[201] Curtin, Creation Myths of Primitive America, p. xxi.
[202] Im Thurn, Indians of Guiana, 335; Landtman, Origin of Priesthood, 117.
[203] Primitive Manners and Customs, cap. i. "Some Savage Myths and Beliefs," and cap. viii., "Fairy Lore of Savages."
[204] Introd. to Hist. of Religion, 263. Of course I do not accept Mr. J. A. Stewart's "general remarks on the μυθολογία or story-telling myth" in his Myths of Plato, 4-17. All Mr. Stewart's research is literary in object and result, though he uses the materials of anthropology.
[205] H. H. Wilson, Rig Veda Sanhita, i. p. xvii.
[206] H. H. Wilson, Vishnu Purana, i. p. iv; Rig Veda Sanhita, i. p. xlv.
[207] Religion of the Semites, 19.
[208] Mr. Hartland passes rapidly in his opening chapter from the myth as primitive science to the myth as fairy tale, from the savage to the Celt (Science of Fairy Tales, pp. 1-5), and I do not think it is possible to make this leap without using the bridge which is to be constructed out of the differing positions occupied by the myth and the fairy tale.
[209] It will be interesting, I think, to preserve here one or two instances of the actual practice of telling traditional tales in our own country. Mr. Hartland has referred to the subject in his Science of Fairy Tales, but the following instances are additional to those he has noted, and they refer directly back to the living custom. They are all from Scotland, and refer to the early part of last century. "In former times, when families, owing to distance and other circumstances, held little intercourse with each other through the day, numbers were in the habit of assembling together in the evening in one house, and spending the time in relating the tales of wonder which had been handed down to them by tradition" (Kiltearn in Ross and Cromarty; Sinclair, Statistical Account of Scotland, xiv. 323). "In the last generation every farm and hamlet possessed its oral recorder of tale and song. The pastoral habits of the people led them to seek recreation in listening to, and in rehearsing the tales of other times; and the senachie and the bard were held in high esteem" (Inverness-shire, ibid., xiv. 168). "In the winter months, many of them are in the habit of visiting and spending the evenings in each other's houses in the different hamlets, repeating the songs of their native bard or listening to the legendary tales of some venerable senachie" (Durness in Sutherlandshire, ibid., xv. 95).
[210] W. H. R. Rivers, The Todas, 3-4.