292 KOSHCHEI THE DEATHLESS 
and the Hindu formed but one single people; and 
we know that English words are like Russian and Hin- 
dustani words because they have been handed down 
by tradition from a common speech, and for no other 
reason, occult or plausible. Knowing this to be so, is 
it not obvious that the conditions of the case quite 
cover also the case of nursery tales? Children learn 
the adventures of Little Bo-Peep and Jack the Giant- 
Killer precisely as they learn the words of their mother 
tongue; and if the power of tradition is sufficient to 
make us say “three” in America to-day just because 
our ancesters said “tri” forty centuries ago in some 
such country as Lithuania, why should not the same 
conservative habit insure a similar duration to the 
rhymes and stories with which infancy is soothed and 
delighted ? 
Our position is further strengthened when we duly 
consider the significant fact that, great as is the num- 
ber of entirely similar s¢orzes which can be brought to- 
gether from the remotest corners of the Indo-European 
world, the number of similar mythical zzczdents is far 
greater. The wide diffusion of such stories as “ Cin- 
derella” and “ Faithful John” is in itself a striking 
phenomenon. But after all, the main point is that no 
matter how endlessly diversified the great mass of 
Aryan nursery tales may appear on a superficial view, 
they are nevertheless all made up of a few fundamental 
incidents, which recur again and again in a bewilder- 
ing variety of combinations. Thus the conception of 
grateful beasts, already noticed, appears in hundreds 
of stories, its simplest version being the familiar legend 
of Andronicus, who pulls a thorn from a lion’s paw, 
nd is long afterward spared by the same lion in the 
