the history unknowingly contained in the legends is very
real, and is applied over and over again to such later events as by
force of circumstances become stamped upon the popular mind and thus
succeed in displacing the original. It would be an important
contribution to history to have these legends collected and examined
by a competent authority. They would be beacon lights of national
history preserved in legend.

It will be readily conceded, I think, that in attempting these
definitions of the various classes of tradition, and in illustrating
them from the records of man's life in various parts of the world, it
has been impossible for me to deal with certain points in the problem
before us. In particular I have not considered the favourite subject
of the diffusion of folk-tales. I do not believe in a general system
of diffusion, such a system, I mean, as would suffice to account for
the parallels to be found in almost all countries.[214] I think
diffusion occupies a very small part indeed of the problem, and that
it only takes place in late historical times. It is a large subject,
and I have virtually stated my answer to the theory of diffusion in
the definitions and classifications which I have ventured to put
forward. It may be considered by some that other facts in the
conditions of myth, folk-tale, and legend would not confirm the
general outline I have given of the three classes of tradition to
which I have applied these terms; and of course there are many side
issues in so great a problem. I would not urge the correctness of the
views I have put forward as applicable to every part of the world, or
to every phase in the history of tradition; but I would urge that in
the great centres of traditional life they are practically the only
means of arriving at the position occupied by tradition, and that in
all cases they form a working hypothesis upon which future inquirers
may well base their researches.

II

Of late years there have been placed alongside of the traditional
myth, folk-tale, and legend many other products of tradition--customs,
ceremonies, practices, and beliefs, and it has been argued, and argued
strongly and convincingly, that the tradition which has brought down
the saga and song as far-off echoes of an otherwise unrecorded past
has also brought down these other elements which must also belong to
the same distant past. This argument is now no longer seriously
disputed. But there still remains