similarity of materials, of instruments, of suggestions from natural objects, and of inexperience in design. The selections of similar situations and of similar patterns into which these are interwoven in märchen, by Greeks, Huarochiris of Peru, and Samoans or Eskimos, is much more puzzling to account for.
Grimm gives some examples in which he thinks that the ideas, and their collocations in the story, can only have originally occurred to one mind, once for all. How is the wide distribution of such a story to be accounted for? Grimm first admits "as rare exceptions the probability of a story's passing from one people to another, and firmly rooting itself in foreign soil". But such cases, he says, are "one or two solitary exceptions," whereas the diffusion of stories which, in his opinion, could only have been invented once for all is an extensive phenomenon. He goes on to say, "We shall be asked where the outermost lines of common property in stories begin, and how the lines of affinity are gradated". His answer was not satisfactory even to himself, and the additions to our knowledge have deprived it of any value. "The outermost lines are coterminous with those of the great race which is called Indo-Germanic." Outside of the Indo-Germanic, or "Aryan" race, that is to say, are found none of the märchen which are discovered within the borders of that race. But Grimm knew very well himself that this was an erroneous belief. "We see with amazement in such of the stories of the Negroes of Bornu and the Bechuanas (a wandering tribe in South Africa) as we have become acquainted with an undeniable connection with the German ones, while at the same time their peculiar composition distinguishes them from these." So Grimm, though he found "no decided resemblance" in North American stories, admitted that the boundaries of common property in marchen did include more than the "Indo-Germanic" race. Bechuanas, and Negroes, and Finns, as he adds, and as Sir George Dasent saw,* are certainly within the fold.
* Popular Tales from the Norse, 1859, pp. liv., lv.
There William Grimm left the question in 1856. His tendency apparently was to explain the community of the marchen on the hypothesis that they were the original common store of the undivided Aryan people, carried abroad in the long wanderings of the race. But he felt that the presence of the marchen among Bechuanas, Negroes and Finns was not thus to be explained. At the same time he closed the doors against a theory of borrowing, except in "solitary exceptions," and against the belief in frequent, separate and independent evolution of the same story in various unconnected regions. Thus Grimm states the question, but does not pretend to have supplied its answer.
The solutions offered on the hypothesis that the marchen are exclusively Aryan, and that they are the detritus or youngest and latest forms of myths, while these myths are concerned with the elemental phenomena of Nature, and arose out of the decay of language, have been so frequently criticised that they need not long detain us.* The most recent review of the system is by M. Cosquin.** In place of repeating objections which have been frequently urged by the present writer, an abstract of M. Cosquin's reasons for differing from the "Aryan" theory of Von Hahn may be given. Voh Hahn was the collector and editor of stories from the modern Greek,*** and his work is scholarly and accomplished. He drew up comparative tables showing the correspondence between Greek and German märchen on the one side, and Greek and Teutonic epics and higher legends or sagas on the other. He also attempted to classify the stories in a certain number of recurring formula or plots. Lin Von Hahn's opinion, the stories were originally the myths of the undivided Aryan people in its central Asian home. As the different branches scattered and separated, they carried with them their common store of myths, which were gradually worn down into the detritus of popular stories, "the youngest form of the myth". The same theory appeared (in 1859) in Mr. Max Muller's Chips from a German Workshop**** The undivided Aryan people possessed, in its mythological and proverbial phraseology, the seeds or germs, more or less developed, which would nourish, under any sky, into very similar plants—that is, the popular stories.
* See our Introduction to Mrs. Hunt's translation of Grimm's
Household Tales.
** Contes Populaire de Lorraine, Paris, 1886, pp. i., xv.
*** Grieschische und Albanesische Marchen, 1864.
**** Vol. ii. p. 226.
Against these ideas M. Cosquin argues that if the Aryan people before its division preserved the myths only in their earliest germinal form, it is incredible that, when the separated branches had lost touch of each other, the final shape of their myths, the märchen, should have so closely resembled each other as they do. The Aryan theory (as it may be called for the sake of brevity) rejects, as a rule, the idea that tales can, as a rule, have been borrowed, even by one Aryan people from another.* "Nursery tales are generally the last things to be borrowed by one nation from another."** Then, says M. Cosquin, as the undivided Aryan people had only the myths in their least developed state, and as the existing peasantry have only the detritus of these myths—the märchen—and as you say borrowing is out of the question, how do you account for a coincidence like this? In the Punjaub, among the Bretons, the Albanians, the modern Greeks and the Russians we find a conte in which a young man gets possession of a magical ring. This ring is stolen from him, and recovered by the aid of certain grateful beasts, whom the young man has benefited. His foe keeps the ring in his mouth, but the grateful mouse, insinuating his tail into the nose of the thief, makes him sneeze, and out comes the magical ring!
* Cox, Mythol. of Aryan Nations, i. 109.
** Max Müller, Chips, ii. 216.
Common sense insists, says M. Cosquin, that this detail was invented once for all. It must have first occurred, not in a myth, but in a conte or märchen, from which all the others alike proceed. Therefore, if you wish the idea of the mouse and the ring and the sneeze to be a part of the store of the undivided Aryans, you must admit that they had contes, märchen, popular stories, what you call the detritus of myths, as well as myths themselves, before they left their cradle in Central Asia. "Nos ancetres, les peres des nations europeennes, auraient, de cette facon, emporte dans leurs fourgons la collection complete de contes Ibleus actuels." In short, if there was no borrowing, myths have been reduced (on the Aryan theory) to the condition of detritus, to the diamond dust of mar-chen, before the Aryan people divided. But this is contrary to the hypothesis.
M. Cosquin does not pause here. The märchen—mouse, ring, sneeze and all—is found among non-Aryan tribes, "the inhabitants of Mardin in Mesopotamia and the Kariaines of Birmanie".* Well, if there was no borrowing, how did the non-Aryan peoples get the story?