Slavonian, from the East, as kith and kin, leaving kith and kin
behind us; and after thousands of years the language and traditions
of those who went East, and those who went West, bear such an
affinity to each other, as to have established, beyond discussion or
dispute, the fact of their descent from a common stock.




DIFFUSION

This general affinity established, we proceed to narrow our subject
to its proper limits, and to confine it to the consideration,
_first_, of Popular Tales in general, and _secondly_, of
those Norse Tales in particular, which form the bulk of this volume.

In the first place, then, the fact which we remarked on setting out,
that the groundwork or plot of many of these tales is common to all
the nations of Europe, is more important, and of greater scientific
interest, than might at first appear. They form, in fact, another
link in the chain of evidence of a common origin between the East and
West, and even the obstinate adherents of the old classical theory,
according to which all resemblances were set down to sheer copying
from Greek or Latin patterns, are now forced to confess, not only
that there was no such wholesale copying at all, but that, in many
cases, the despised vernacular tongues have preserved the common
traditions far more faithfully than the writers of Greece and Rome.
The sooner, in short, that this theory of copying, which some, even
besides the classicists, have maintained, is abandoned, the better,
not only for the truth, but for the literary reputation of those who