sons who must be told
of a death in the family. Their myths are still not wholly out of
concord with their habitual view of a world in which an old woman may
become a hare. As soon as learned Jesuits like Pere Lafitau began to
understand their savage flocks, they said, 'These men are living in
Ovid's Metamorphoses.' They found mythology in situ! Hence mythologists
now study mythology in situ--in savages and in peasants, who till very
recently were still in the mythopoeic stage of thought. Mannhardt made
this idea his basis. Mr. Max Muller says, {0d} very naturally, that I
have been 'popularising the often difficult and complicated labours of
Mannhardt and others.' In fact (as is said later), I published all my
general conclusions before I had read Mannhardt. Quite independently I
could not help seeing that among savages and peasants we had mythology,
not in a literary hortus siccus, but in situ. Mannhardt, though he
appreciated Dr. Tylor, had made, I think, but few original researches
among savage myths and customs. His province was European folklore. What
he missed will be indicated in the chapter on 'The Fire-Walk'--one
example among many.

But this kind of mythology in situ, in 'the unrestrained utterances of
the people,' Mr. Max Muller tells us, is no province of his. 'I saw it
was hopeless for me to gain a knowledge at first hand of innumerable
local legends and customs;' and it is to be supposed that he distrusted
knowledge acquired by collectors: Grimm, Mannhardt, Campbell of Islay,
and an army of others. 'A scholarlike knowledge of Maori or Hottentot
mythology' was also beyond him. We, on the contrary, take our Maori lore
from a host of collectors: Taylor, White, Manning ('The Pakeha Maori'),
Tregear, Polack, and many others. From them we flatter ourselves that we
get--as from Grimm, Mannhardt, Islay, and the rest--mythology in situ. We
compare it with the dry mythologic blossoms of the classical hortus
siccus, and with Greek ritual and temple legend, and with Marchen in the
scholiasts, and we think the comparisons very illuminating. They have
thrown new light on Greek mythology, ritual, mysteries, and religion.
This much we think we have already done, though we do not know Maori, and
though each of us can hope to gather but few facts from the mouths of
living peasants.

Examples of the results of our method will be found in the following
pages. Thus, if the myth of the fire-stealer in Greece