Inherited Memory

I'm fairly certain the first time I came across the concept of "inherited memory" was through Tolkien.  As Flieger describes (414):

Now, having re-read The King of Elfland's Daughter, I find myself wondering if Dunsany, like Tolkien after him, had some experience(s) he considered "inherited memory," based on this passage (238):

"[F]or only a moment the houses held back that wonderful tide, for it broke over them with a burst of unearthly foam, like a meteor of unknown metal burning in heaven, and passed on and the houses stood all quaint and queer and enchanted, like homes remembered out of a long-past age by the sudden waking of an inherited memory."

Of course, inherited memory may have been part of the standard scientific view of the 1920's, for all I know.  (If so, I could imagine it might have become associated with racial ideologies, in which case it would likely have fallen out of favor along with phrenology and various all-too-manipulable pseudo-sciences.)

Then again, even now we occasionally see news reports about scientific studies suggesting that some memories might potentially be inherited, as in this 2013 BBC article.

Works Cited

Dunsany. The King of Elfland’s Daughter. 1924. 1st Del Rey trade paperback ed, Del Rey Impact, 1999.

Flieger, Verlyn. “Memory.” J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment, edited by Michael D. C Drout, Routledge, 2007.