Popular Tales from the Norse | Page 7

inquiry, based upon casual analogy,
may bring itself to believe, and even to fancy it has proved.
These general observations, then, and this rapid bird's eye view, may
suffice to show the common affinity which exists between the Eastern
and Western Aryans; between the Hindoo on the one hand, and the
nations of Western Europe on the other. That is the fact to keep steadily
before our eyes. We all came, Greek, Latin, Celt, Teuton, Slavonian,
from the East, as kith and kin, leaving kith and kin behind us; and after
thousands of years the language and traditions of those who went East,
and those who went West, bear such an affinity to each other, as to
have established, beyond discussion or dispute, the fact of their descent
from a common stock.

DIFFUSION
This general affinity established, we proceed to narrow our subject to
its proper limits, and to confine it to the consideration, first, of Popular
Tales in general, and secondly, of those Norse Tales in particular,
which form the bulk of this volume.
In the first place, then, the fact which we remarked on setting out, that
the groundwork or plot of many of these tales is common to all the
nations of Europe, is more important, and of greater scientific interest,

than might at first appear. They form, in fact, another link in the chain
of evidence of a common origin between the East and West, and even
the obstinate adherents of the old classical theory, according to which
all resemblances were set down to sheer copying from Greek or Latin
patterns, are now forced to confess, not only that there was no such
wholesale copying at all, but that, in many cases, the despised
vernacular tongues have preserved the common traditions far more
faithfully than the writers of Greece and Rome. The sooner, in short,
that this theory of copying, which some, even besides the classicists,
have maintained, is abandoned, the better, not only for the truth, but for
the literary reputation of those who put it forth. No one can, of course,
imagine that during that long succession of ages when this mighty
wedge of Aryan migration was driving its way through that prehistoric
race, that nameless nationality, the traces of which we everywhere find
underlying the intruders in their monuments and implements of bone
and stone--a race akin, in all probability, to the Mongolian family, and
whose miserable remnants we see pushed aside, and huddled up in the
holes and corners of Europe, as Lapps, and Finns, and Basques--No one,
we say, can suppose for a moment, that in that long process of contact
and absorption, some traditions of either race should not have been
caught up and adopted by the other. We know it to be a fact with regard
to their language, from the evidence of philology, which cannot lie; and
the witness borne by such a word as the Gothic Atta for father, where a
Mongolian has been adopted in preference to an Aryan word, is
irresistible on this point; but that, apart from such natural assimilation,
all the thousand shades of resemblance and affinity which gleam and
flicker through the whole body of popular tradition in the Aryan race,
as the Aurora plays and flashes in countless rays athwart the Northern
heaven, should be the result of mere servile copying of one tribe's
traditions by another, is a supposition as absurd as that of those good
country-folk, who, when they see an Aurora, fancy it must be a great
fire, the work of some incendiary, and send off the parish engine to put
it out. No! when we find in such a story as the Master-thief traits,
which are to be found in the Sanscrit Hitopadesa [4], and which
reminds us at once of the story of Rhampsinitus in Herodotus; which
are also to be found in German, Italian, and Flemish popular tales, but
told in all with such variations of character and detail, and such

adaptations to time and place, as evidently show the original working
of the national consciousness upon a stock of tradition common to all
the race, but belonging to no tribe of that race in particular; and when
we find this occurring not in one tale but in twenty, we are forced to
abandon the theory of such universal copying, for fear lest we should
fall into a greater difficulty than that for which we were striving to
account.
To set this question in a plainer light, let us take a well-known instance;
let us take the story of William Tell and his daring shot, which is said
to have been made in the year 1307. It is just possible that the feat
might be historical, and, no doubt, thousands believe it for the sake of