light upon the primitive
psychology of the Aryan peoples. Benfey's researches were followed up
by E. Cosquin who, in the elaborate notes to his _Contes de Lorraine_,
Paris, 1886, largely increased the evidence both for the common
European popularity of many of the tales and incidents as well as for
the parallels to be found in Oriental collections.

Still a third theory to account for the similarity of folk-tale
incidents was started by James A. Farrer and elaborated by Andrew Lang
in connection with the general movement initiated by Sir Edward Tylor
to explain mythology and superstition by the similar processes of
savage psychology at definite stages of primitive culture. In
introductions to Perrault and Grimm and elsewhere, Andrew Lang
pointed out the similarity of some of the incidents of folk
tales--speaking of animals, transference of human feeling to inanimate
objects and the like--with the mental processes of contemporary
savages. He drew the conclusion that the original composers of fairy
tales were themselves in a savage state of mind and, by inference,
explained the similarities found in folk tales as due to the
similarity of the states of minds. In a rather elaborate controversy
on the subject between Mr. Lang and myself, carried through the
transactions of the Folk-Lore Congress of 1891, the introduction to
Miss Roalfe Cox's "Cinderella," and in various numbers of "Folk-Lore,"
I urged the improbability of this explanation as applied to the
_plots_ of fairy tales. Similar states of mind might account for
similar incidents arising in different areas independently, but not
for whole series of incidents artistically woven together to form a
definite plot which must, I contended, arise in a single artist mind.
The similarities in plot would thus be simply due to borrowing from
one nation to another, though incidents or series of incidents might
be inserted or omitted during the process. Mr. Lang ultimately yielded
this point and indeed insisted that he had never denied the
possibility of the transmission of complete folk-tale formulae from one
nation and language to another.

During all this discussion as to the causes of the similarity of
folk-tale plots no attempt has been made to reconstitute any of these
formulae in their original shape. Inquirers have been content to point
out the parallelisms to be found in the various folk-tale collections,
and of course these parallelisms have bred and mustered with the