Note 178.1 — Chapter XXI · THE STORY AS A WHOLE. THE PROBLEM OF ITS PLACE OF ORIGIN. CONCLUSION.

It has been contended, and it may be thought, that we should look for evidence of transmission rather to the general identity and sequence of the main incidents than to the recurrence of trivial details. An able and well-known writer, criticising M. Bédier’s use of special accessories as a test of transmission, has lately traversed its validity as applied to folklore. “It is obviously derived,” he says, “from considerations current in literary criticism, as might be expected from M. Bédier’s training. His method is exactly the process by which literary critics prove the derivation of one species of mss. from an archetype, or affiliate a translation in one language to its original in another. Minute and unimportant accessories, e.g. the form of a proper name, are just the tests in such cases. But with oral tradition, with transmission in folklore, I would exactly reverse the process and adopt M. Bédier’s test”—namely, similarity in the general idea—“as a proof of such transmission.”178.1