ason legend are
familiar where no Greek word was ever spoken. Finally, the names in
common use among savages are usually derived from natural phenomena,
often from clouds, sky, sun, dawn. If, then, a name in a myth can be
proved to mean cloud, sky, sun, or what not (and usually one set of
scholars find clouds where others see the dawn), we must not instantly
infer that the myth is a nature-myth. Though, doubtless, the heroes in
it were never real people, the names are as much common names of real
people in the savage state, as Smith and Brown are names of civilised
men.

For all these reasons, but chiefly because of the fact that stories
are usually anonymous at first, that names are added later, and that
stories naturally crystallise round any famous name, heroic, divine,
or human, the process of analysis of names is most precarious and
untrustworthy. A story is told of Zeus: Zeus means sky, and the story
is interpreted by scholars as a sky myth. The modern interpreter
forgets, first, that to the myth-maker sky did not at all mean the
same thing as it means to him. Sky meant, not an airy, infinite,
radiant vault, but a person, and, most likely, a savage person.
Secondly, the interpreter forgets that the tale (say the tale of Zeus,
Demeter, and the mutilated Ram) may have been originally anonymous,
and only later attributed to Zeus, as unclaimed jests are attributed
to Sheridan or Talleyrand. Consequently no heavenly phenomena will be
the basis and explanation of the story. If one thing in mythology be
certain, it is that myths are always changing masters, that the old
tales are always being told with new names. Where, for example, is the
value of a philological analysis of the name of Jason? As will be seen
in the essay 'A Far-Travelled Tale,' the analysis of the name of Jason
is fanciful, precarious, disputed, while the essence of his myth is
current in Samoa, Finland, North America, Madagascar, and other lands,
where the name was never heard, and where the characters in the story
have other names or are anonymous.

For these reasons, and others too many to be adduced here, I have
ventured to differ from the current opinion that myths must be
interpreted chiefly by philological analysis of names. The system
adopted here is explained in the first essay, called 'The Method of
Folklore.' The name, Folklore, is not a good one, but 'comparative
mythology' is usually claimed exclusively by the philological
interpreters.