Posted by Tom Napier on February 11, 2012 at 06:34:23 user Didymus.
Somewhat related to the "Lesson learned" thread:
We have AR's word that PD is a metastory, a story made up by the children with help from CF. There are hints that ML is in the same category and some AR experts also include GN. A metastory requires that the meta-authors have a prototype story in mind and collectively have sufficient background knowledge to tell the story. My question is, where did this knowledge come from?
Children's stories about pirates, albeit not modern ones, and buried treasure were common. I can't recollect a specific prototype Chinese pirate story but we can suppose that the background to ML came from CF who, like AR, had visited China.
However, if the children were to tell a story about the wilds of Scotland, surely it would be set in the familiar Highlands, not the far more obscure Outer Hebrides. Can anyone think of a prototype from which the children could have gained sufficient knowledge of the Hebrides to write GN? I don't recollect any mention of CF having made an earlier visit there even though AR did.
This is why I've always assumed that GN was one of the "real" stories.