he
terms of the northern poem,

"Laid fences,
Enriched the plough lands,
Tended swine,
Herded goats,
Dug peat."[438]

Unfortunately the institution of the tribe has never been properly
studied by the great authorities in history, and students are left
without guidance in this important matter. And yet in any attempt to
get back to the earliest period of history in lands governed by an
Aryan-speaking people we must proceed, can only proceed, on the basis
of the tribe, and it is the failure to understand this which has made
so much early history unsatisfactory and inconclusive and compels us
to the conclusion that the master-hand is still needed to rewrite in
terms of tribal history all that has been written in terms merely of
political history.

If, however, history from the written records is thus at fault, so too
is history from the traditional records. No systematic effort has been
made to treat the traditional story or the traditional custom and
belief as part of the tribal history of our race, and yet in the few
cases where it has been so treated the results are obviously
satisfactory. I can illustrate the value of this point of view by an
example drawn from the period which witnessed the earliest struggles
of our race. I think with Mr. Keary that in those German stories
"which delight above all things in that portrait of the youngest son
of the house--he is the youngest of three--who is left behind despised
and neglected when his brothers go forth to seek their fortunes," we
have traces of a veritable fact, of an historical condition where the
elder sons actually went forth to conquest and to settlement and the
youngest son remained in the original home as the hearth-child.[439]
The position of hearth-child, surviving as it does in our law of
Borough English, is of great significance, and that we can by the aid
of tradition reach a state of society which gave birth to it is a
point of the greatest importance, even if we could go no further. But
there is a stage beyond it. The majority of these youngest-son
stories relate to events not to be identified with any particular
tribe or people, but which belong to all the tribes and peoples whose
course of conquest and settlement took the common form. But if apart
from these all-world stories there exist stories, or if there be but
one story which has become identified with an episode, a person, or a
place belonging to a particular p