ANCIENT STORIES.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 443, 28 February 1912, Page 6

ANCIENT STORIES.

_ PRE-HISTORIC GOSSIP. HOW THEY ARE REPEATED. It is 3 matter for wonder how few stories there are in the world. In all the ages that man has existed, with so many hard-working imaginations embellishing facts, the possible, credible, enjoyable stories constructed are a scanty army. This has recently been emphasised by Mr. Andrew Lane, and there is no higher authority on story-telling. "1 have been told in a smoking-room a very terrible tale abo.it a respectable family in Blankshirc ; ;1 title which the narrator thoroughly believed in as a contemporary anecdote of private life. I said, 'That is the plot of Horace Walpole's play, "The Mysterious Mother," and Walpolc got it from Howell's Letters, written in the time of Charles 1., and Howell sot it from ' But here the other man said, 'I doa't care : these Hum:; keep on happening in families. History repeats itself.' " It is not, as Mr. Lane justly adds, history, but myth which keeps repeating itself. A vast deal of the gossip which is the current coin of our day is but the fabliaux, the jests of centuries past. The other day we had a very modern novel, the plot of which was a new version of a tale told by La Fontaine, who took it out of Ovid, who took it from the Greek. Just the same sort of ancestry can be traced for our kindly little anecdotes of old Mr. B. and voting Mrs. A. The plot is in the air. or, if you prefer it, it is somewhere in the subconscious strata of our minds. It occurs to someone or other how neatly it will fit particular characters. And immediately to them it is fitted. The most strenuous gossip-mon-gers are not people with a peculiar talent for invention. They live by memory and a sense of sta.'-e efTect. You will be wise, even when you are injured, not to treat them too seriously or too harshly. The proper reply to scandal is, "Dear, me, how stale ! Don't y<';i remember? Precisely the same talc. is told of Nebuehadnezer and his first wife. It's all in the cuneiform tablets. You don't read eur.cLVrm ? Well, you'll find an English versior n Strene."— '"Daily Telegraph."