bride. The maiden of Pohjola loses her heart to Ilmarinen, and, by her
aid, he bridles the wolf and bear, ploughs a field of adders with a
plough of gold, and conquers the gigantic pike that swims in the Styx of
Finnish mythology. After this point the story is interrupted by a long
sequel of popular bridal songs, and, in the wandering course of the
rather aimless epic, the flight and its incidents have been forgotten, or
are neglected. These incidents recur, however, in the thread of somewhat
different plots. We have seen that they are found in Japan, among the
Eskimo, among the Bushmen, the Samoyeds, and the Zulus, as well as in
Hungarian, Magyar, Celtic, and other European household tales.

The conclusion appears to be that the central part of the Jason myth is
incapable of being explained, either as a nature-myth, or as a myth
founded on a disease of language. So many languages could not take the
same malady in the same way; nor can we imagine any series of natural
phenomena that would inevitably suggest this tale to so many diverse
races.

We must suppose, therefore, either that all wits jumped and invented the
same romantic series of situations by accident, or that all men spread
from one centre, where the story was known, or that the story, once
invented, has drifted all round the world. If the last theory be
approved of, the tale will be like the Indian Ocean shell found lately in
the Polish bone-cave, {102a} or like the Egyptian beads discovered in the
soil of Dahomey. The story will have been carried hither and thither, in
the remotest times, to the remotest shores, by traders, by slaves, by
captives in war, or by women torn from their own tribe and forcibly
settled as wives among alien peoples.

Stories of this kind are everywhere the natural property of mothers and