[101] Geiger, Hist. Sweden, 31, 32.
[102] Elton, Origins of English History, 92.
[103] Aubrey, Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme, 14.
[104] Nutt, Legend of the Holy Grail, 44.
[105] Gentleman's Magazine, 1850, i. 250-252.
[106] Journ. Ethnol. Soc., ii. 337.
[107] Elton's Origins, 92.
[108] Mr. Jacobs (Folklore, i. 405) objected to my interpretation of this story because—first, the Latin rhyme appearing in the Gaelic tale, the twelfth-century Latin story and the German inscription "tell for the origination of the story in one single place in historic times;" and, secondly, because a Kashmir story (Knowles' Folk-tales of Kashmir, 241), based on the same main incident, omits the minor incident of the mallet altogether. The answer to the first objection is that the Latin rhyme has been attached, in historic times, to the ancient folk-tale; and to the second objection, that the Kashmir story preserves the main incident of surrender of property upon reaching old age, and omits the more savage incident of killing, because the Kashmir people are in a stage of culture which still allowed of the surrender of property, but, like the Scandinavians, did not allow of the killing of the aged. Similarly, an English parallel to this form of the variant is preserved by De la Pryme in his Diary (Surtees Society), 162. It must be remembered that the Kashmiris occupy a land which is referred to by Herodotos (iii. 99-105) as in the possession of people who killed their aged (cf. Latham, Ethnology of India, 199); and if my reading of the evidence is correct, this is also the case of the Highland peasant.
[109] Dr. Pearson advocates statistical methods in his Chances of Death, ii. 58, 75-77, and shows by examples the value of them.
[110] MacCulloch, Childhood of Fiction: "Some of the things which in these old-world stories form their fascination, have had their origin in sordid fact and reality" (p. vii).