and revived or retained by the Ionians, an older and distinct stock of Pelasgian origin. I am unable to convince myself in this matter, not knowing how much of the refinement in the Homeric poems is due to the genius of the poet, who might ignore practices with which he was familiar. They may have been Pelasgo-Ionians, who derived Helen's birth from the Swan, or Homer may have chosen to slur over an Achæan legend, and so on in other cases; for example, as to the descent of the Myrmidons from Zeus in the shape of an Ant. On another point a word may be said. One has been accused of believing that identical popular tales, the same incident in the same sequence of plot, might arise simultaneously in savage imaginations in all parts of the world. In Custom and Myth it will be plain that I say nothing of the sort. The Far-Travelled Tale' is one instance chosen to show that such a story must probably have drifted, somehow, round the world. On the other hand, in 'Cupid and Psyche,' it is asserted that the central incident might be invented wherever the nuptial taboo on which it is based was recognised. The exact sequence of incidents in the 'Cupid and Psyche' of Apuleius, on the other hand, could probably only be invented once for all. But we find the central incident where we do not find the sequence of incidents which make up Cupid and Psyche.' A full statement of my ideas is prefixed to Miss Roalfe Cox's Cinderella (Folklore Society). As a rule, the incidents in Märchen are common to all races; an artistic combination of many of these in a plot must probably be due to a single imagination,

and the plot must have been diffused in the ways described in Custom and Myth. Independently evolved myths may closely resemble each other when they account for some natural phenomenon, or are based on some common custom. Wherever a sequence of such incidents is found in a distinct and artistic plot, we may provisionally assign diffusion from an original centre as that cause. Singular as

are the coincidences of fancy, it is unlikely that they ever produced exactly the same tale in lands which have never been in communication with each other. I am unable to conjecture why Mr. Jacobs, M. Cosquin, and probably other critics, regard me as maintaining that all similar tales in all countries. have been independently evolved. I have always allowed for the possibility both of diffusion and, to a certain extent, of coincidence, as in the Red Indian forms of Cupid and Psyche' and of 'The Dead Bride,' a shape of the story of Eurydice. Discussion would be simpler, if controversialists took the trouble to understand each other.

In the Report of the Folklore Congress of 1891 (p. 65) I find that I said 'the suggestion that exactly the same plot, in exactly the same shape, and with exactly the same incidents, can have been invented by several persons independently, seems to me inconceivable,' and on p. 74 I find M. Cosquin alleging that my opinion is the very reverse, followed by Mr. Jacobs (p. 85). I have tried to explain that I believe in no such exact coincidences of imagination, though how far precisely coincidence may go is a delicate question.

CUSTOM AND MYTH.

INTRODUCTION.

THOUGH SOME of the essays in this volume have appeared in various serials, the majority of them were written expressly for their present purpose, and they are now arranged in a designed order. During some years of study of Greek, Indian, and savage mythologies, I have become more and more impressed with a sense of the inadequacy of the prevalent method of comparative mythology. That method is based on the belief that myths are the result of a disease of language, as the pearl is the result of a disease of the oyster. It is argued that men at some period, or periods, spoke in a singular style of coloured and concrete language, and that their children retained the phrases of this language after losing hold of the original meaning. The consequence was the growth of myths about supposed persons, whose names had originally been mere 'appellations.' In conformity with this hypothesis the method of comparative mythology examines the proper names which occur in myths. The notion is that these names contain a key to the meaning of the story, and that, in

B