eople, we may claim it as part of the
history of that particular people. It may be that the general story
has become specialised in this one case, or it may be that an entirely
new story has sprung out of the special case. But whichever be the
origin of such a story attached to a particular people, it must tell
us something of that people at a period when its history was being
made rather than recorded. What it tells may be very little, may not
lead up to anything very great or definite, so far as later history is
concerned; but that for the period to which it belongs it relates to
an episode worthy to have been kept in the memories of the descendants
of the chief actors in the events is the point to bear in mind.

There is one such story which belongs to English history. One of the
most famous of these youngest-son stories is that of Childe Rowland,
and Mr. Jacobs, on examining its incidents and details, suggests that
"our story may have a certain amount of historic basis and give a
record which history fails to give of the very earliest conflict of
races in these isles."[440] Mr. Jacobs gives good grounds for this
conclusion, and shows up a picture of earliest English history which
is certainly not contained elsewhere, and we are able by this means
to pass from that large group of youngest-son stories, which have
brought with them living testimony of an ancient institution of our
race in its oldest home, to the narrower but more direct example which
comes to us from events which happened just at the dawn of history in
our own land. It is not necessary to emphasise the importance of this
service to history at the instance of tradition, for it will be
obvious to every student that many a struggle must have remained
unrecorded and many a hero must have died unnamed in the events which
belong to the period of tribal conquest and settlement. And to have
still with us the far-off echo of these events is no slight
encouragement to an inquiry which has for its object the
reconstruction of the conditions under which such events took place.

This would be all the better understood if we could get a concrete
case for illustration, and, fortunately, this is possible by turning
to the evidence of India. "What we know of the manner in which the
states of Upper India were founded," says Sir Alfred Lyall,

"gives a very fair sample of the movements and changes
of the primitive world. When the dominant Rajput
fami