Note 159.1 — Chapter XXI · THE STORY AS A WHOLE. THE PROBLEM OF ITS PLACE OF ORIGIN. CONCLUSION.

We cannot pursue the conjecture into the region of probabilities, because of the obvious confusion of the Albanian tale, and of the imperfect state of our knowledge with regard to local legends not taken up into Greek and Roman literature, and with regard to Egyptian and Babylonian cults. The Tuscan tale from Pratovecchio159.1 seems, however, to have descended in right line from the familiar version of Ovid and Lucian—not, that is to say, from their writings, but from the oral sources whence they drew—though on its way to us it has not passed wholly uncontaminated by other streams. But can we venture to assert the same either of the Irish, German, Swedish, and Russian tales which I have assigned to the Danae type; or of the various modern Italian and Greek stories wherein the hero’s birth is ascribed to entirely different causes? Of the latter, some are perhaps derived from local variants current in antiquity. Yet even to assume this will carry us but a little way towards the solution of the problem of origin of a märchen told as far afield as Ireland and Cambodia.