Note 184.1 — Chapter XXI · THE STORY AS A WHOLE. THE PROBLEM OF ITS PLACE OF ORIGIN. CONCLUSION.

Such may seem an impotent conclusion of the inquiry. Disappointing it must be admitted to be; and, so far as the results of research as to one story may enable us to forecast the results of research as to others, it favours the view of those students who declare that the hope of tracking a folktale to its pristine home is illusory, and the attempt a waste of time. If a story which must have taken up its crucial incident so late in civilisation cannot be assigned to its primitive tellers, how can we hope to find the birth-places of other tales, all whose elements are rooted in a distant and dateless savagery? Henceforth, if it be true, as Mr. Jacobs alleges, that “the problem of diffusion is of prior urgency to that of origin”184.1—that is to say, if we cannot employ the tales as evidence of belief until we know whence they come—it seems likely that we shall have to deny ourselves the use of this evidence, and rely wholly upon evidence of a more direct character. But is the contention true? I have elsewhere tried to give some grounds for thinking that we need not wait to know where a tale was first conceived ere we use it as evidence of the belief of the peoples who tell it.184.2 And I would fain hope that fresh and more cogent reasons to the same effect may be gathered from the foregoing pages. In this connection I should like to insist on the fact that these evidences of belief are to be found, not in the tale as a whole, but in the separate incidents of which it is composed. To such, and even lesser details, our attention must be directed, if we would avail ourselves of the full advantage which the study of folktales gives us in investigating the early ideas of mankind.