Popular tales of the west Highlands Author:John Francis Campbell Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III.—MYTHOLOGY. Origin Of Such Stories. As to the origin of popular tales there are three current opinions. First, it is said the minds of men are simil... more »arly constituted in all parts of the world, and when they are similarly placed will produce similar results, therefore similar stories have sprung up simultaneously all over the world, and though they resemble each other, they have really nothing in common. They are weeds of the human understanding which should be rooted out, but which spring up wherever there is a proper soil, and climate, and sufficient ignorance, idleness, and neglect. Secondly, it is said " These were the work of wise men in the East, whose writings we know; we know when and where these writings first appeared in Europe, and these have spread all over the world." For example, " Cupid and Psyche," and all stories like it, originated with the author of the " Golden Ass." Thirdly, it is held that these ideas were originally the offspring of the minds of men in the East, at a period when great part of the earth was waiting for men to own it; when language itself was young, before the ancestors of those who now dwell in India and in Barra set off on their travels, before Sanscrit grew to be a language. In short, it is held that these despised stories are the fragments of the early myths and beliefs, moral tales, and heroic pastimes of the early ages of the world, and that Cupid and Psyche is but one phase of an Aryan myth. I have been drawn to all these in turn. When I sit in a room surrounded by printed books, and trace one through them for centuries; when I read an English translation of Apuleius, printed in 1566, and my own translation of a Gaelic story, like one of those told by " Lucius," that most amusing of asses, I am all for books ; but when...« less