story is told of Zeus: Zeus means sky, and the story is interpreted by
scholars as a sky myth. The modern interpreter forgets, first, that to
the myth-maker sky did not at all mean the same thing as it means to him.
Sky meant, not an airy, infinite, radiant vault, but a person, and, most
likely, a savage person. Secondly, the interpreter forgets that the tale
(say the tale of Zeus, Demeter, and the mutilated Ram) may have been
originally anonymous, and only later attributed to Zeus, as unclaimed
jests are attributed to Sheridan or Talleyrand. Consequently no heavenly
phenomena will be the basis and explanation of the story. If one thing
in mythology be certain, it is that myths are always changing masters,
that the old tales are always being told with new names. Where, for
example, is the value of a philological analysis of the name of Jason? As
will be seen in the essay 'A Far-travelled Tale,' the analysis of the
name of Jason is fanciful, precarious, disputed, while the essence of his
myth is current in Samoa, Finland, North America, Madagascar, and other
lands, where the name was never heard, and where the characters in the
story have other names or are anonymous.

For these reasons, and others too many to be adduced here, I have
ventured to differ from the current opinion that myths must be
interpreted chiefly by philological analysis of names. The system
adopted here is explained in the first essay, called 'The Method of
Folklore.' The name, Folklore, is not a good one, but 'comparative
mythology' is usually claimed exclusively by the philological
interpreters.

The second essay, 'The Bull-Roarer,' is intended to show that certain
peculiarities in the Greek mysteries occur also in the mysteries of
savages, and that on Greek soil they are survivals of savagery.