Primitive Lapp and Slav Myths Compared.
An examination of the eight Slav fairy stories has constrained us to refer them to an Arctic origin. If the theory be correct, points of resemblance ought to be found between the primitive myths of the Arctic dwellers and our Slav folk-lore. The myths of the Lapps, among the most northern nations of Europe, have lately been collected; the principal ones, embodied in poetical form, are given, translated literally from the German or Swedish into Italian, in Professor Mantegazza’s admirable little book “Un viaggio in Lapponia.” He ascribes to these legends a very great antiquity, believing the most primitive of them to date as far back as the neolithic period. Be this as it may, while it is very unlikely that Central Europe Slavs should have carried the legends in remote times into the Arctic circle, nothing is more likely than that dwellers in high latitudes, finding it cold there, and life difficult, should have drifted into warmer southern regions and brought their legends along with them. In fact, there is some evidence that this happened. About 10 or 15,000 years ago the climate of Belgium was much colder than it is now. It was inhabited by chamois, the ptarmigan, the ibex, and the reindeer, and also by a peaceful race of people, resembling in their physique the modern Lapps of Lapland. These people were gradually driven south about 10,000 years ago by their raw-boned Scottish neighbours, and settled in the Auvergne, Savoy, and the Maritime Alps. Between 20 and 80,000 years ago, Siberia was much warmer than it is now, and mammoths lived there. All at once, most likely in consequence of a sudden change in the distribution of sea and land, where the Caspian now is, combined with other causes, a sudden spell of cold weather set in, which killed all the mammoths, and ice-potted them in the frozen gravel of Siberia, which, since then, has never been warmer than it is at the present day. The difficulty is to believe that myths hatched 70,000 years ago could be orally transmitted down to the present day. But we know nothing of the longevity of oral traditions among illiterate nature-folk. It is a curious fact, which I do not pretend even to endeavour to explain, that the primitive Slav stories are more clearly hall-marked with the stamp of the long Arctic winter night than the (supposed) neolithic Lapp ones. They may have been deliberately touched up in later times, while the tradition of their Arctic origin was still fresh in men’s minds, although the stories themselves were circulating in Central Europe.
