in the tricks whereby the wolf deceives his
victims; in the victory of the goat; in the disgorging of the kids
alive; and the punishment of the wolf (as of Cronus in Hesiod) by the
stone which he is obliged to admit into his system. In these events
there is nothing allegorical or mystical, no reference to sunrise or
storms. The crude ideas and incidents are of world-wide range, and suit
the fancy of the most backward nation.' The only thing in Grimm's tale
which differs materially from those of 'world-wide range' is the
clock-case--clearly a modern addition, but an item which forms an
essential factor in Cox's definition of the 'myth.'

So much by way of illustration; but dozens of tales might be produced,
all pointing the same way. This is to the belief that, although stories
have unquestionably been transmitted from race to race throughout the
ages, and so have become widely distributed over the world, all the
current nursery, or household, or folk, stories have not necessarily
been so transmitted from some one creative race of myth-makers. We have
just seen how an evidently modern interpolation (a clock-case) has come
to be regarded as an essential part of a myth, and it is surely easier
to believe that the other features are relics of some ancient customs of
which we have no record, than that they bear the ingenious references to
natural phenomena which the mythologists suppose.

Max Mueller holds that all the stories of princesses, imprisoned or
enchanted, and delivered by young lovers, 'can be traced back to
mythological tradition about the Spring being released from the bonds
of Winter.' But he requires, first, to have the names of the personages
of the story, because he traces the connection more by their etymology
than by the incidents of the narrative--of which more anon. With regard
to purely nursery or household tales, the question seems to resolve
itself pretty much into this: Are they the remains of an older and
higher mythology, or are they the foundations upon which the priests and
medicine-men and minstrels of later ages built their myths? Are they, in
short, surviving relics, or were they germs? The favourite scientific
theory adopts the former view; I incline to the latter. There are many
of the familiar folk-tales which it is impossible to explain, and there
are many, doubtless, which are in some sort fragments of the old
mythologies filtered to us through Greece. But, on the whole, it is more
reas