he missed will be indicated in the chapter on 'The Fire-Walk'--one
example among many.

But this kind of mythology in situ, in 'the unrestrained utterances of
the people,' Mr. Max Muller tells us, is no province of his. 'I saw it
was hopeless for me to gain a knowledge at first hand of innumerable
local legends and customs;' and it is to be supposed that he distrusted
knowledge acquired by collectors: Grimm, Mannhardt, Campbell of Islay,
and an army of others. 'A scholarlike knowledge of Maori or Hottentot
mythology' was also beyond him. We, on the contrary, take our Maori lore
from a host of collectors: Taylor, White, Manning ('The Pakeha Maori'),
Tregear, Polack, and many others. From them we flatter ourselves that we
get--as from Grimm, Mannhardt, Islay, and the rest--mythology in situ. We
compare it with the dry mythologic blossoms of the classical hortus
siccus, and with Greek ritual and temple legend, and with Marchen in the
scholiasts, and we think the comparisons very illuminating. They have
thrown new light on Greek mythology, ritual, mysteries, and religion.
This much we think we have already done, though we do not know Maori, and
though each of us can hope to gather but few facts from the mouths of
living peasants.

Examples of the results of our method will be found in the following
pages. Thus, if the myth of the fire-stealer in Greece is explained by
misunderstood Greek or Sanskrit words in no way connected with robbery,
we shall show that the myth of the theft of fire occurs where no Greek or
Sanskrit words were ever spoken. _There_, we shall show, the myth arose
from simple inevitable human ideas. We shall therefore doubt whether in
Greece a common human myth had a singular cause--in a 'disease of
language.'