Myth, Ritual And Religion, Vol. 2 (of 2)Lang, Andrew
Religion
Myth, Ritual And Religion, Vol. 2 (of 2)
Lang, Andrew
Myth; Mythology; Religion; Rites and ceremonies
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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