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 _Maerchen_
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