as the existing peasantry have only the detritus of these myths—the märchen—and as you say borrowing is out of the question, how do you account for a coincidence like this? In the Punjaub, among the Bretons, the Albanians, the modern Greeks, and the Russians, we find a conte in which a young man gets possession of a magical ring. This ring is stolen from him, and recovered by the aid of certain grateful beasts, whom the young man has benefited. His foe keeps the ring in his mouth, but the grateful mouse, insinuating his tail into the nose of the thief, makes him sneeze, and out comes the magical ring!
Common-sense insists, says M. Cosquin, that this detail was invented once for all. It must have first occurred, not in a myth, but in a conte or märchen, from which all the others alike proceed. Therefore, if you wish the idea of the mouse and the ring and the sneeze to be a part of the store of the undivided Aryans, you must admit that they had contes, märchen, popular stories, what you call the detritus of myths, as well as myths themselves, before they left their cradle in Central Asia. "Nos ancêtres, les pères des nations européennes, auraient, de cette façon, emporté dans leurs fourgons la collection complete de contes bleus actuels." In short, if there was no borrowing, myths had been reduced (on the Aryan theory) to the condition of detritus, to the diamond dust of märchen, before the Aryan people divided. But this is contrary to the hypothesis.
M. Cosquin does not pause here. The märchen,—mouse, ring, sneeze, and all,—is found among non-
