The development of a
common stock of legends is, of course, impossible, save where
there is a common language; and thus philology pronounces
against the kinship of barbaric myths with each other and with
similar myths of the Aryan and Semitic worlds. Similar stories
told in Greece and Norway are likely to have a common
pedigree, because the persons who have preserved them in
recollection speak a common language and have inherited the
same civilization. But similar stories told in Labrador and
South Africa are not likely to be genealogically related,
because it is altogether probable that the Esquimaux and the
Zulu had acquired their present race characteristics before
either of them possessed a language or a culture sufficient
for the production of myths. According to the nature and
extent of the similarity, it must be decided whether such
stories have been carried about from one part of the world to
another, or have been independently originated in many
different places.
Here the methods of philology suggest a rule which will often
be found useful. In comparing, the vocabularies of different
languages, those words which directly imitate natural sounds--
such as whiz, crash, crackle--are not admitted as evidence of
kinship between the languages in which they occur.
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