The ocean of story, being C.H. Tawney's translation of Somadeva's ...

FOREWORD ix
though we may differ as to which is the primary version of
the two. 1
Nor, again, shall we be justified in selecting a particular
picturesque episode in a story, which, taken by itself, might
well have been invented more than once independently, and
in classifying with it the narratives of similar episodes, which
occur elsewhere in a different context. Nor, where their context
elsewhere is unknown, may we legitimately assume that it consisted
of the same arrangement of episodes as the story from
which we started. This last is the vicious reasoning which
has quite obscured the true relation of classical stories to European
folk-tales. To explain my meaning I may refer by way
of illustration to the very sensible note of Child upon the
story of Wilhelm Tell, which in reality consists of a series
of connected incidents possessing a restricted distribution in
Teutonic and Scandinavian countries. To group with it the
tale of Alkon the Greek Argonaut, the Persian story of the
twelfth century about the Shah who shot an apple off his
favourite's head, or the recorded feats of marksmanship of the
Mississippi keel-boatmen carries us no further than to establish
it a
the not very surprising fact that many people have thought
remarkable test of marksmanship to be able to shoot an object
resting upon a person's head or body without inflicting injury. 2
I have, of course, been assuming that stories may have
a history and that transmission may be a vera causa of the
appearance of the same story in different parts
of the world.
But it is improbable that anyone nowadays would adopt
the extreme " polygenetic " position. For while one can
imagine that an isolated incident A might spontaneously
occur to different minds in different countries, the imagination
boggles at supposing that a chain of incidents A + B + C + D
1 I have discussed this matter in a note upon a Bulgarian Gypsy, Song of
the Bridge in Journal of the Gypsy-Lore Society, 3rd ser., iv, pp. 110-114. My
own view is that the type represented by the Serbian Building of Scutari is
primary and the Bridge of Arta secondary. The most important collections
of data are Kohler, Aufsatze uber Marchen und Volkslieder, pp. 38-47, and
Politis, 'E/cAoycu a7ro ra rpayovSia rov 'EXXtjvlkov Xaov, i, pp. 130, 287, and
Aaoypafyla, i, pp. 15, 630, 631. A few supplementary references will be found
in my paper.
2 Child, Popular Ballads of England and Scotland , iii, pp. 14 foil.