And again, there is an accepted connection in myth and language between all Aryan languages and Sanskrit.  According to Sir George Dasent, “The whole human race has sprung from one stock planted in the East, which has stretched its boughs and branches laden with the fruit of language and bright with the bloom of song and story, by successive offshoots to the utmost parts of the earth.”  Dasent tells how the Aryans who went west, who went out to do, were distinguished from the nations of the world by their common sense, by their power of adapting themselves to circumstances, by making the best of their position, by being ready to receive impressions, and by being able to develop impressions.  They became the Greeks, the Latins, the Teutons, the Celts, and the Slavonians.  The Aryans who stayed at home, remained to reflect, and were distinguished by their power of thought.  They became a nation of philosophers and gave to the world the Sanskrit language as the basis of comparative philology.  Dasent shows how legends, such as the Story of William Tell and Dog Gellert, which have appeared in many Aryan peoples were common in germ to the Aryan tribes before migration.  Joseph Jacobs has more recently settled the travels of Gellert, tracing its literary route from the Indian Vinaya Pitaka, through the Fables of Bidpai, Sindibad, Seven Sages of Rome, Gesta Romanorum, and the Welsh Fables of Cottwg, until the legend became localized in Wales.

IV.  Fairy tales owe their origin to the identity of early fancy.

Just as an individual, after thinking along certain lines, is surprised to come upon the exact sequence of his thought in a book he had never seen, so primitive peoples in remote parts of the world, up against similar situations, would express experience in tales containing similar motifs.  A limited set of experiences was presented to the inventive faculty, and the limited combinations possible would result in similar combinations.  The Aryan Jackal, the Mediaeval Reynard, the Southern Brer Rabbit, and the Weasel of Africa, are near relations.  Dasent said, “In all mythology and tradition there are natural resemblances, parallelisms, suggested to the senses of each race by natural objects and everyday events; and these might spring up spontaneously all over the earth as home-growths, neither derived by imitation from other tribes, nor from the tradition of a common stock.”

It is probable that all four theories of the origin of fairy tales are correct and that fairy tales owe their origin not to any one cause but to all four.

II.  THE TRANSMISSION OF FAIRY TALES