LITERARY ASPECTS OF NORTH AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY. 
49 
detached from it and used as a free element. This seems to be 
true, for instance, of the robbers’ cave of the Ali Baba tale. 
What it is that determines the introduction of a new myth 
or of new episodes, etc., it is somewhat difficult to say before 
specific investigations have been made. It depends very likely 
largely on chance, the individuality of the borrower, the nature 
of the specific mythology, and the duration and intimacy of the 
contact between tribes. In some cases, notably in Spanish 
America, we seem to have a complete or at least almost complete 
displacement of the Indian mythology by that of the Spaniards. 
To ascribe that solely to the intimacy of the contact between the 
Spaniards and the Indians and the duration of that contact seems 
to me hasty. The Aesopian fables and the riddles found in 
Mexico are unquestionably European, yet some significance may 
attach to the fact that they were so readily adopted by the In- 
dians. Similarly, if the Coyote and the Rabbit cycle found in 
Mexico turn out eventually to be of unquestioned European 
origin, the fact that the ancient Mexicans undoubtedly possessed 
a Coyote and Rabbit cycle may have some bearing upon the 
fact that the European cycle displaced the older Indian one. In 
other words, there is likely to be as much significance in the dis- 
placement of older myths by newer ones as in the rejection of 
newer ones. 
In the majority of cases, where diffusion occurred in a nor- 
mal way, we may, therefore, assume that the separate units of the 
myth were borrowed. Now the borrowing of a myth is, of course, 
rarely an inert transmission of a tale. An individual brings 
back to his tribe not simply what he has heard but what has 
struck his fancy. He naturally interprets the story in terms 
of his own mythology. He will probably instantaneously asso- 
ciate some of his episodes with his trickster, others with his trans- 
former, etc. When he subsequently narrates his own trickster or 
transformer cycle, what more natural than that he substitute 
this new episode, etc., for the older one or simply add it to the 
older ? 
We have, then, in myth-borrowing to distinguish in alt 
cases what has been borrowed, whether the complete myth or 
individual component elements, and we have always to bear in 
