CORRESPONDENCE.
WHAT’S IN A NAME?
To the Editor of Folk-Lore.
Sir,—In his second Avatar (would that these were more frequent amongst us), our President expressed himself as not in full agreement with the conclusion at which I arrived after comparison of what seemed most common and essential to the “Rumpelstiltskin” group of stories.[1] Mr. Lang thinks that these need not have so archaic an origin as that exclusion appears to him to imply, and that instead of holding any barbaric philosophy in them, they may be but the vehicles of the harmless jest that the fairy relies upon having an out-of-the-way name which none is likely to guess.
Now, whether the stories are “archaic” or not seems to me to be of quite secondary importance. Whatever be their age they may hold many old philosophies of things, as do much more serious vehicles than fairy tales to this day. And however fantastic or out-of-the-way the elfish names may be, it invariably happens that when the name is guessed, the elf becomes powerless to work the ill which is threatened if the name is not found out. Therefore, however grotesque the term given to the story, there abides the fact of discomfiture and defeat through discovery of name; and this fact seems to me linked to that world-wide crude philosophy which confuses names and persons, things living and things not living, making them alike instruments of good or of evil, as the case may be.
Since my paper was published, my friend Mr. William Simpson, the well-known artist-traveller, has sent me the
- ↑ Folk-Lore Journal, vol. vii, pp. 135 seq.
