few more years, when the African languages are better known, and the
roots of Egyptian and Chinese words are more accurately detected,
Science will be better able to speak as to the common affinity of all
the tribes that throng the earth. In the meantime, let the testimony
of tradition and popular tales be heard, which in this case have
outstripped comparative philology, and lead instead of following her.
It is beyond the scope of this essay, which aims at being popular and
readable rather than learned and lengthy, to go over a prolonged
scientific investigation step by step. We repeat it. The reader must
have faith in the writer, and believe the words now written are the
results of an inquiry, and not ask for the inquiry itself. In all
mythologies and traditions, then, there are what may be called
natural resemblances, parallelisms suggested to the senses of each
race by natural objects and every-day events, and these might spring
up spontaneously all over the earth as home growths, neither derived
by imitation from other tribes, nor from seeds of common tradition
shed from a common stock. Such resemblances have been well
compared by William Grimm, [_Kinder and Hausmaerchen_, vol. 3, _3d_
edition (Goettingen, 1856) a volume worthy of the utmost attention.]
to those words which are found in all languages derived from the
imitation of natural sounds, or, we may add, from the first lisping
accents of infancy. But the case is very different when this or that
object which strikes the senses is accounted for in a way so
extraordinary and peculiar, as to stamp the tradition with a
character of its own. Then arises a like impression on the mind, if
we find the same tradition in two tribes at the opposite ends of the
earth, as is produced by meeting twin brothers, one in Africa and the
other in Asia; we say at once 'I know you are so and so's brother,
you are so like him'. Take an instance: In these Norse Tales, No.
xxiii, we are told how it was the bear came to have a stumpy tail,