160 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 
overwhelming advantage, and that the object of the battle was to kill the 
leaders, who were expected to distinguish themselves by personal bravery. 
The same considerations, however, apply equally to feudal times, yet we 
never find feudal monarchs engaging in single combat. | 
The theory put forward by Ridgeway to account for this and similar 
facts was that people who cannot write keep accurate historical records 
which they transmit orally, but that instead of expressing themselves in 
straightforward language they personify their own and neighbouring 
tribes, and then represent collective activities in terms of individual 
acts. ‘The theory seems to be that at a certain stage in our culture we 
should have described the English conquest of Ireland by saying that 
Britannia jumped a ditch into her neighbour’s garden, and the Battle of 
Trafalgar by saying that Britannia quarrelled with Gallia, and threw her 
bucket down the well. 
In criticising this theory, Mr. A. Nutt asked : ‘ Is there such a thing as 
‘ historic myth at all? Do men commemorate tribal wanderings, settle- 
‘ ments, conquests, subjugations, acquisitions of new forms of culture, 
‘ or any of the other incidents in the collective life of a people, in the form 
‘ of stories about individual men and women? I do not for one moment 
‘ deny the possibility of their doing so ; all I ask for is evidence of the fact.’ 
I cannot find that anyone has ever produced any evidence, yet the theory 
is still widely held, and was much later put forward by Prof. Murray, 
who tells us that he strongly suspects the lists of men slain by the heroes 
of the Jiad to be tribal records, condensed, and, ‘ of course,’ transferred 
from their original context. He has already given us an example of one 
of these ‘ tribal records.’ In the Jad it is said that Phzstus was slain 
by Idomeneus, and fell from his chariot with a crash. On this Prof. 
Murray comments: ‘ Idomeneus is the king of Knossos in Crete, and 
‘ Phestus is only known to history as the next most famous town in the 
‘same island. ‘That is to say, Phestus zs the town, or the eponymous 
‘hero of the town. So we have in this passage a record of a local battle 
‘ or conquest in Crete, torn up from its surroundings and used by the poet 
‘ to fill in some details of slaughter in a great battle before Troy.’ 
Even if we admitted the possibility of historic myth, it would be diffi- 
cult to explain why a town should be represented as falling from a chariot.; 
why an eponymous hero should be invented for one town but not for 
the other ; and why the poet of the J/iad should have recourse to Cretan 
records in order to fill in details of a battle before Troy, seeing that in 
more important cases he makes use of ‘mythological changes and false 
‘ identifications.’ 2> It is difficult to acquit Prof. Murray of treating 
those portions of the dad which fit in with his theories as ‘ real history,’ 
and those which do not as ‘ the emptiest kind of fiction.’ *® Sir William 
Ridgeway and Dr. Leaf rendered themselves liable to a similar charge. 
The reason for the single combats in tradition is that the original ritual 
combat was between the king and his challenger. It was this tradition 
which induced Shakespeare, with his habitual disregard of historical 
fact, to make Henry IV fight a single combat with Douglas. 
23 Folklore, vol. Xii, p. 339. 24 Op. cit., pp. 232-234. 
25 [bide 22955 (a 26 (P3253. 
