LITERARY ASPECTS OP NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY. 
41 
may exist in the details and the sequence of the episodes and 
motifs. Such a fixity in the associations of plot, episodes, 
and motifs, with an apparent absence of literary remodelling, 
is, however, not common. We would ordinarily expect to find 
only a few episodes or motifs definitely associated, as in the differ- 
ent folk-lore versions of the “Twins.” 
THE NOVELETTE AS TRANSMITTED. 
The literary remodelling of the folk-lore myth or novelette, 
as we will now call it, has certainly gone on for many generations, 
longer in some tribes, of course, and shorter in others. A num- 
ber of myth versions will consequently represent in reality 
novelettes that have deviated so far from the original folk-lore- 
myth on which they were based that it is as impossible to re- 
construct this original myth with their help, as it would be to 
reconstruct the primitive versions of the Greek myths from the 
literary versions known to us. However, we are much better 
off among the Indians than among the Greeks in this respect — 
that folk-lore versions of the myths have been transmitted with 
which these literary versions may be, at times, compared. 
We have, then, one means of determining, within certain limits, 
the changes a novelette has undergone. The study of these 
changes will also be facilitated as soon as we know first, in more 
detail the role of the author-raconteur, who unquestionably 
represents the main agency in the remodelling, and secondly, 
their approximate number in different tribes and different 
generations. 
The general opposition against change is perhaps more 
marked in the case of the novelette than in that of the folk-lore- 
myth and is evidenced at times in a contemptuous attitude 
toward the “radicals” who tell myths differently from their 
fathers. It should also be remembered that the novelette was 
on the whole neither as generally known nor as popular as the 
myth and was probably transmitted along distinct family 
lines. This is particularly true of adventures of ancestors 
and fasting experiences that have been cast into a literary 
mould, and it may also be true of the common realistic tale 
t 
