INDIA: Steel and Temple, _Wide-awake Stories_, p. 157 ("The Death
and Burial of Poor Hen-Sparrow").

_Remarks_.--These 25 variants of the same jingle scattered over
the world from India to Spain, present the problem of the diffusion of
folk-tales in its simplest form. No one is likely to contend with
Prof. Mueller and Sir George Cox, that we have here the detritus of
archaic Aryan mythology, a parody of a sun-myth. There is little that
is savage and archaic to attract the school of Dr. Tylor, beyond the
speaking powers of animals and inanimates. Yet even Mr. Lang is not
likely to hold that these variants arose by coincidence and
independently in the various parts of the world where they have been
found. The only solution is that the curious succession of incidents
was invented once for all at some definite place and time by some
definite entertainer for children, and spread thence through all the
Old World. In a few instances we can actually trace the passage-
_e.g._, the Shetland version was certainly brought over from
Hamburg. Whether the centre of dispersion was India or not, it is
impossible to say, as it might have spread east from Smyrna (Hahn, No.
56). Benfey (_Einleitung zu Pantschatantra_, i. 190-91) suggests
that this class of accumulative story may be a sort of parody on the
Indian stories, illustrating the moral, "what great events from small
occasions rise." Thus, a drop of honey falls on the ground; a fly goes
after it, a bird snaps at the fly, a dog goes for the bird, another
dog goes for the first, the masters of the two dogs--who happen to be
kings--quarrel and go to war, whole provinces are devastated, and all
for a drop of honey! "Titty Mouse and Tatty Mouse" also ends in a
universal calamity which seems to arise from a cause of no great
importance. Benfey's suggestion is certainly ingenious, but perhaps