op. Bulg._, p. 172.

[74] _Lectures on Language_, Second Series, p. 41.

[75] J. A. Farrer, _Primitive Manners_, p. 202, quoting Seeman.

[76] Sebillot, _Contes Pop. de la Haute-Bretagne_, p. 183.

[77] Gervase of Tilbury.

[78] Kuhn, _Herabkunft_, p. 92. See also _South African Journal of
Folklore_, May, 1879, p. 46: 'As a rule, the bridegroom never sees his
bride.'

[79] _Chips_, ii. 251.

[80] _Kitchi Gami_, p. 105.

[81] Dalton's _Ethnol. of Bengal_, pp. 165, 166.

[82] Taylor, _New Zealand_, p. 143.

[83] Liebrecht gives a Hindoo example, _Zur Volkskunde_, p. 239.

[84] _Cymmrodor_, iv. pt. ii.

[85] _Prim. Cult._, i. 140.

[86] _Primitive Manners_, p. 256.

[87] See Meyer, _Gandharven-Kentauren_, Benfey, _Pantsch._, i. 263.

[88] _Selected Essays_, i. 411.

[89] _Callaway_, p. 63.

[90] _Ibid._, p. 119.

_A FAR-TRAVELLED TALE._

A modern novelist has boasted that her books are read 'from Tobolsk to
Tangiers.' This is a wide circulation, but the widest circulation in
the world has probably been achieved by a story whose author, unlike
Ouida, will never be known to fame. The tale which we are about to
examine is, perhaps, of all myths the most widely diffused, yet there
is no ready way of accounting for its extraordinary popularity. Any
true 'nature-myth,' any myth which accounts for the processes of
nature or the aspects of natural phenomena, may conceivably have been
invented separately, wherever men in an early state of thought
observed the same facts, and attempted to explain them by telling a
story. Thus we have seen that the earlier part of the myth of Cronus
is a nature-myth, setting forth the cause of the separation of Heaven
and Earth. Star-myths, again, are everywhere similar, because men who
believed all nature to be animated and personal, accounted for the
grouping of constellations in accordance with these crude beliefs.[91]
Once more, if a story like that of 'Cupid and Psyche' be found among
the most diverse races, the distribution becomes intelligible if the
myth was invented to illustrate or enforce a widely prevalent custom.
But in the following story no such explanation is even provisionally
acceptable.

The gist of the tale (which has many different 'openings,' and
conclusions in different places) may be stated thus: A young man is
brought to the home of a hostile animal, a giant, cannibal, wizard, or
a malevolent king. He is put by his unfriendly host to various