FAIRY TALES, THEIR ORIGIN AND MEANING

With Some Account of Dwellers in Fairyland

BY

JOHN THACKRAY BUNCE

INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

The substance of this volume was delivered as a course ofChristmas Holiday Lectures, in 1877, at the Birmingham andMidland Institute, of which the author was then the seniorVice-president. It was found that both the subject and thematter interested young people; and it was therefore thoughtthat, revised and extended, the Lectures might not proveunacceptable in the form of a Book. The volume does not pretendto scientific method, or to complete treatment of the subject. Its aim is a very modest one: to furnish an inducement ratherthan a formal introduction to the study of Folk Lore; a studywhich, when once begun, the reader will pursue, with unflagginginterest, in such works as the various writings of Mr. Max-Muller;the "Mythology of the Aryan Nations, " by Mr. Cox; Mr. Ralston's"Russian Folk Tales;" Mr. Kelly's "Curiosities of Indo-EuropeanFolk Lore;" the Introduction to Mr. Campbell's "Popular Tales ofthe West Highlands, " and other publications, both English andGerman, bearing upon the same subject. In the hope that hislabour may serve this purpose, the author ventures to ask foran indulgent rather than a critical reception of this littlevolume. 

BIRMINGHAM, September, 1878. 

CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER I. ORIGIN OF FAIRY TALES--THE ARYAN RACE: ITS CHARACTERISTICS, ITSTRADITIONS, AND ITS MIGRATIONS

CHAPTER II. KINDRED TALES FROM DIVERS LANDS

CHAPTER III. DWELLERS IN FAIRYLAND: STORIES FROM THE EAST

CHAPTER IV. DWELLERS IN FAIRYLAND: TEUTONIC, SCANDINAVIAN, ETC. 

CHAPTER V. DWELLERS IN FAIRYLAND: CELTIC, THE WEST HIGHLANDS

CHAPTER VI. CONCLUSION-SOME POPULAR TALES EXPLAINED. 

INDEX

CHAPTER I. 

ORIGIN OF FAIRY STORIES. 

We are going into Fairy Land for a little while, to see what wecan find there to amuse and instruct us this Christmas time. Does anybody know the way? There are no maps or guidebooks, andthe places we meet with in our workaday world do not seem likethe homes of the Fairies. Yet we have only to put on our WishingCaps, and we can get into Fairy Land in a moment. The house-wallsfade away, the winter sky brightens, the sun shines out, the weathergrows warm and pleasant; flowers spring up, great trees cast afriendly shade, streams murmur cheerfully over their pebbly beds, jewelled fruits are to be had for the trouble of gathering them;invisible hands set out well-covered dinner-tables, brilliant andgraceful forms flit in and out across our path, and we all at oncefind ourselves in the midst of a company of dear old friends whomwe have known and loved ever since we knew anything. There isFortunatus with his magic purse, and the square of carpet thatcarries him anywhere; and Aladdin with his wonderful lamp; andSindbad with the diamonds he has picked up in the Valley ofSerpents; and the Invisible Prince, who uses the fairy cat to gethis dinner for him; and the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, justawakened by the young Prince, after her long sleep of a hundredyears; and Puss in Boots curling his whiskers after having eatenup the ogre who foolishly changed himself into a mouse; and Beautyand the Beast; and the Blue Bird; and Little Red Riding Hood, andJack the Giant Killer, and Jack and the Bean Stalk; and the YellowDwarf; and Cinderella and her fairy godmother; and great numbersbesides, of whom we haven't time to say anything now. 

And when we come to look about us, we see that there are otherdwellers in Fairy Land; giants and dwarfs, dragons and griffins, ogres with great white teeth, and wearing seven-leagued boots;and enchanters and magicians, who can change themselves into anyforms they please, and can turn other people into stone. Andthere are beasts and birds who can talk, and fishes that comeout on dry land, with golden rings in their mouths; and goodmaidens who drop rubies and pearls when they speak, and bad onesout of whose mouths come all kinds of ugly things. Then thereare evil-minded fairies, who always want to be doing mischief;and there are good fairies, beautifully dressed, and withshining golden hair and bright blue eyes and jewelled coronets, and with magic wands in their hands, who go about watching thebad fairies, and always come just in time to drive them away, and so prevent them from doing harm--the sort of Fairies you seeonce a year at the pantomimes, only more beautiful, and morehandsomely dressed, and more graceful in shape, and not so fat, and who do not paint their faces, which is a bad thing for anywoman to do, whether fairy or mortal. 

Altogether, this Fairy Land that we can make for ourselves in amoment, is a very pleasant and most delightful place, and onewhich all of us, young and old, may well desire to get into, even if we have to come back from it sooner than we like. It isjust the country to suit everybody, for all of us can find in itwhatever pleases him best. If he likes work, there is plenty ofadventure; he can climb up mountains of steel, or travel overseas of glass, or engage in single combat with a giant, or divedown into the caves of the little red dwarfs and bring up theirhidden treasures, or mount a horse that goes more swiftly thanthe wind, or go off on a long journey to find the water of youthand life, or do anything else that happens to be very dangerousand troublesome. If he doesn't like work, it is again just theplace to suit idle people, because it is all Midsummer holidays. I never heard of a school in Fairy Land, nor of masters withcanes or birch rods, nor of impositions and long lessons to belearned when one gets home in the evening. Then the weather isso delightful. It is perpetual sunshine, so that you may lie outin the fields all day without catching cold; and yet it is nottoo hot, the sunshine being a sort of twilight, in which you seeeverything, quite clearly, but softly, and with beautifulcolours, as if you were in a delightful dream. 

And this goes on night and day, or at least what we call night, for they don't burn gas there, or candles, or anything of thatkind; so that there is no regular going to bed and getting up;you just lie down anywhere when you want to rest, and when youhave rested, you wake up again, and go on with your travels. There is one capital thing about Fairy Land. There are nodoctors there; not one in the whole country. Consequently nobodyis ill, and there are no pills or powders, or brimstone andtreacle, or senna tea, or being kept at home when you want to goout, or being obliged to go to bed early and have gruel insteadof cake and sweetmeats. They don't want the doctors, because ifyou cut your finger it gets well directly, and even when peopleare killed, or are turned into stones, or when anything elseunpleasant happens, it can all be put right in a minute or two. All you have to do when you are in trouble is to go and look forsome wrinkled old woman in a patched old brown cloak, and bevery civil to her, and to do cheerfully and kindly any serviceshe asks of you, and then she will throw off the dark cloak, andbecome a young and beautiful Fairy Queen, and wave her magicwand, and everything will fall out just as you would like tohave it. 

As to Time, they take no note of it in Fairy Land. The Princessfalls asleep for a hundred years, and wakes up quite rosy, andyoung, and beautiful. Friends and sweethearts are parted foryears, and nobody seems to think they have grown older when theymeet, or that life has become shorter, and so they fall to theiryouthful talk as if nothing had happened. Thus the dwellers inFairy Land have no cares about chronology. With them there is nopast or future; it is all present--so there are no disagreeabledates to learn, nor tables of kings, and when they reigned, orwho succeeded them, or what battles they fought, or anything ofthat kind. Indeed there are no such facts to be learned, forwhen kings are wicked in Fairy Land, a powerful magician comesand twists their heads off, or puts them to death somehow; andwhen they are good kings they seem to live for ever, and alwaysto be wearing rich robes and royal golden crowns, and to beentertaining Fairy Queens, and receiving handsome brilliantgifts from everybody who knows them. 

Now this is Fairy Land, the dear sweet land of Once Upon a Time, where there is constant light, and summer days, and everlastingflowers, and pleasant fields and streams, and long dreamswithout rough waking, and ease of life, and all things strangeand beautiful; where nobody wonders at anything that may happen;where good fairies are ever on the watch to help those whom theylove; where youth abides, and there is no pain or death, and alltrouble fades away, and whatever seems hard is made easy, andall things that look wrong come right in the end, and truth andgoodness have their perpetual triumph, and the world is everyoung. 

And Fairy Land is always the same, and always has been, whetherit is close to us--so close that we may enter it in a moment--orwhether it is far off; in the stories that have come to us fromthe most ancient days, and the most distant lands, and in thosewhich kind and clever story-tellers write for us now. It is thesame in the legends of the mysterious East, as old as thebeginning of life; the same in the glowing South, in the mythsof ancient Greece; the same in the frozen regions of theScandinavian North, and in the forests of the great Teuton land, and in the Islands of the West; the same in the tales thatnurses tell to the little ones by the fireside on winterevenings, and in the songs that mothers sing to hush their babesto sleep; the same in the delightful folk-lore that Grimm hascollected for us, and that dear Hans Andersen has but justceased to tell. 

All the chief stories that we know so well are to be found inall times, and in almost all countries. Cinderella, for one, istold in the language of every country in Europe, and the samelegend is found in the fanciful tales related by the Greekpoets; and still further back, it appears in very ancient Hindulegends. So, again, does Beauty and the Beast, so does our ownfamiliar tale of Jack the Giant Killer, so also do a greatnumber of other fairy stories, each being told in differentcountries and in different periods, with so much likeness as toshow that all the versions came from the same source, and yetwith so much difference as to show that none of the versions aredirectly copied from each other. Indeed, when we compare themyths and legends of one country with another, and of one periodwith another, we find out how they have come to be so muchalike, and yet in some things so different. We see that theremust have been one origin for all these stories, that they musthave been invented by one people, that this people must havebeen afterwards divided, and that each part or division of itmust have brought into its new home the legends once common tothem all, and must have shaped and altered these according, tothe kind of places in which they came to live: those of theNorth being sterner and more terrible, those of the South softerand fuller of light and colour, and adorned with touches of moredelicate fancy. And this, indeed, is really the case. All thechief stories and legends are alike, because they were firstmade by one people; and all the nations in which they are nowtold in one form or another tell them because they are alldescended from this one common stock. If you travel amongstthem, or talk to them, or read their history, and learn theirlanguages, the nations of Europe seem to be altogether unlikeeach other; they have different speech and manners, and ways ofthinking, and forms of government, and even different looks--foryou can tell them from one another by some peculiarity ofappearance. Yet, in fact, all these nations belong to one greatfamily--English, and German, and Russian, and French, andItalian, and Spanish, the nations of the North, and the South, and the West, and partly of the East of Europe, all came fromone stock; and so did the Romans and Greeks who went beforethem; and so also did the Medes and Persians, and the Hindus, and some other peoples who have always remained in Asia. And tothe people from whom all these nations have sprung learned menhave given two names. Sometimes they are called the Indo-Germanicor Indo-European race, to show how widely they extend; andsometimes they are called the Aryan race, from a word which isfound in their language, and which comes from the root "ar, " toplough, and is supposed to mean noble, or of a good family. 

But how do we know that there were any such people, and that wein England are descended from them, or that they were theforefathers of the other nations of Europe, and of the Hindus, and of the old Greeks and Romans? We know it by a most curiousand ingenious process of what may be called digging out andbuilding up. Some of you may remember that years ago there wasfound in New Zealand a strange-looking bone, which nobody couldmake anything of, and which seemed to have belonged to somecreature quite lost to the world as we know it. This bone wassent home to England to a great naturalist, Professor Owen, ofthe British Museum, who looked at it, turned it over, thoughtabout it, and then came to the conclusion that it was a bonewhich had once formed part of a gigantic bird. Then; by degrees, he began to see the kind of general form which such a bird musthave presented, and finally, putting one thing to another, andfitting part to part, he declared it to be a bird of giganticsize, and of a particular character, which he was able todescribe; and this opinion was confirmed by later discoveries ofother bones and fragments, so that an almost complete skeletonof the Dinornis may now be seen in this country. Well, ourknowledge of the Aryan people, and of our own descent from them, has been found out in much the same way. Learned men observed, as a curious thing, that in various European languages therewere words of the same kind, and having the same root forms;they found also that these forms of roots existed in the olderlanguage of Greece; and then they found that they existed alsoin Sanskrit, the oldest language of India--that in which thesacred books of the Hindus are written. They discovered, further, that these words and their roots meant always the samethings, and this led to the natural belief that they came fromthe same source. Then, by closer inquiry into the _Vedas_, orHindu sacred books, another discovery was made, namely, thatwhile the Sanskrit has preserved the words of the originallanguage in their most primitive or earliest state, the otherlanguages derived from the same source have kept some formsplainly coming from the same roots, but which Sanskrit has lost. Thus we are carried back to a language older than Sanskrit, andof which this is only one of the forms, and from this we knowthat there was a people which used a common tongue; and ifdifferent forms of this common tongue are found in India, inPersia, and throughout Europe, we know that the races whichinhabit these countries must, at sometime, have parted from theparent stock, and must have carried their language and theirtraditions along with them. So, to find out who these peoplewere, we have to go back to the sacred books of the Hindus andthe Persians, and to pick out whatever facts may be found there, and thus to build up the memorial of the Aryan race, just asProfessor Owen built up the great New Zealand bird. 

It would take too long, and would be much too dry, to show howthis process has been completed step by step, and bit by bit. That belongs to a study called comparative philology, and toanother called comparative mythology--that is, the studies ofwords and of myths, or legends--which some of those who readthese pages may pursue with interest in after years. All thatneed be done now is to bring together such accounts of the Aryanpeople, our forefathers, as may be gathered from the writings ofthe learned men who have made this a subject of inquiry, andespecially from the works of German and French writers, and moreparticularly from those of Mr. Max Muller, an eminent German, who lives amongst us in England, who writes in English, and whohas done more, perhaps, than anybody else, to tell us what weknow about this matter. 

As to when the Aryans lived we know nothing, but that it wasthousands of years ago, long before history began. As to thekind of people they were we know nothing in a direct way. Theyhave left no traces of themselves in buildings, or weapons, orenduring records of any kind. There are no ruins of theirtemples or tombs, no pottery--which often helps to throw lightupon ancient peoples-no carvings upon rocks or stones. It isonly by the remains of their language that we can trace them;and we do this through the sacred books of the Hindus andPersians-the _Vedas_ and the _Zend Avesta_--in which remains oftheir language are found, and by means of which, therefore, weget to know something about their dwelling-place, their manners, their customs, their religion, and their legends--the source andorigin of our Fairy Tales. 

In the _Zend Avesta_--the oldest sacred book of the Persians--orin such fragments of it as are left, there are sixteen countriesspoken of as having been given by Ormuzd, the Good Deity, forthe Aryans to live in; and these countries are described as aland of delight, which was turned, by Ahriman, the Evil Deity, into a land of death and cold; partly, it is said, by a greatflood, which is described as being like Noah's flood recorded inthe Book of Genesis. This land, as nearly as we can make it out, seems to have been the high, central district of Asia, to thenorth and west of the great chain of mountains of the HinduKoush, which form the frontier barrier of the present country ofthe Afghans. It stretched, probably, from the sources of theriver Oxus to the shores of the Caspian Sea; and when the Aryansmoved from their home, it is thought that the easterly portionof the tribes were those who marched southwards into India andPersia, and that those who were nearest the Caspian Sea marchedwestwards into Europe. It is not supposed that they were all oneunited people, but rather a number of tribes, having a commonorigin--though what was this original stock is quite beyond anyknowledge we have, or even beyond our powers of conjecture. But, though the Aryan peoples were divided into tribes, and werespread over a tract of country nearly as large as half Europe, we may properly describe them generally, for so far as ourknowledge goes, all the tribes had the same character. 

They were a pastoral people--that is, their chief work was tolook after their herds of cattle and to till the earth. Of thiswe find proof in the words and roots remaining of their language. From the same source, also, we know that they lived in dwellingsbuilt with wood and stone; that these dwellings were groupedtogether in villages; that they were fenced in against enemies, and that enclosures were formed to keep the cattle from straying, and that roads of some kind were made from one village toanother. These things show that the Aryans had some claim to thename they took, and that in comparison with their forefathers, or with the savage or wandering tribes they knew, they had aright to call themselves respectable, excellent, honourable, masters, heroes--for all these are given as probable meaningsof their name. Their progress was shown in another way. Therudest and earliest tribes of men used weapons of flint, roughlyshaped into axes and spear-heads, or other cutting implements, with which they defended themselves in conflict, or killed thebeasts of chase, or dug up the roots on which they lived. TheAryans were far in advance of this condition. They did not, itis believed, know the use of iron, but they knew and used gold, silver, and copper; they made weapons and other implements ofbronze; they had ploughs to till the ground, and axes, andprobably saws, for the purpose of cutting and shaping timber. Of pottery and weaving they knew something: the western tribescertainly used hemp and flax as materials for weaving, and whenthe stuff was woven the women made it into garments by the useof the needle. Thus we get a certain division of trades oroccupations. There were the tiller of the soil, the herdsman, the smith who forged the tools and weapons of bronze, the joineror carpenter who built the houses, and the weaver who made theclothing required for protection against a climate which wasusually cold. Then there was also the boat-builder, for theAryans had boats, though moved only by oars. There was yetanother class, the makers of personal ornaments, for thesepeople had rings, bracelets, and necklaces made of the preciousmetals. 

Of trade the Aryans knew something; but they had no coinedmoney--all the trade was done by exchange of one kind of cattle, or grain or goods, for another. They had regulations as toproperty, their laws punished crime with fine, imprisonment, ordeath, just as ours do. They seem to have been careful to keeptheir liberties, the families being formed into groups, andthese into tribes or clans, under the rule of an elected chief, while it is probable that a Great Chief or King ruled overseveral tribes and led them to war, or saw that the laws wereput into force. 

Now we begin to see something of these ancient forefathers ofours, and to understand what kind of people they were. Presentlywe shall have to look into their religion, out of which ourFairy Stories were really made; but first, there are one or twoother things to be said about them. One of these shows that theywere far in advance of savage races, for they could count ashigh as one hundred, while savages can seldom get further thanthe number of their fingers; and they had also advanced so faras to divide the year into twelve months, which they took fromthe changes of the moon. Then their family relations were veryclose and tender. "Names were given to the members of familiesrelated by marriage as well as by blood. A welcome greeted thebirth of children, as of those who brought joy to the home; andthe love that should be felt between brother and sister wasshown in the names given to them: _bhratar_ (or brother) beinghe who sustains or helps; _svasar_ (or sister) she who pleasesor consoles. The daughter of each household was called _duhitar, _from _duh_, a root which in Sanskrit means to milk, by which weknow that the girls in those days were the milking-maids. Father comes from a root, _pa_, which means to protect orsupport; mother, _matar_, has the meaning of maker. "[1]

Now we may sum up what we know of this ancient people andtheir ways; and we find in them much that is to be found intheir descendants--the love of parents and children, thecloseness of family ties, the protection of life and property, the maintenance of law and order, and, as we shall seepresently, a great reverence for _God_. Also, they were wellversed in the arts of life--they built houses, formed villagesor towns, made roads, cultivated the soil, raised great herdsof cattle and other animals; they made boats and land-carriages, worked in metals for use and ornament, carried on trade witheach other, knew how to count, and were able to divide theirtime so as to reckon by months and days as well as by seasons. Besides all this, they had something more and of still highervalue, for the fragments of their ancient poems or hymnspreserved in the Hindu and Persian sacred books show that theythought much of the spirit of man as well as of his bodilylife; that they looked upon sin as an evil to be punished orforgiven by the Gods, that they believed in a life after thedeath of the body, and that they had a strong feeling fornatural beauty and a love of searching into the wonders ofthe earth and of the heavens. 

The religion of the Aryan races, in its beginning, was a verysimple and a very noble one. They looked up to the heavens andsaw the bright sun, and the light and beauty and glory of theday. They saw the day fade into night and the clouds drawthemselves across the sky, and then they saw the dawn and thelight and life of another day. Seeing these things, they feltthat some Power higher than man ordered and guided them; and tothis great Power they gave the name of _Dyaus_, from a root-wordwhich means "to shine. " And when, out of the forces and forms ofNature, they afterwards fashioned other Gods, this name of Dyausbecame _Dyaus pitar_, the Heaven-Father, or Lord of All; and infar later times, when the western Aryans had found their home inEurope, the _Dyaus pitar_ of the central Asian land became theZeupater of the Greeks, and the Jupiter of the Romans; and thefirst part of his name gave us the word Deity, which we apply to_God_. So, as Professor Max Muller tells us, the descendants ofthe ancient Aryans, "when they search for a name for what is mostexalted and yet most dear to every one of us, when they wish toexpress both awe and love, the infinite and the finite, they cando but what their old fathers did when gazing up to the eternalsky, and feeling the presence of a Being as far as far, and asnear as near can be; they can but combine the self-same wordsand utter once more the primeval Aryan prayer, Heaven-Father, in that form which will endure for ever, 'Our Father, which artin Heaven. '"

The feeling which the Aryans had towards the Heaven-Father isvery finely shown in one of the oldest hymns in the _Rig Veda_, or the Book of Praise--a hymn written 4, 000 years ago, andaddressed to Varuna, or the All-Surrounder, the ancient Hinduname for the chief deity:--

 "Let me not, O Varuna, enter into the house of clay. Have mercy! Almighty, have mercy! If I go trembling, like a cloud driven by the wind, Have mercy! Almighty, have mercy! Through want of strength, thou strong and bright God, have I gone wrong; Have mercy! Almighty, have mercy!"

But, besides Dyaus pitar, or Varuna, the Aryans worshipped othergods, whom they made for themselves out of the elements, and thechanges of night and day, and the succession of the seasons. They worshipped the sky, the earth, the sun, the dawn, fire, water, and wind. The chief of these deities were Agni, the fire;Prithivi, the earth; Ushas, the dawn; Mitra, or Surya, the sun;Indra, the sky; Maruts, the storm-winds; and Varuna, theAll-Surrounder. To these deities sacrifice was offered andprayer addressed; but they had no priests or temples--these camein later ages, when men thought they had need of others to standbetween them and _God_. But the ancient Aryans saw the Deityeverywhere, and stood face to face with Him in Nature. He was tothem the early morning, the brightness of midday, the gloom ofevening, the darkness of night, the flash of the lightning, theroll of the thunder, and the rush of the mighty storm-wind. Itseems strange to us that those who could imagine the oneHeaven-Father should degrade Him by making a multitude of Gods;but this came easily to them, partly out of a desire to accountfor all they saw in Nature, and which their fancy clothed indivine forms, and partly out of reverence for the great AllFather, by filling up the space between Him and themselves withinferior Gods, all helping to make His greatness the greater andHis power the mightier. 

We cannot look into this old religion of the Aryans any further, because our business is to see how their legends are connectedwith the myths and stories which are spread by their descendantsover a great part of East and West. Now this came about in theway we are going to describe. 

The mind of the Aryan peoples in their ancient home was full ofimagination. They never ceased to wonder at what they heard andsaw in the sky and upon the earth. Their language was highlyfigurative, and so the things which struck them with wonder, andwhich they could not explain, were described under forms andnames which were familiar to them. Thus the thunder was to themthe bellowing of a mighty beast or the rolling of a greatchariot. In the lightning they saw a brilliant serpent, or aspear shot across the sky, or a great fish darting swiftlythrough the sea of cloud. The clouds were heavenly cows, whoshed milk upon the earth and refreshed it; or they were webswoven by heavenly women, who drew water from the fountains onhigh and poured it down as rain. The sun was a radiant wheel, ora golden bird, or an eye, or a shining egg, or a horse ofmatchless speed, or a slayer of the cloud-dragons. Sometimes itwas a frog, when it seemed to be sinking into or squatting uponthe water; and out of this fancy, when the meaning of it waslost, there grew a Sanskrit legend, which is to be found also inTeutonic and Celtic myths. This story is, that Bheki (the frog)was a lovely maiden who was found by a king, who asked her to behis wife. So she married him, but only on condition that heshould never show her a drop of water. One day she grew tired, and asked for water. The king gave it to her, and she sank outof his sight; in other words, the sun disappears when it touchesthe water. 

This imagery of the Aryans was applied by them to all they sawin the sky. Sometimes, as we have said, the clouds were cows;they were also dragons, which sought to slay the sun; or greatships floating across the sky, and casting anchor upon earth; orrocks, or mountains, or deep caverns, in which evil deities hidthe golden light. Then, also, they were shaped by fancy intoanimals of various kinds-the bear, the wolf, the dog, the ox;and into giant birds, and into monsters which were both bird andbeast. 

The Winds, again, in their fancy, were the companions or theministers of Indra, the sky-god. The Maruts, or spirits of thewinds, gathered into their host the souls of the dead--thusgiving birth to the Scandinavian and Teutonic legend of the WildHorseman, who rides at midnight through the stormy sky, with hislong train of dead behind him, and his weird hounds before. TheRibhus, or Arbhus, again, were the sunbeams or the lightning, who forged the armour of the Gods, and made their thunderbolts, and turned old people young, and restored out of the hide alonethe slaughtered cow on which the Gods had feasted. Out of theseheavenly artificers, the workers of the clouds, there came, inlater times, two of the most striking stories of ancientlegend--that of Thor, the Scandinavian thunder-god, who feastedat night on the goats which drew his chariot, and in themorning, by a touch of his hammer, brought them back to life;and that of Orpheus in the beautiful Greek legend, the master ofdivine song, who moved the streams, and rocks, and trees, by thebeauty of his music, and brought back his wife Eurydike from theshades of death. In our Western fairy tales we still have theseRibhus, or Arbhus, transformed, through various changes oflanguage, into Albs, and Elfen, and last into our English Elves. It is not needful to go further into the fanciful way in whichthe old Aryans slowly made ever-increasing deities and superhumanbeings for themselves out of all the forms and aspects of Nature;or how their Hindu and Persian and Greek and Teuton descendantspeopled all earth, and air, and sky, and water, with good andbad spirits and imaginary powers. But, as we shall see later, all these creatures grew out of one thing only--the Sun, and hisinfluence upon the earth. Aryan myths were no more than poeticfancies about light and darkness, cloud and rain, night and day, storm and wind; and when they moved westward and southward, theAryan races brought these legends with them; and they wereshaped by degrees into the innumerable gods and demons of theHindus, the divs and jinns of the Persians, the great gods, the minor deities, and nymphs, and fauns, and satyrs of Greekmythology and poetry; the stormy divinities, the giants, andtrolls of the cold and rugged North; the dwarfs of the Germanforests; the elves who dance merrily in the moonlight of anEnglish summer; and the "good people" who play mischievous tricksupon stray peasants amongst the Irish hills. Almost all, indeed, that we have of a legendary kind comes to us from our Aryanforefathers; sometimes scarcely changed, sometimes so alteredthat we have to puzzle out the links between the old and the new;but all these myths and traditions, and Old-world stories, whenwe come to know the meaning of them, take us back to the timewhen the Aryan races dwelt together in the high lands of CentralAsia, and they all mean the same things--that is, the relationbetween the sun and the earth, the succession of night and day, of winter and summer, of storm and calm, of cloud and tempest, and golden sunshine and bright blue sky. And this is the sourcefrom which we get our Fairy Stories; for underneath all of themthere are the same fanciful meanings, only changed and alteredin the way of putting them, by the lapse of ages of time, by thecircumstances of different countries, and by the fancy of thosewho kept the wonderful tales alive without knowing what theymeant. 

When the change happened that brought about all this, we do notknow. It was thousands of years ago that the Aryan people begantheir march out of their old country in mid-Asia. But from theremains of their language and the likeness of their legends tothose amongst other nations, we do know that ages and ages agotheir country grew too small for them, so they were obliged tomove away from it. They could not go eastward, for the greatmountains shut them in; they could not go northward, for thegreat desert was too barren for their flocks and herds. So theyturned, some of them southward into India and Persia, and someof them westward into Europe--at the time, perhaps, when theland of Europe stretched from the borders of Asia to our ownislands, and when there was no sea between us and what is nowthe mainland. How they made their long and toilsome march weknow not. But, as Kingsley writes of such a movement of anancient tribe, so we may fancy these old Aryans marchingwestward--"the tall, bare-limbed men, with stone axes on theirshoulders and horn bows at their backs, with herds of greycattle, guarded by huge lop-eared mastiffs, with shaggy whitehorses, heavy-horned sheep and silky goats, moving alwayswestward through the boundless steppes, whither or why we knownot, but that the All-Father had sent them forth. And behind us[he makes them say] the rosy snow-peaks died into ghastly grey, lower and lower, as every evening came; and before us the plainsspread infinite, with gleaming salt-lakes, and ever-fresh tribesof gaudy flowers. Behind us, dark: lines of living beingsstreamed down the mountain slopes; around us, dark lines crawledalong the plains--westward, westward ever. Who could standagainst us? We met the wild asses on the steppe, and tamed them, and made them our slaves. We slew the bison herds, and swambroad rivers on their skins. The Python snake lay across ourpath; the wolves and wild dogs snarled at us out of theircoverts; we slew them and went on. The forests rose in blacktangled barriers, we hewed our way through them and went on. Strange giant tribes met us, and eagle-visaged hordes, fierceand foolish; we smote them, hip and thigh, and went on, west-ward ever. " And so, as they went on, straight towards thewest, or as they turned north and south, and thus overspread newlands, they brought with them their old ways of thought andforms of belief, and the stories in which these had taken form;and on these were built up the Gods and Heroes, and allwonder-working creatures and things, and the poetical fables andfancies which have come down to us, and which still linger inour customs and our Fairy Tales bright and sunny and manycoloured in the warm regions of the south; sterner and wilderand rougher in the north; more homelike in the middle andwestern countries; but always alike in their main features, andalways having the same meaning when we come to dig it out; andthese forms and this meaning being the same in the lands of theWestern Aryans as in those still peopled by the Aryans of theEast. 

It would take a very great book to give many examples of themyths and stories which are alike in all the Aryan countries;but we may see by one instance what the likeness is; and itshall be a story which all will know when they read it. 

Once upon a time there was a Hindu Rajah, who had an onlydaughter, who was born with a golden necklace. In this necklacewas her soul; and if the necklace were taken off and worn bysome one else, the Princess would die. On one of her birthdaysthe Rajah gave his daughter a pair of slippers with ornaments ofgold and gems upon them. The Princess went out upon a mountainto pluck the flowers that grew there, and while she was stoopingto pluck them one of her slippers came off and fell down into aforest below. A Prince, who was hunting in the forest, picked upthe lost slipper, and was so charmed with it that he desired tomake its owner his wife. So he made his wish known everywhere, but nobody came to claim the slipper, and the poor Prince grewvery sad. At last some people from the Rajah's country heard ofit, and told the Prince where to find the Rajah's daughter; andhe went there, and asked for her as his wife, and they weremarried. Sometime after, another wife of the Prince, beingjealous of the Rajah's daughter, stole her necklace, and put iton her own neck, and then the Rajah's daughter died. But herbody did not decay, nor did her face lose its bloom; and thePrince went every day to see her, for he loved her very muchalthough she was dead. Then he found out the secret of thenecklace, and got it back again, and put it on his dead wife'sneck, and her soul was born again in her, and she came back tolife, and they lived happy ever after. 

This Hindu story of the lost slipper is met with again in alegend of the ancient Greeks, which tells that while a beautifulwoman, named Rhodope--or the rosy-cheeked--was bathing, an eaglepicked up one of her slippers and flew away with it, and carriedit off to Egypt, and dropped it in the lap of the King of thatcountry, as he sat at Memphis on the judgment-seat. The slipperwas so small and beautiful that the King fell in love with thewearer of it, and had her sought for, and when she was found hemade her his wife. Another story of the same kind. It is foundin many countries, in various forms, and is that of Cinderella, the poor neglected maiden, whom her stepmother set to work inthe kitchen, while her sisters went to the grand balls andfeasts at the King's palace. You know how Cinderella's fairygodmother came and dressed her like a princess, and sent her tothe ball; how the King's son fell in love with her; how she lostone of her slippers, which the Prince picked up; how he vowedthat he would marry the maiden who could fit on the lostslipper; how all the ladies of the court tried to do it, andfailed, Cinderella's sisters amongst them; and how Cinderellaherself put on the slipper, produced the fellow to it, wasmarried to the King's son, and lived happily with him. 

Now the story of Cinderella helps us to find out the meaning ofour Fairy Tales; and takes us back straight to the far-off landwhere fairy legends began, and to the people who made them. Cinderella, and Rhodope, and the Hindu Rajah's daughter, and thelike, are but different forms of the same ancient myth. It is thestory of the Sun and the Dawn. Cinderella, grey and dark, anddull, is all neglected when she is away from the Sun, obscured bythe envious Clouds her sisters, and by her stepmother the Night. So she is Aurora, the Dawn, and the fairy Prince is the MorningSun, ever pursuing her, to claim her for his bride. This is thelegend as we find it in the ancient Hindu sacred books; and thisexplains at once the source and the meaning of the Fairy Tale. 

Nor is it in the story of Cinderella alone that we trace theancient Hindu legends. There is scarcely a tale of Greek orRoman mythology, no legend of Teutonic or Celtic or Scandinaviangrowth, no great romance of what we call the middle ages, nofairy story taken down from the lips of ancient folk, anddressed for us in modern shape and tongue, that we do not find, in some form or another, in these Eastern poems. The Greek godsare there--Zeus, the Heaven-Father, and his wife Hera, "andPhoebus Apollo the Sun-god, and Pallas Athene, who taught menwisdom and useful arts, and Aphrodite the Queen of Beauty, andPoseidon the Ruler of the Sea, and Hephaistos the King of theFire, who taught men to work in metals. "[2] There, too, arelegends which resemble those of Orpheus and Eurydike, of Erosand Psyche, of Jason and the Golden Fleece, of the labours ofHerakles, of Sigurd and Brynhilt, of Arthur and the Knights ofthe Round Table. There, too, in forms which can be traced withease, we have the stories of Fairyland--the germs of theThousand and One Tales of the Arabian Nights, the narratives ofgiants, and dwarfs, and enchanters; of men and maidenstransformed by magic arts into beasts and birds; of richeshidden in the caves and bowels of the earth, and guarded bytrolls and gnomes; of blessed lands where all is bright andsunny, and where there is neither work nor care. Whatever, indeed, is strange or fanciful, or takes us straight from ourgrey, hard-working world into the sweet and peaceful country ofOnce Upon a Time, is to be found in these ancient Hindu books, and is repeated, from the source whence they were drawn, in manycountries of the East and West; for the people whose traditionsthe Vedas record were the forefathers of those who now dwell inIndia, in Persia, in the border-lands, and in most parts ofEurope. Yes; strange as it may seem, all of us, who differ somuch in language, in looks in customs and ways of thought, inall that marks out one nation from another--all of us have acommon origin and a common kindred. Greek and Roman, and Teutonand Kelt and Slav, ancient and modern, all came from the samestock. English and French, Spanish and Germans, Italians andRussians, all unlike in outward show, are linked together inrace; and not only with each other, but also claim kindred withthe people who now fill the fiery plains of India, and dwell onthe banks of her mighty rivers, and on the slopes of her greatmountain-chains, and who still recite the sacred books, and singthe ancient hymns from which the mythology of the West is ingreat part derived, whence our folk-lore comes, and which givelife and colour and meaning to our legends of romance and ourTales of Fairyland. 

By taking a number of stories containing the same idea, butrelated in different ages and in countries far away from eachother, we shall see how this likeness of popular tradition runsthrough all of them, and shows their common origin. So we willgo to the next chapter, and tell a few kindred tales from Eastand West, and South and North. 

------------------------[1] Edward Clodd, _The Childhood of Religions: Embracing a Simple Account of the Birth and Growth of Myths and Legends_, p. 76-77. (1878)

[2] Kingsley's _Heroes_, preface, p. Xv. 

CHAPTER II. 

KINDRED TALES FROM DIVERS LANDS: EROS AND PSYCHE. 

Once upon a time there lived a king and a queen, who had threebeautiful daughters. The youngest of them, who was calledPsyche, was the loveliest; she was so very beautiful that shewas thought to be a second Aphrodite, the Goddess of Beauty andLove, and all who saw her worshipped her as if she were thegoddess; so that the temples of Aphrodite were deserted and herworship neglected, and Psyche was preferred to her; and as shepassed along the streets, or came into the temples, the peoplecrowded round her, and scattered flowers under her feet, andoffered garlands to her. Now, when Aphrodite knew this she grewvery angry, and resolved to punish Psyche, so as to make her awonder and a shame for ever. So Aphrodite sent for her son Eros, the God of Love, and took him to the city where Psyche lived, and showed the maiden to him, and bade him afflict her with lovefor a man who should be the most wicked and most miserable ofmankind, an outcast, a beggar, one who had done some greatwrong, and had fallen so low that no man in the whole worldcould be so wretched. Eros agreed that he would do what hismother wished; but this was only a pretence, for when he sawPsyche he fell in love with her himself, and made up his mindthat she should be his own wife. The first thing to do was toget the maiden into his own care and to hide her from thevengeance of Aphrodite. So he put it into the mind of her fatherto go to the shrine of Phoebus, at Miletus, and ask the god whatshould be done with Psyche. The king did so, and he was biddenby an oracle to dress Psyche as a bride, to take her to the browof a high mountain, and to leave her there, and that after atime a great monster would come and take her away and make herhis wife. So Psyche was decked in bridal garments, was taken toa rock on the top of a mountain, and was left there as asacrifice to turn away the wrath of Aphrodite. But Eros tookcare that she came to no harm. He went to Zephyrus, the God ofthe West Wind, and told him to carry Psyche gently down into abeautiful valley, and to lay her softly on the turf, amidstlovely flowers. So Zephyrus lulled Psyche to sleep, and thencarried her safely down, and laid her in the place where Eroshad bidden him. When Psyche awoke from sleep she saw a thickgrove, with a crystal fountain in it, and close to the fountainthere was a stately palace, fit for the dwelling of a king or agod. She went into the palace, and found it very wonderful. Thewalls and ceilings were made of cedar and ivory, there weregolden columns holding up the roof, the floors were laid withprecious stones, so put together as to make pictures, and on thewalls were carvings in gold and silver of birds, and beasts, andflowers, and all kinds of strange and beautiful things. Andthere were also great treasure places full of gold, and silver, and gems, in such great measure that it seemed as if all theriches of the world were gathered there. But nowhere was thereany living creature to be seen; all the palace was empty, andPsyche was there alone. And while she went trembling and fearingthrough the rooms, and wondering whose all this might be, sheheard voices, as of invisible maidens, which told her that thepalace was for her, and that they who spoke, but whom she mightnot see, were her servants. And the voices bade her go first tothe bath, and then to a royal banquet which was prepared forher. So Psyche, still wondering, went to the bath, and then to agreat and noble room, where there was a royal seat, and uponthis she placed herself, and then unseen attendants put beforeher all kinds of delicate food and wine; and while she ate anddrank there was a sound as of a great number of people singingthe most charming music, and of one playing upon the lyre; butnone of them could she see. Then night came on, and all thebeautiful palace grew dark, and Psyche laid herself down upon acouch to sleep. Then a great terror fell upon her, for she heardfootsteps, which came nearer and nearer, and she thought it wasthe monster whose bride the oracle of Phoebus had destined herto be. And the footsteps drew closer to her, and then an unseenbeing came to her couch and lay down beside her, and made herhis wife; and he lay there until just before the break of day, and then he departed, and it was still so dark that Psyche couldnot see his form; nor did he speak, so that she could not guessfrom his voice what kind of creature it was to whom the Fateshad wedded her. So Psyche lived for a long while, wanderingabout her palace in the daytime, tended by her unseen guardians, and every night her husband came to her and stayed untildaybreak. Then she began to long to hear about her father andmother, and to see her sisters, and she begged leave of herhusband that these might come to her for a time. To this Erosagreed, and gave her leave to give her sisters rich gifts, butwarned her that she must answer no questions they might askabout him, and that she must not listen to any advice they mightgive her to find out who he was, or else a great misfortunewould happen to her. Then Zephyrus brought the sisters of Psycheto her, and they stayed with her for a little while, and werevery curious to know who her husband was, and what he was like. But Psyche, mindful of the commands of Eros, put them off, firstwith one story and then with another, and at last sent themaway, loaded with jewels. Now Psyche's sisters were envious ofher, because such good fortune had not happened to themselves, to have such a grand palace, and such store of wealth, and theyplotted between themselves to make her discover her husband, hoping to get some good for themselves out of it, and not caringwhat happened to her. And it so fell out that they had theirway, for Psyche again getting tired of solitude, again begged ofher husband that her sisters might come to see her once more, towhich, with much sorrow, he consented, but warned her again thatif she spoke of him, or sought to see him, all her happinesswould vanish, and that she would have to bear a life of misery. But it was fated that Psyche should disobey her husband; and itfell out in this way. When her sisters came to her again theyquestioned her about her husband, and persuaded her that she wasmarried to a monster too terrible to be looked at, and they toldher that this was the reason why he never came in the daytime, and refused to let himself be seen at night. Then they alsopersuaded her that she ought to put an end to the enchantment bykilling the monster; and for this purpose they gave her a sharpknife, and they gave her also a lamp, so that while he wasasleep she might look at him, so as to know where to strike. Then, being left alone, poor Psyche's mind was full of terror, and she resolved to follow the advice of her sisters. So whenher husband was asleep, she went and fetched the lamp, andlooked at him by its light; and then she saw that, instead of adeadly monster, it was Eros himself, the God of Love, to whomshe was married. But while she was filled with awe and delightat this discovery, the misfortune happened which Eros hadforetold. A drop of oil from the lamp fell upon the shoulder ofthe god, and he sprang up from the couch, reproached Psyche forher fatal curiosity, and vanished from her sight; and then thebeautiful palace vanished also, and Psyche found herself lyingon the bare cold earth, weeping, deserted, and alone. 

Then poor Psyche began a long and weary journey, to try to findthe husband she had lost, but she could not, for he had gone tohis mother Aphrodite, to be cured of his wound; and Aphrodite, finding out that Eros had fallen in love with Psyche, determinedto punish her, and to prevent her from finding Eros. FirstPsyche went to the god Pan, but he could not help her; then shewent to the goddess Demeter, the Earth-Mother, but she warnedher against the vengeance of Aphrodite, and sent her away. Andthe great goddess Hera did the same; and at last, abandoned byevery one, Psyche went to Aphrodite herself, and the goddess, who had caused great search to be made for her, now ordered herto be beaten and tormented, and then ridiculed her sorrows, andtaunted her with the loss of Eros, and set her to work at manytasks that seemed impossible to be done. First the goddess tooka great heap of seeds of wheat, barley, millet, poppy, lentils, and beans, and mixed them all together, and then bade Psycheseparate them into their different kinds by nightfall. Now therewere so many of them that this was impossible; but Eros, whopitied Psyche, though she had lost him, sent a great many ants, who parted the seeds from each other and arranged them in theirproper heaps, so that by evening all that Aphrodite hadcommanded was done. Then the goddess was very angry, and fedPsyche on bread and water, and next day she set Psyche anothertask. This was to collect a quantity of golden wool from thesheep of the goddess, creatures so fierce and wild that nomortal could venture near them and escape with life. Then Psychethought herself lost; but Pan came to her help and bade her waituntil evening, when the golden sheep would be at rest, and thenshe might from the trees and shrubs collect all the wool sheneeded. So Psyche fulfilled this task also. But Aphrodite wasstill unsatisfied. She now demanded a crystal urn, filled withicy waters from the fountain of Oblivion. The fountain wasplaced on the summit of a great mountain; it issued from afissure in a lofty rock, too steep for any one to ascend, andfrom thence it fell into a narrow channel, deep, winding, andrugged, and guarded on each side by terrible dragons, whichnever slept. And the rush of the waters, as they rolled along, resembled a human voice, always crying out to the adventurousexplorer--"Beware! fly! or you perish!" Here Psyche thought hersufferings at an end; sooner than face the dragons and climb therugged rocks she must die. But again Eros helped her, for hesent the eagle of Zeus, the All-Father, and the eagle took thecrystal urn in his claws, flew past the dragons, settled on therock, and drew the water of the black fountain, and gave itsafely to Psyche, who carried it back and presented it to theangry Aphrodite. But the goddess, still determined that Psycheshould perish, set her another task, the hardest and mostdangerous of all. "Take this box, " she said, "go with it intothe infernal regions to Persephone, and ask her for a portion ofher beauty, that I may adorn myself with it for the supper ofthe gods. " Now on hearing this, poor Psyche knew that thegoddess meant to destroy her; so she went up to a lofty tower, meaning to throw herself down headlong so that she might bekilled, and thus pass into the realm of Hades, never to return. But the tower was an enchanted place, and a voice from it spoketo her and bade her be of good cheer, and told her what to do. She was to go to a city of Achaia and find near it a mountain, and in the mountain she would see a gap, from which a narrowroad led straight into the infernal regions. But the voicewarned her of many things which must be done on the journey, andof others which must be avoided. She was to take in each hand apiece of barley bread, soaked in honey, and in her mouth she wasto put two pieces of money. On entering the dreary path shewould meet an old man driving a lame ass, laden with wood, andthe old man would ask her for help, but she was to pass him byin silence. Then she would come to the bank of the black river, over which the boatman Charon ferries the souls of the dead; andfrom her mouth Charon must take one piece of money, she sayingnot a word. In crossing the river a dead hand would stretchitself up to her, and a dead face, like that of her father, would appear, and a voice would issue from the dead man's mouth, begging for the other piece of money, that he might pay for hispassage, and get released from the doom of floating for ever inthe grim flood of Styx. But still she was to keep silence, andto let the dead man cry out in vain; for all these, the voicetold her, were snares prepared by Aphrodite, to make her let gothe money, and to let fall the pieces of bread. Then, at thegate of the palace of Persephone she would meet the greatthree-headed dog, Kerberos, who keeps watch there for ever, andto him, to quiet his terrible barking, she must give one pieceof the bread, and pass on, still never speaking. So Kerberoswould allow her to pass; but still another danger would awaither. Persephone would greet her kindly, and ask her to sit uponsoft cushions, and to eat of a fine banquet. But she must refuseboth offers--sitting only on the ground, and eating only of thebread of mortals, or else she must remain for ever in the gloomyregions below the earth. Psyche listened to this counsel, andobeyed it. Everything happened as the voice had foretold. Shesaw the old man with the overladen ass, she permitted Charon totake the piece of money from her lips, she stopped her earsagainst the cry of the dead man floating in the black river, shegave the honey bread to Kerberos, and she refused the softcushions and the banquet offered to her by the queen of theinfernal regions. Then Persephone gave her the precious beautydemanded by Aphrodite, and shut it up in the box, and Psychecame safely back into the light of day, giving to Kerberos, thethree-headed dog, the remaining piece of honey bread, and toCharon the remaining piece of money. But now she fell into agreat danger. The voice in the tower had warned her not to lookinto the box; but she was tempted by a strong desire, and so sheopened it, that she might see and use for herself the beauty ofthe gods. But when she opened the box it was empty, save of avapour of sleep, which seized upon Psyche, and made her as ifshe were dead. In this unhappy state, brought upon her by thevengeance of Aphrodite, she would have been lost for ever, butEros, healed of the wound caused by the burning oil, camehimself to her help, roused her from the death-like sleep, andput her in a place of safety. Then Eros flew up into the abodeof the gods, and besought Zeus to protect Psyche against hismother Aphrodite; and Zeus, calling an assembly of the gods, sent Hermes to bring Psyche thither, and then he declared herimmortal, and she and Eros were wedded to each other; and therewas a great feast in Olympus. And the sisters of Psyche, who hadstriven to ruin her, were punished for their crimes, for Erosappeared to them one after the other in a dream, and promised tomake each of them his wife, in place of Psyche, and bade eachthrow herself from the great rock whence Psyche was carried intothe beautiful valley by Zephyrus; and both the sisters did asthe dream told them, and they were dashed to pieces, andperished miserably. 

Now this is the story of Eros and Psyche, as it is told byApuleius, in his book of _Metamorphoses_, written nearly twothousand years ago. But the story was told ages before Apuleiusby people other than the Greeks, and in a language which existedlong before theirs. It is the tale of Urvasi and Pururavas, whichis to be found in one of the oldest of the Vedas, or Sanskritsacred books, which contain the legends of the Aryan race beforeit broke up and went in great fragments southward into India, andwestward into Persia and Europe. A translation of the story ofUrvasi and Pururavas is given by Mr. Max-Muller, [3] who alsotells what the story means, and this helps us to see the meaningof the tale of Eros and Psyche, and of many other myths whichoccur among all the branches of the Aryan family; among theTeutons, the Scandinavians, and the Slavs, as well as among theGreeks. Urvasi, then, was an immortal being, a kind of fairy, whofell in love with Pururavas, a hero and a king; and she marriedhim, and lived with him, on this condition--that she should neversee him unless he was dressed in his royal robes. Now there was aewe, with two lambs, tied to the couch of Urvasi and Pururavas;and the fairies--or Gandharvas, as the kinsfolk of Urvasi werecalled--wished to get her back amongst them; and so they stoleone of the lambs. Then Urvasi reproached her husband, and said, "They take away my darling, as if I lived in a land where thereis no hero and no man. " The fairies stole the other lamb, andUrvasi reproached her husband again, saying, "How can that be aland without heroes or men where I am?" Then Pururavas hastenedto bring back the pet lamb; so eager was he that he stayed notto clothe himself, and so sprang up naked. Then the Gandharvassent a flash of lightning, and Urvasi saw her husband naked asif by daylight; and then she cried out to her kinsfolk, "I comeback, " and she vanished. And Pururavas, made wretched by theloss of his love, sought her everywhere, and once he waspermitted to see her, and when he saw her, he said he should dieif she did not come back to him. But Urvasi could not return;but she gave him leave to come to her, on the last night of theyear, to the golden seats; and he stayed with her for thatnight. And Urvasi said to him, "The Gandharvas will to-morrowgrant thee a wish; choose. " He said; "Choose thou for me. " Shereplied, "Say to them, Let me be one of you. " And he said this, and they taught him how to make the sacred fire, and he becameone of them, and dwelt with Urvasi for ever. 

Now this, we see, is like the story of Eros and Psyche; and Mr. Max-Muller teaches us what it means. It is the story of the Sunand the Dawn. Urvasi is the Dawn, which must vanish or die whenit beholds the risen Sum; and Pururavas is the Sun; and they areunited again at sunset, when the Sun dies away into night. So, in the Greek myth, Eros is the dawning Sun, and when Psyche, theDawn, sees him, he flies from her, and it is only at nightfallthat they can be again united. In the same paper Mr. Max-Mullershows how this root idea of the Aryan race is found again inanother of the most beautiful of Greek myths or stories--that ofOrpheus and Eurydike. In the Greek legends the Dawn has manynames; one of them is Eurydike. The name of her husband, Orpheus, comes straight from the Sanskrit: it is the same asRibhu or Arbhu, which is a name of Indra, or the Sun, or whichmay be used for the rays of the Sun. The old story, then, saysour teacher, was this: "Eurydike (the Dawn) is bitten by aserpent (the Night); she dies, and descends into the lowerregions. Orpheus follows her, and obtains from the gods that hiswife should follow him, if he promised not to look back. Orpheuspromises--ascends from the dark world below; Eurydike is behindhim as he rises, but, drawn by doubt or by love, he looks round;the first ray of the Sun glances at the Dawn; and the Dawn fadesaway. "

We have now seen that the Greek myth is like a much older mythexisting amongst the Aryan race before it passed westward. Wehave but to look to other collections of Aryan folk-lore to findthat in some of its features the legend is common to allbranches of the Aryan family. In our own familiar story of"Beauty and the Beast, " for instance, we have the same idea. There are the three sisters, one of whom is chosen as the brideof an enchanted monster, who dwells in a beautiful palace. Bythe arts of her sisters she is kept away from him, and he is atthe point of death through his grief. Then she returns, and herevives, and becomes changed into a handsome Prince, and theylive happy ever after. One feature of these legends is thatbeings closely united to each other--as closely, that is, asthe Sun and the Dawn--may not look upon each other withoutmisfortune. This is illustrated in the charming Scandinavianstory of "The Land East of the Sun and West of the Moon, " whichis told in various forms; the best of them being in Mr. Morris'sbeautiful poem in "The Earthly Paradise, " and in Dr. Dasent'sNorse Tales. [4] We shall abridge Dr. Dasent's version, tellingthe story in our own way:

There was a poor peasant who had a large family whom he couldscarcely keep; and there were several daughters amongst them. The loveliest was the youngest daughter; who was very beautifulindeed. One evening in autumn, in bad weather, the family satround the fire; and there came three taps at the window. Thefather went out to see who it was, and he found only a greatWhite Bear. And the White Bear said, "If you will give me youryoungest daughter, I will make you rich. " So the peasant went inand asked his daughter if she would be the wife of the WhiteBear; and the daughter said "No. " So the White Bear went away, but said he would come back in a few days to see if the maidenhad changed her mind. Now her father and mother talked to her somuch about it, and seemed so anxious to be well off, that themaiden agreed to be the wife of the White Bear: and when he cameagain, she said "Yes, " and the White Bear told her to sit uponhis back, and hold by his shaggy coat, and away they wenttogether. After the maiden had ridden for a long way, they cameto a great hill, and the White Bear gave a knock on the hillwith his paw, and the hill opened, and they went in. Now insidethe hill there was a palace with fine rooms, ornamented withgold and silver, and all lighted up; and there was a table readylaid; and the White Bear gave the maiden a silver bell, and toldher to ring it when she wanted anything. And when the maiden hadeaten and drank, she went to bed, in a beautiful bed with silkpillows and curtains, and gold fringe to them. Then, in thedark, a man came and lay down beside her. This was the WhiteBear, who was an Enchanted Prince, and who was able to put offthe shape of a beast at night, and to become a man again; butbefore daylight, he went away and turned once more into a WhiteBear, so that his wife could never see him in the human form. Well, this went on for some time, and the wife of the White Bearwas very happy with her kind husband, in the beautiful palace hehad made for her. Then she grew dull and miserable for want ofcompany, and she asked leave to go home for a little while tosee her father and mother, and her brothers and sisters. So theWhite Bear took her home again, but he told her that there wasone thing she must not do; she must not go into a room with hermother alone, to talk to her, or a great misfortune wouldhappen. When the wife of the White Bear got home, she found thather family lived in a grand house, and they were all very gladto see her; and then her mother took her into a room bythemselves, and asked about her husband. And the wife of theWhite Bear forgot the warning, and told her mother that everynight a man came and lay down with her, and went away beforedaylight, and that she had never seen him, and wanted to seehim, very much. Then the mother said it might be a Troll sheslept with; and that she ought to see what it was; and she gaveher daughter a piece of candle, and said, "Light this while heis asleep, and look at him, but take care you don't drop thetallow upon him. " So then the White Bear came to fetch his wife, and they went back to the palace in the hill, and that night shelit the candle, while her husband was asleep, and then she sawthat he was a handsome Prince, and she felt quite in love withhim, and gave him a soft kiss. But just as she kissed him shelet three drops of tallow fall upon his shirt, and he woke up. Then the White Bear was very sorrowful, and said that he wasenchanted by a wicked fairy, and that if his wife had onlywaited for a year before looking at him, the enchantment wouldbe broken, and he would be a man again always. But now that shehad given way to curiosity, he must go to a dreary castle Eastof the Sun and West of the Moon, and marry a witch Princess, with a nose three ells long. And then he vanished, and so didhis palace, and his poor wife found herself lying in the middleof a gloomy wood, and she was dressed in rags, and was verywretched. But she did not stop to cry about her hard fate, forshe was a brave girl, and made up her mind to go at once insearch of her husband. So she walked for days, and then she metan old woman sitting on a hillside, and playing with a goldenapple; and she asked the old woman the way to the Land East ofthe Sun and West of the Moon. And the old woman listened to herstory, and then she said, "I don't know where it is; but you cango on and ask my next neighbour. Ride there on my horse, andwhen you have done with him, give him a pat under the left earand say, 'Go home again;' and take this golden apple with you, it may be useful. " So she rode on for a long way, and then cameto another old woman, who was playing with a golden cardingcomb; and she asked her the way to the Land East of the Sun andWest of the Moon? But this old woman couldn't tell her, and badeher go on to another old woman, a long way off. And she gave herthe golden carding comb, and lent her a horse just like thefirst one. And the third old woman was playing with a goldenspinning wheel; and she gave this to the wife of the White Bear, and lent her another horse, and told her to ride on to the EastWind, and ask him the way to the enchanted land. Now after aweary journey she got to the home of the East Wind, and he saidhe had heard of the Enchanted Prince, and of the country East ofthe Sun and West of the Moon, but he did not know where it was, for he had never been so far. But, he said, "Get on my back, andwe will go to my brother the West Wind; perhaps he knows. " Sothey sailed off to the West Wind, and told him the story, and hetook it quite kindly, but said he didn't know the way. Butperhaps his brother the South Wind might know; and they would goto him. So the White Bear's wife got on the back of the WestWind, and he blew straight away to the dwelling-place of theSouth Wind, and asked him where to find the Land East of the Sunand West of the Moon. But the South Wind said that although hehad blown pretty nearly everywhere, he had never blown there;but he would take her to his brother the North Wind, the oldest, and strongest, and wisest Wind of all; and he would be sure toknow. Now the North Wind was very cross at being disturbed, andhe used bad language, and was quite rude and unpleasant. But hewas a kind Wind after all, and when his brother the West Windtold him the story, he became quite fatherly, and said he woulddo what he could, for he knew the Land East of the Sun and Westof the Moon very well. But, he said, "It is a long way off; sofar off that once in my life I blew an aspen leaf there, and wasso tired with it that I couldn't blow or puff for ever so manydays after. " So they rested that night, and next morning theNorth Wind puffed himself out, and got stout, and big, andstrong, ready for the journey; and the maiden got upon his back, and away they went to the country East of the Sun and West ofthe Moon. It was a terrible journey, high up in the air, in agreat storm, and over the mountains and the sea, and before theygot to the end of it the North Wind grew very tired, anddrooped, and nearly fell into the sea, and got so low down thatthe crests of the waves washed over him. But he blew as hard ashe could, and at last he put the maiden down on the shore, justin front of the Enchanted Castle that stood in the Land East ofthe Sun and West of the Moon; and there he had to stop and restmany days before he became strong enough to blow home again. 

Now the wife of the White Bear sat down before the castle, andbegan to play with the golden apple. And then the wickedPrincess with the nose three ells long opened a window, andasked if she would sell the apple? But she said "No;" she wouldgive the golden apple for leave to spend the night in thebed-chamber of the Prince who lived there. So the Princess withthe long nose said "Yes, " and the wife of the White Bear wasallowed to pass the night in her husband's chamber. But asleeping draught had been given to the Prince, and she could notwake him, though she wept greatly, and spent the whole night incrying out to him; and in the morning before he woke she wasdriven away by the wicked Princess. Well, next day she sat andplayed with the golden carding comb, and the Princess wantedthat too; and the same bargain was made; but again a sleepingdraught was given to the Prince, and he slept all night, andnothing could waken him; and at the first peep of daylight thewicked Princess drove the poor wife out again. Now it was thethird day, and the wife of the White Bear had only the goldenspinning-wheel left. So she sat and played with it, and thePrincess bought it on the same terms as before. But some kindfolk who slept in the next room to the Prince told him that fortwo nights a woman had been in his chamber, weeping bitterly, and crying out to him to wake and see her. So, being warned, thePrince only pretended to drink the sleeping draught, and so whenhis wife came into the room that night he was wide awake, andwas rejoiced to see her; and they spent the whole night inloving talk. Now the next day was to be the Prince's weddingday; but now that his lost wife had found him, he hit upon aplan to escape marrying the Princess with the long nose. So whenmorning came, he said he should like to see what his bride wasfit for? "Certainly, " said the Witch-mother and the Princess, both together. Then the Prince said he had a fine shirt, withthree drops of tallow upon it; and he would marry only the womanwho could wash them out, for no other would be worth having. Sothey laughed at this, for they thought it would be easily done. And the Princess began, but the more she rubbed, the worse thetallow stuck to the shirt. And the old Witch-mother tried; butit got deeper and blacker than ever. And all the Trolls in theenchanted castle tried; but none of them could wash the shirtclean. Then said the Prince, "Call in the lassie who sitsoutside, and let her try. " And she came in, and took the shirt, and washed it quite clean and white, all in a minute. Then theold Witch-mother put herself into such a rage that she burstinto pieces, and so did the Princess with the long nose, and sodid all the Trolls in the castle; and the Prince took his wifeaway with him, and all the silver and gold, and a number ofChristian people who had been enchanted by the witch; and awaythey went for ever from the dreary Land East of the Sun and Westof the Moon. 

In the story of "The Soaring Lark, " in the collection of Germanpopular tales made by the brothers Grimm, we have anotherversion of the same idea; and here, as in Eros and Psyche, andin the Land East of the Sun and West of the Moon, it is thewoman to whose fault the misfortunes are laid, and upon whomfalls the long and weary task of search. The story told inbrief, is this. A merchant went on a journey, and promised tobring back for his three daughters whatever they wished. Theeldest asked for diamonds, the second for pearls, and theyoungest, who was her father's favourite, for a singing, soaringlark. As the merchant came home, he passed through a greatforest, and on the top bough of a tall tree he found a lark, andtried to take it. Then a Lion sprang from behind the tree, andsaid the lark was his, and that he would eat up the merchant fortrying to steal it. The merchant told the Lion why he wanted thebird, and then the Lion said that he would give him the lark, and let him go, on one condition, namely, that he should give tothe Lion the first thing or person that met him on his return. Now the first person who met the merchant when he got home washis youngest daughter, and the poor merchant told her the story, and wept very much, and said that she should not go into theforest. But the daughter said, "What you have promised you mustdo;" and so she went into the forest, to find the Lion. The Lionwas an Enchanted Prince, and all his servants were also turnedinto lions; and so they remained all day; but at night they allchanged back again into men. Now when the Lion Prince saw themerchant's daughter, he fell in love with her, and took her to afine castle, and at night, when he became a man, they weremarried, and lived very happily, and in great splendour. One daythe Prince said to his wife, "To-morrow your eldest sister is tobe married; if you would like to be there, my lions shall gowith you. " So she went, and the lions with her, and there weregreat rejoicings in her father's house, because they were afraidthat she had been torn to pieces in the forest; and afterstaying some time, she went back to her husband. After a while, the Prince said to his wife, "To-morrow your second sister isgoing to be married, " and she replied, "This time I will not goalone, for you shall go with me. " Then he told her how dangerousthat would be, for if a single ray from a burning light fellupon him, he would be changed into a Dove, and in that formwould have to fly about for seven years. But the Princess verymuch wanted him to go, and in order to protect him from thelight, she had a room built with thick walls, so that no lightcould get through, and there he was to sit while the bridalcandles were burning. But by some accident, the door of the roomwas made of new wood, which split, and made a little chink, andthrough this chink one ray of light from the torches of thebridal procession fell like a hair upon the Prince, and he wasinstantly changed in form; and when his wife came to tell himthat all danger was over, she found only a White Dove, who saidvery sadly to her--

"For seven years I must fly about in the world, but at everyseventh mile I will let fall a white feather and a drop of redblood, which will show you the way, and if you follow it, youmay save me. "

Then the White Dove flew out of the door, and the Princessfollowed it, and at every seventh mile the Dove let fall a whitefeather and a drop of red blood; and so, guided by the feathersand the drops of blood, she followed the Dove, until the sevenyears had almost passed, and she began to hope that the Prince'senchantment would be at an end. But one day there was no whitefeather to be seen, nor any drop of red blood, and the Dove hadflown quite away. Then the poor Princess thought, "No man canhelp me now;" and so she mounted up to the Sun, and said, "Thoushinest into every chasm and over every peak; hast thou seen aWhite Dove on the wing?"

"No, " answered the Sun. "I have not seen one; but take thiscasket, and open it when you are in need of help. "

She took the casket, and thanked the Sun. When evening came, sheasked the Moon--

"Hast thou seen a White Dove? for thou shinest all night longover every field and through every wood. "

"No, " said the Moon, "I have not seen a White Dove; but here isan egg--break it when you are in great trouble. "

She thanked the Moon, and took the egg; and then the North Windcame by; and she said to the North Wind:

"Hast thou not seen a White Dove? for thou passest through allthe boughs, and shakest every leaf under heaven. "

"No, " said the North Wind, "I have not seen one; but I will askmy brothers, the East Wind, and the West Wind, and the SouthWind. "

So he asked them all three; and the East Wind and the West Windsaid, "No, they had not seen the White Dove;" but the South Windsaid--

"I have seen the White Dove; he has flown to the Red Sea, andhas again been changed into a Lion, for the seven years are up;and the Lion stands there in combat with an Enchanted Princess, who is in the form of a great Caterpillar. "

Then the North Wind knew what to do; and he said to thePrincess--

"Go to the Red Sea; on the right-hand shore there are greatreeds, count them, and cut off the eleventh reed, and beat theCaterpillar with it. Then the Caterpillar and the Lion will taketheir human forms. Then look for the Griffin which sits on theRed Sea, and leap upon its back with the Prince, and the Griffinwill carry you safely home. Here is a nut; let it fall when youare in the midst of the sea, and a large nut-tree will grow outof the water, and the Griffin will rest upon it. "

So the Princess went to the Red Sea, and counted the reeds, andcut off the eleventh reed, and beat the Caterpillar with it, andthen the Lion conquered in the fight, and both of them tooktheir human forms again. But the Enchanted Princess was tooquick for the poor wife, for she instantly seized the Prince andsprang upon the back of the Griffin, and away they flew, quiteout of sight. Now the poor deserted wife sat down on thedesolate shore, and cried bitterly; and then she said, "So faras the wind blows, and so long as the cock crows, will I searchfor my husband, till I find him;" and so she travelled on andon, until one day she came to the palace whither the EnchantedPrincess had carried the Prince; and there was great feastinggoing on, and they told her that the Prince and Princess wereabout to be married. Then she remembered what the Sun had said, and took out the casket and opened it, and there was the mostbeautiful dress in all the world; as brilliant as the Sunhimself. So she put it on, and went into the palace, andeverybody admired the dress, and the Enchanted Princess asked ifshe would sell it?

"Not for gold or silver, " she said, "but for flesh and blood. "

"What do you mean?" the Princess asked. 

"Let me sleep for one night in the bridegroom's chamber, " thewife said. So the Enchanted Princess agreed, but she gave thePrince a sleeping draught, so that he could not hear his wife'scries; and in the morning she was driven out, without a wordfrom him, for he slept so soundly that all she said seemed tohim only like the rushing of the wind through the fir-trees. 

Then the poor wife sat down and wept again, until she thought ofthe egg the Moon had given her; and when she took the egg andbroke it, there came out of it a hen with twelve chickens, allof gold, and the chickens pecked quite prettily, and then ranunder the wings of the hen for shelter. Presently, the EnchantedPrincess looked out of the window, and saw the hen and thechickens, and asked if they were for sale. "Not for gold orsilver, but for flesh and blood, " was the answer she got; andthen the wife made the same bargain as before--that she shouldspend the night in the bridegroom's chamber. Now this night thePrince was warned by his servant, and so he poured away thesleeping draught instead of drinking it; and when his wife came, and told her sorrowful story, he knew her, and said, "Now I amsaved;" and then they both went as quickly as possible, and setthemselves upon the Griffin, who carried them over the Red Sea;and when they got to the middle of the sea, the Princess letfall the nut which the North Wind had given to her, and a greatnut-tree grew up at once, on which the Griffin rested; and thenit went straight to their home, where they lived happy everafter. 

One more story of the same kind must be told, for three reasons:because it is very good reading, because it brings togethervarious legends, and because it shows that these were common toCeltic as well as to Hindu, Greek, Teutonic, and Scandinavianpeoples. It is called "The Battle of the Birds, " and is given atfull length, and in several different versions, in Campbell's"Popular Tales of the West Highlands. "[5] To bring it within ourspace we must tell it in our own way. 

Once upon a time every bird and other creature gathered tobattle. The son of the King of Tethertoun went to see thebattle, but it was over before he got there, all but one fight, between a great Raven and a Snake; and the Snake was getting thevictory. The King's son helped the Raven, and cut off theSnake's head. The Raven thanked him for his kindness and said, "Now I will give thee a sight; come up on my wings;" and thenthe Raven flew with him over seven mountains, and seven glens, and seven moors, and that night the King's son lodged in thehouse of the Raven's sisters; and promised to meet the Ravennext morning in the same place. This went on for three nightsand days, and on the third morning, instead of a raven, theremet him a handsome lad, who gave him a bundle, and told him notto look into it, until he was in the place where he would mostwish to dwell. But the King's son did look into the bundle, andthen he found himself in a great castle with fine grounds aboutit, and he was very sorry, because he wished the castle had beennear his father's house, but he could not put it back into thebundle again. Then a great Giant met him, and offered to put thecastle back into a bundle for a reward, and this was to be thePrince's son, when the son was seven years old. So the Princepromised, and the Giant put everything back into the bundle, andthe Prince went home with it to his father's house. When he gotthere he opened the bundle, and out came the castle and all therest, just as before, and at the castle door stood a beautifulmaiden who asked him to marry her, and they were married, andhad a son. When the seven years were up, the Giant came to askfor the boy, and then the King's son (who had now become a kinghimself) told his wife about his promise. "Leave that to me andthe Giant, " said the Queen. So she dressed the cook's son (whowas the right age) in fine clothes, and gave him to the Giant;but the Giant gave the boy a rod, and asked him, "If thy fatherhad that rod, what would he do with it?" "He would beat the dogsif they went near the King's meat, " said the boy. Then Said theGiant, "Thou art the cook's son, " and he killed him. Then theGiant went back, very angry, and the Queen gave him the butler'sson; and the Giant gave him the rod, and asked him the samequestion, "My father would beat the dogs if they came near theKing's glasses, " said the boy. "Thou art the butler's son, " saidthe Giant; and he killed him. Now the Giant went back the thirdtime, and made a dreadful noise. "Out here _thy_ son, " he said, "or the stone that is highest in thy dwelling shall be thelowest. " So they gave him the King's son, and the Giant took himto his own house, and he stayed there a long while. One day theyouth heard sweet music at the top of the Giant's house, and hesaw a sweet face. It was the Giant's youngest daughter; and shesaid to him, "My father wants you to marry one of my sisters, and he wants me to marry the King of the Green City, but I willnot. So when he asks, say thou wilt take me. " Next day the Giantgave the King's son choice of his two eldest daughters; but thePrince said, "Give me this pretty little one?" and then theGiant was angry, and said that before he had her he must dothree things. The first of these was to clean out a byre orcattle place, where there was the dung of a hundred cattle, andit had not been cleaned for seven years. He tried to do it, andworked till noon, but the filth was as bad as ever. Then theGiant's youngest daughter came, and bid him sleep, and shecleaned out the stable, so that a golden apple would run fromend to end of it. Next day the Giant set him to thatch the byrewith birds' down, and he had to go out on the moors to catch thebirds; but at midday, he had caught only two blackbirds, andthen the Giant's youngest daughter came again, and bid himsleep, and then she caught the birds, and thatched the byre withthe feathers before sundown. The third day the Giant set himanother task. In the forest there was a fir-tree, and at the topwas a magpie's nest, and in the nest were five eggs, and he wasto bring these five eggs to the Giant without breaking one ofthem. Now the tree was very tall; from the ground to the firstbranch it was five hundred feet, so that the King's son couldnot climb up it. Then the Giant's youngest daughter came again, and she put her fingers one after the other into the tree, andmade a ladder for the King's son to climb up by. When he was atthe nest at the very top, she said, "Make haste now with theeggs, for my father's breath is burning my back;" and she was insuch a hurry that she left her little finger sticking in the topof the tree. Then she told the King's son that the Giant wouldmake all his daughters look alike, and dress them alike, andthat when the choosing time came he was to look at their hands, and take the one that had not a little finger on one hand. So ithappened, and the King's son chose the youngest daughter, because she put out her hand to guide him. 

Then they were married, and there was a great feast, and theywent to their chamber. The Giant's daughter said to her husband, "Sleep not, or thou diest; we must fly quick, or my father willkill thee. " So first she cut an apple into nine pieces, and puttwo pieces at the head of the bed, and two at the foot, and twoat the door of the kitchen, and two at the great door, and oneoutside the house. And then she and her husband went to thestable, and mounted the fine grey filly, and rode off as fast asthey could. Presently the Giant called out, "Are you asleepyet?" and the apple at the head of the bed said, "We are notasleep. " Then he called again, and the apple at the foot of thebed said the same thing; and then he asked again and again, until the apple outside the house door answered; and then heknew that a trick had been played on him, and ran to the bedroomand found it empty. And then he pursued the runaways as fast aspossible. Now at day-break--"at the mouth of day, " the story-teller says--the Giant's daughter said to her husband, "Myfather's breath is burning my back; put thy hand into the ear ofthe grey filly, and whatever thou findest, throw it behindthee. " "There is a twig of sloe-tree, " he said. "Throw it behindthee, " said she; and he did so, and twenty miles of black-thornwood grew out of it, so thick that a weasel could not getthrough. But the Giant cut through it with his big axe and hiswood-knife, and went after them again. At the heat of day theGiant's daughter said again, "My father's breath is burning myback;" and then her husband put his finger in the filly's ear, and took out a piece of grey stone, and threw it behind him, andthere grew up directly a great rock twenty miles broad andtwenty miles high. Then the Giant got his mattock and his lever, and made a way through the rocks, and came after them again. Nowit was near sunset, and once more the Giant's daughter felt herfather's breath burning her back. So, for the third time, herhusband put his hand into the filly's ear, and took out abladder of water, and he threw it behind him, and there was afresh-water loch, twenty miles long and twenty miles broad; andthe Giant came on so fast that he ran into the middle of theloch and was drowned. 

Here is clearly a Sun-myth, which is like those of ancient Hinduand Greek legend: the blue-grey Filly is the Dawn, on which thenew day, the maiden and her lover, speed away. The great Giant, whose breath burns the maiden's back, is the morning Sun, whoseprogress is stopped by the thick shade of the trees. Then herises higher, and at midday he breaks through the forest, andsoars above the rocky mountains. At evening, still powerful inspeed and heat, he comes to the great lake, plunges into it, andsets, and those whom he pursues escape. This ending is repeatedin one of the oldest Hindu mythical stories, that of Bheki, theFrog Princess, who lives with her husband on condition that henever shows her a drop of water. One day he forgets, and shedisappears: that is, the sun sets or dies on the water--afanciful idea which takes us straight as an arrow to Aryanmyths. 

Now, however, we must complete the Gaelic story, which herebecomes like the Soaring Lark, and the Land East of the Sun andWest of the Moon, and other Teutonic and Scandinavian tales. 

After the Giant's daughter and her husband had got free from theGiant, she bade him go to his father's house, and tell themabout her; but he was not to suffer anything to kiss him, or hewould forget her altogether. So he told everybody they were notto kiss him, but an old greyhound leapt up at him, and touchedhis mouth, and then he forgot all about the Giant's daughter, just as if she had never lived. Now when the King's son lefther, the poor forgotten wife sat beside a well, and when nightcame she climbed into an oak-tree, and slept amongst thebranches. There was a shoemaker who lived near the well, andnext day he sent his wife to fetch water, and as she drew it shesaw what she fancied to be her own reflection in the water, butit was really the likeness of the maiden in the tree above it. The shoemaker's wife, however, thinking it was her own, imaginedherself to be very handsome, and so she went back and told theshoemaker that she was too beautiful to be his thrall, or slave, any longer, and so she went off. The same thing happened to theshoemaker's daughter; and she went off too. Then the man himselfwent to the well, and saw the maiden in the tree, and understoodit all, and asked her to come down and stay at his house, and tobe his daughter. So she went with him. After a while there camethree gentlemen from the King's Court, and each of them wantedto marry her; and she agreed with each of them privately, oncondition that each should give a sum of money for a weddinggift. Well, they agreed to this, each unknown to the other; andshe married one of them, but when he came and had paid themoney, she gave him a cup of water to hold, and there he had tostand, all night long, unable to move or to let go the cup ofwater, and in the morning he went away ashamed, but said nothingto his friends. Next night it was the turn of the second; andshe told him to see that the door-latch was fastened; and whenhe touched the latch he could not let it go, and had to standthere all night holding it; and so he went away, and saidnothing. The next night the third came, and when he stepped uponthe floor, one foot stuck so fast that he could not draw it outuntil morning; and then he did the same as the others--went offquite cast down. And then the maiden gave all the money to theshoemaker for his kindness to her. This is like the story of"The Master Maid, " in Dr. Dasent's collection of "Tales from theNorse. " But there is the end of it to come. The shoemaker had tofinish some shoes because the young King was going to bemarried; and the maiden said she should like to see the Kingbefore he married. So the shoemaker took her to the King'scastle; and then she went into the wedding-room, and because ofher beauty they filled a vessel of wine for her. When she wasgoing to drink it, there came a flame out of the glass, and outof the flame there came a silver pigeon and a golden pigeon; andjust then three grains of barley fell upon the floor, and thesilver pigeon ate them up. Then the golden one said, "If thouhadst mind when I cleaned the byre, thou wouldst not eat thatwithout giving me a share. " Then three more grains fell, and thesilver pigeon ate them also. Then said the golden pigeon, "Ifthou hadst mind when I thatched the byre, thou wouldst not eatthat without giving me a share. " Then three other grains fell, and the silver pigeon ate them up. And the golden pigeon said, "If thou hadst mind when I harried the magpie's nest, thouwouldst not eat that without giving me my share. I lost mylittle finger bringing it down, and I want it still. " Then, suddenly, the King's son remembered, and knew who it was, andsprang to her and kissed her from hand to mouth; and the priestcame, and they were married. 

These stories will be enough to show how the same idea repeatsitself in different ways among various peoples who have comefrom the same stock: for the ancient Hindu legend of Urvasi andPururavas, the Greek fable of Eros and Psyche, the Norse storyof the Land East of the Sun and West of the Moon, the Teutonicstory of the Soaring Lark, and the Celtic story of the Battle ofthe Birds, are all one and the same in their general character, their origin, and their meaning; and in all these respects theyresemble the story which we know so well in English--that ofBeauty and the Beast. The same kind of likeness has already beenshown in the story of Cinderella, and in those which resemble itin the older Aryan legends and in the later stories of theGreeks. If space allowed, such comparisons might be carried muchfurther; indeed, there is no famous fairy tale known to childrenin our day which has not proceeded from our Aryan forefathers, thousands of years ago, and which is not repeated in Hindu, Persian, Greek, Teutonic, Scandinavian, and Celtic folk-lore;the stories being always the same in their leading idea, and yetalways so different in their details as to show that thestory-tellers have not copied from each other, but that they arerepeating, in their own way, legends and fancies which existedthousands of years ago, before the Aryan people broke up fromtheir old homes, and went southward and westward, and spreadthemselves over India and throughout Europe. 

Now there is a curious little German story, called "The Wolf andthe Seven Little Kids, " which is told in Grimm's collection, andwhich shows at once the connection between Teutonic folk-lore, and Greek mythology, and Aryan legend. There was an old Goat whohad seven young ones, and when she went into the forest forwood, she warned them against the Wolf; if he came, they werenot to open the door to him on any account. Presently the Wolfcame, and knocked, and asked to be let in; but the little Kidssaid, "No, you have a gruff voice; you are a wolf. " So the Wolfwent and bought a large piece of chalk, and ate it up, and bythis means he made his voice smooth; and then he came back tothe cottage, and knocked, and again asked to be let in. Thelittle Kids, however, saw his black paws, and they said, "No, your feet are black; you are a wolf. " Then the Wolf went to abaker, and got him to powder his feet with flour; and when thelittle Kids saw his white feet, they thought it was theirmother, and let him in. Then the little Kids were very muchfrightened, and ran and hid themselves. The first got under thetable, the second into the bed, the third into the cupboard, thefourth into the kitchen, the fifth into the oven, the sixth intothe wash-tub, and the seventh into the clock-case. The wickedWolf, however, found all of them out, and ate them up, exceptingthe one in the clock-case, where he did not think of looking. And when the greedy monster had finished his meal, he went intothe meadow, and lay down and slept. Just at this time the oldGoat came home, and began crying for her children; but the onlyone who answered was the youngest, who said, "Here I am, dearmother, in the clock-case;" and then he came out and told herall about it. Presently the Goat went out into the meadow, andthere lay the Wolf, snoring quite loud; and she thought she sawsomething stirring in his body. So she ran back, and fetched apair of scissors and a needle and thread, and then she cut openthe monster's hairy coat, and out jumped first one little kid, and then another, until all the six stood round her, for thegreedy Wolf was in such a hurry that he had swallowed them whole. Then the Goat and the little Kids brought a number of stones, and put them into the Wolf's stomach, and sewed up the placeagain. When the Wolf woke up, he felt very thirsty, and ran offto the brook to drink, and the heavy stones overbalanced him, so that he fell into the brook, and was drowned. And then theseven little Kids danced round their mother, singing joyfully, "The wolf is dead! the wolf is dead!" Now this story is nothingbut another version of an old Greek legend which tells howKronos (Time), an ancient god, devoured his children while theywere quite young; and Kronos was the son of Ouranos, which meansthe heavens; and Ouranos is a name which comes from that ofVaruna, a god of the sky in the old sacred books, or Vedas, ofthe Hindus; and the meaning of the legend is that Night swallowsup or devours the days of the week, all but the youngest, whichstill exists, because, like the little kid in the German tale, it is in the clock-case. 

Again, in the Vedas we have many accounts of the fights ofIndra, the sun-god, with dragons and monsters, which mean thedark-clouds, the tempest thunder-bearing clouds, which weresupposed to have stolen the heavenly cows, or the light, pleasant, rain-bearing clouds, and to have shut them up ingloomy caverns. From this source we have an infinite number ofGreek and Teutonic, and Scandinavian, and other legends. One ofthese is the story of Polyphemos, the great one-eyed giant, orKyklops, whom Odysseus blinded. Polyphemos is the storm-cloud, and Odysseus stands for the sun. The storm-cloud threatens themariners; the lightnings dart from the spot which seems like aneye in the darkness; he hides the blue heavens and the softwhite clouds--the cows of the sky, or the white-fleeced flocksof heaven. Then comes Odysseus, the sun-god, the hero, andsmites him blind, and chases him away, and disperses thethreatening and the danger, and brings light, and peace, andcalm again. 

Now this legend of Polyphemos is to be found everywhere; in theoldest Hindu books, in Teutonic, and Norse, and Slav stories;and everywhere also the great giant, stormy, angry, andone-eyed, is always very stupid, and is always overthrown oroutwitted by the hero, Odysseus, when he is shut up in thecavern of Polyphemos, cheats the monster by tying himself underthe belly of the largest and oldest ram, and so passes out whilethe blind giant feels the fleece, and thinks that all is safe. Almost exactly the same trick is told in an old Gaelic story, that of Conall Cra Bhuidhe. [6] A great Giant with only one eyeseized upon Conall, who was hunting on the Giant's lands. Conallhimself is made to tell the story:

"I hear a great clattering coming, and what was there but agreat Giant and his dozen of goats with him, and a buck at theirhead. And when the Giant had tied the goats, he came up, and hesaid to me, 'Hao O! Conall, it's long since my knife is rustingin my pouch waiting for thy tender flesh. ' 'Och!' said I, 'it'snot much thou wilt be bettered by me, though thou shouldst tearme asunder; I will make but one meal for thee. But I see thatthou art one-eyed. I am a good leech, and I will give thee thesight of the other eye. ' The Giant went and he drew the greatcaldron on the site of the fire. I was telling him how he shouldheat the water, so that I should give its sight to the othereye. I got leather and I made a rubber of it, and I set himupright in the caldron. I began at the eye that was well, till Ileft them as bad as each other. When he saw that he could notsee a glimpse, and when I myself said to him that I would getout in spite of him, he gave that spring out of the water, andhe stood in the mouth of the cave, and he said that he wouldhave revenge for the sight of his eye. I had but to stay therecrouched the length of the night, holding in my breath in such away that he might not feel where I was. When he felt the birdscalling in the morning, and knew that the day was, he said, 'Artthou sleeping? Awake, and let out my lot of goats!' I killed thebuck. He cried, 'I will not believe that thou art not killing mybuck. ' 'I am not, ' I said, 'but the ropes are so tight that Itake long to loose them. ' I let out one of the goats, and he wascaressing her, and he said to her, 'There thou art, thou shaggyhairy white goat; and thou seest me, but I see thee not. ' I wasletting them out, by way of one by one, as I flayed the buck, and before the last one was out I had him flayed, bag-wise. ThenI went and put my legs in the place of his legs, and my hands inthe place of his fore-legs, and my head in the place of hishead, and the horns on top of my head, so that the brute mightthink it was the buck. I went out. When I was going out theGiant laid his hand on me, and said, 'There thou art, thoupretty buck; thou seest me, but I see thee not. ' When I myselfgot out, and I saw the world about me, surely joy was on me. When I was out and had shaken the skin off me, I said to thebrute, 'I am out now, in spite of thee!'"

It was a blind fiddler, in Islay, who told the story of Conall, as it had been handed down by tradition from generation togeneration; just as thousands of years before the story ofOdysseus and Polyphemos was told by Greek bards to wonderingvillagers. 

Here we must stop; for volumes would not contain all that mightbe said of the likeness of legend to legend in all the branchesof the Aryan family, or of the meaning of these stories, and ofthe lessons they teach--lessons of history, and religiousbelief, and customs, and morals and ways of thought, and poeticfancies, and of well-nigh all things, heavenly and human--stretching back to the very spring and cradle of our race, older than the oldest writings, and yet so ever fresh andnew that while great scholars ponder over them for their deepmeaning, little children in the nursery or by the fire-side inwinter listen to them with delight for their wonder and theirbeauty. Else, if there were time and space we might tell thestory of Jason, and show how it springs from the changes of dayand night, and how the hero, in his good ship Argo, our motherEarth, searches for and bears away in triumph the Golden Fleece, the beams of the radiant sun. Or we might fly with Perseus onhis weary, endless journey--the light pursuing and scatteringthe darkness; the glittering hero, borne by the mystic sandalsof Hermes, bearing the sword of the sunlight, piercing thetwilight or gloaming in the land of the mystic Graiae; slayingMedusa, the solemn star-lit night; destroying the dark dragon, and setting free Andromeda the dawn-maiden; and doing manywonders more. Or in Hermes we might trace out the Master Thiefof Teutonic, and Scandinavian, and Hindu legends; or inHerakles, the type of the heroes who are god-like in theirstrength, yet who do the bidding of others, and who suffer toiland wrong, and die glorious deaths, and leave great names formen to wonder at: heroes such as Odysseus, and Theseus, andPhoebus, and Achilles, and Sigurd, and Arthur, and all of whomrepresent, in one form or another, the great mystery of Nature, and the conflict of light and darkness; and so, if we look totheir deeper meaning, the constant triumph of good over evil, and of right over wrong. 

------------------------[3] _Oxford Essays:_ "Comparative Mythology, " p. 69. 

[4] _Popular Tales from the Norse_, by George Webbe Dasent, D. C. L. 

[5] _Popular Titles of the West Highlands_. Orally collected, with a Translation by J. F. Campbell. Edinburgh: Edmonton and Douglas. 4 vols. 

[6] Campbell's _Popular Tales of the West Highlands_, i. 112. 

CHAPTER III. 

DWELLERS IN FAIRYLAND: STORIES FROM THE EAST. 

We have said something about the people and the countries whichgave birth to our Fairy Stories, and about the meaning of suchtales generally when they were first thought of. Then they wereclearly understood, and those who told them and heard them knewwhat they meant; but, as time went on, and as the Aryan racebecame scattered in various countries, the old stories changed agreat deal, and their meaning was lost, and all kinds of wildlegends, and strange fables and fanciful tales, were made out ofthem. The earliest stories were about clouds, and winds, and thesun, and the waters, and the earth, which were turned into Godsand other beings of a heavenly kind. By degrees, as the firstmeanings of the legends were lost, these beings gave place to amultitude of others: some of them beautiful, and good, and kindand friendly to mankind; and some of them terrible, and bad, andmalignant, and always trying to do harm; and there were so manyof both kinds that all the world was supposed to be full ofthem. There were Spirits of the water, and the air, and theearth, forest and mountain demons, creatures who dwelt indarkness and in fire, and others who lived in the sunshine, orloved to come out only in the moonlight. There were some, again--Dwarfs, and other creatures of that kind--who made theirhomes in caves and underground places, and heaped up treasuresof gold and silver, and gems, and made wonderful works in metalsof all descriptions; and there were giants, some of them withtwo heads, who could lift mountains, and walk through rivers andseas, and who picked up great rocks and threw them about likepebbles. Then there were Ogres, with shining rows of terribleteeth, who caught up men and women and children, and strung themtogether like larks, and carried them home, and cooked them forsupper. Then, also, there were Good Spirits, of the kind theArabs call Peris, and we call Fairies, who made it theirbusiness to defend deserving people against the wicked monsters;and there were Magicians, and other wise or cunning people, whohad power over the spirits, whether good or bad, as you read inthe story of Aladdin and his Ring, and his Wonderful Lamp, andin other tales in the "Arabian Nights, " and collections of thatkind. Many of these beings--all of whom, for our purpose, may becalled Dwellers in Fairyland--had the power of taking any shapethey pleased, like the Ogre in the story of "Puss in Boots, " whochanged himself first into a lion, and then into an elephant, and then into a mouse, when he got eaten up; and they could alsochange human beings into different forms, or turn them intostone, or carry them about in the air from place to place, andput them under the spells of enchantment, as they liked. 

Some of the most wonderful creatures of Fairyland are to befound in Eastern stories, the tales of India, and Arabia, andPersia. Here we have the Divs, and Jinns, and Peris, andRakshas--who were the originals of our own Ogres--and terriblegiants, and strange mis-shapen dwarfs, and vampires and monstersof various kinds. Many others, also very wonderful, are to befound in what is called the Mythology--that is, the fables andstories--of ancient Greece, such as the giant Atlas, who borethe world upon his shoulders; and Polyphemus, the one-eyedgiant, who caught Odysseus and his companions, and shut them upin his cave; and Kirke, the beautiful sorceress, who turned meninto swine; and the Centaurs, creatures half men and halfhorses; and the Gorgon Medusa, whose head, with its hair ofserpents, turned into stone all who beheld it; and the greatdragon, the Python, whom Phoebus killed, and who resembles thedragon Vritra, in Hindu legend--the dragon slain by Indra, thegod of the Sun, because he shut up the rain, and so scorched theearth--and who also resembles Fafnir, the dragon of Scandinavianlegend, killed by Sigurd; and the fabled dragon with whom St. George fought; and also, the dragon of Wantley, whom our oldEnglish legends describe as being killed by More of More Hall. In the stories of the North lands of Europe, as we are told inthe Eddas and Sagas (the songs and records), there are likewisemany wonderful beings--the Trolls, the Frost Giants, curiousdwarfs, elves, nisses, mermen and mermaids, and swan-maidens andthe like. The folk-lore--that is, the common traditionarystories--of Germany are full of such wonders. Here, again, wehave giants and dwarfs and kobolds; and birds and beasts andfishes who can talk; and good fairies, who come in and helptheir friends just when they are wanted; and evil fairies, andwitches; and the wild huntsman, who sweeps across the sky withhis ghostly train; and men and women who turn themselves intowolves, and go about in the night devouring sheep and killinghuman beings, In Russian tales we find many creatures of thesame kind, and also in those of Italy, and Spain, and France. And in our own islands we have them too, for the traditions ofEnglish giants, and ogres, and dwarfs still linger in the talesof Jack the Giant-killer and Jack and the Bean-stalk, and Hop o'my Thumb; and we have also the elves whom Shakspeare draws forus so delightfully in "Midsummer Night's Dream" and in "TheMerry Wives of Windsor"; and there are the Devonshire pixies;and the Scottish fairies and the brownies--the spirits who dothe work of the house or the farm--and the Irish "good people;"and the Pooka, which comes in the form of a wild colt; and theLeprechaun, a dwarf who makes himself look like a little oldman, mending shoes; and the Banshee, which cries and moans whengreat people are going to die. 

To all these, and more, whom there is no room to mention, wemust add other dwellers in Fairyland--forms, in one shape orother, of the great Sun-myths of the ancient Aryan race--such asArthur and the Knights of the Round Table and Vivien and Merlin, and Queen Morgan le hay, and Ogier the Dane, and the story ofRoland, and the Great Norse poems which tell of Sigurd, andBrynhilt, and Gudrun, and the Niblung folk. And to these, again, there are to be added many of the heroes and heroines who figurein the Thousand-and-one Nights--such, for example, as Aladdin, and Sindbad, and Ali Baba, and the Forty Thieves, and theEnchanted Horse, and the Fairy Peri Banou, with her wonderfultent that would cover an army, and her brother Schaibar, thedwarf, with his beard thirty feet long, and his great bar ofiron with which he could sweep down a city. Even yet we have notgot to the end of the long list of Fairy Folk, for there arestill to be reckoned the well-known characters who figure in ourmodern Fairy Tales, such as Cinderella, and the Yellow Dwarf, and the White Cat, and Fortunatus, and Beauty and the Beast, andRiquet with the Tuft, and the Invisible Prince, and many morewhom children know by heart, and whom all of us, however old wemay be, still cherish with fond remembrance, because they giveus glimpses into the beautiful and wondrous land, the trueFairyland whither good King Arthur went--

 "The island-valley of Avilion, Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow, Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies Deep-meadowed, happy, fair with orchard lawns, And bowery hollows crowned with summer sea. "

Now it is plain that we cannot speak of all these dwellers inFairyland; but we can only pick out a few here and there, andthose of you who want to know more must go to the books thattell of them. As to me, who have undertaken to tell something ofthese wonders, I feel very much like the poor boy in the littleGerman story of "The Golden Key. " Do you know the story? If youdon't, I will tell it you. "One winter, when a deep snow waslying on the ground, a poor boy had to go out in a sledge tofetch wood. When he had got enough he thought he would make afire to warm himself, for his limbs were quite frozen. So heswept the snow away and made a clear space, and there he found agolden key. Then he began to think that where there was a keythere must also be a lock; and digging in the earth he found asmall iron chest. 'I hope the key will fit, ' lie said tohimself, 'for there must certainly be great treasures in thisbox. ' After looking all round the box he found a little keyhole, and to his great joy, the golden key fitted it exactly. Then heturned the key once round"--and now we must wait till he hasquite unlocked it and lifted the lid up, and then we shall learnwhat wonderful treasures were in the chest. This is all thatthis book can do for you. It can give you the golden key, andshow you where the chest is to be found, and then you mustunlock it for yourselves. 

Where shall we begin our hasty journey into Wonderland? Supposewe take a glance at those famous Hindu demons, the Rakshas, whoare the originals of all the ogres and giants of our nurserytales? Now the Rakshas were very terrible creatures indeed, andin the minds of many people in India are so still, for they arebelieved in even now. Their natural form, so the stories say, isthat of huge, unshapely giants, like clouds, with hair and beardof the colour of the red lightning; but they can take any formthey please, to deceive those whom they wish to devour, fortheir great delight, like that of the ogres, is to kill all theymeet, and to eat the flesh of those whom they kill. Often theyappear as hunters, of monstrous size, with tusks instead ofteeth, and with horns on their heads, and all kinds of grotesqueand frightful weapons and ornaments. They are very strong, andmake themselves stronger by various arts of magic; and they arestrongest of all at nightfall, when they are supposed to roamabout the jungles, to enter the tombs, and even to make theirway into the cities, and carry off their victims. But theRakshas are not alone like ogres in their cruelty, but also intheir fondness for money, and for precious stones, which theyget together in great quantities and conceal in their palaces;for some of them are kings of their species, and have thousandsupon thousands of inferior Rakshas under their command. Butwhile they are so numerous and so powerful, the Rakshas, likeall the ogres and giants in Fairyland, are also very stupid, andare easily outwitted by clever people. There are many Hindustories which are told to show this. I will tell you one ofthem. [7] Two little Princesses were badly treated at home, andso they ran away into a great forest, where they found a palacebelonging to a Rakshas, who had gone out. So they went into thehouse and feasted, and swept the rooms, and made everything neatand tidy. Just as they had done this, the Rakshas and his wifecame home, and the two Princesses ran up to the top of thehouse, and hid themselves on the flat roof. When the Rakshasgot indoors he said to his wife: "Somebody has been makingeverything clean and tidy. Wife, did you do this?" "No, " shesaid; "I don't know who can have done it. " "Some one has beensweeping the court-yard, " said the Rakshas. "Wife, did you sweepthe court-yard?" "No, " she answered; "I did not do it. " Then theRakshas walked round and round several times, with his nose upin the air, saying, "Some one is here now; I smell flesh andblood. Where can they be?" "Stuff and nonsense!" cried theRakshas' wife. "You smell flesh and blood, indeed! Why, youhave just been killing and eating a hundred thousand people. Ishould wonder if you didn't still smell flesh and blood!" Theywent on disputing, till at last the Rakshas gave it up. "Nevermind, " lie said; "I don't know how it is--I am very thirsty:let's come and drink some water. " So they went to the well, andbegan letting down jars into it, and drawing them up, anddrinking the water. Then the elder of the two Princesses, whowas very bold and wise, said to her sister, "I will do somethingthat will be very good for us both. " So she ran quickly downstairs, and crept close behind the Rakshas and his wife, as theystood on tip-toe more than half over the side of the well, andcatching hold of one of the Rakshas' heels, and one of hiswife's, she gave each a little push, and down they both tumbledinto the well, and were drowned--the Rakshas and the Rakshas'wife. The Princess then went back to her sister, and said, "Ihave killed the Rakshas!" "What, both?" cried her sister. "Yes, both, " she said. "Won't they come back?" said her sister. "No, never, " answered she. 

This, you see, is something like the story of the Little Girland the Three Bears, so well known amongst our Nursery Tales. 

Another story will show you how stupid a Rakshas is, and howeasily he can be outwitted. [8]

Once upon a time a Blind Man and a Deaf Man made an agreement. The Blind Man was to hear for the Deaf Man; and the Deaf Manwas to see for the Blind Man; and so they were to go about ontheir travels together. One day they went to a nautch--that is, a singing and dancing exhibition. The Deaf Man said, "Thedancing is very good; but the music is not worth listening to. ""I do not agree with you, " the Blind Man said; "I think themusic is very good; but the dancing is not worth looking at. " Sothey went away for a walk in the jungle. On the way they found adonkey, belonging to a dhobee, or washerman, and a big chattee, or iron pot, which the washerman used to boil clothes in. "Brother, " said the Deaf Man, "here is a donkey and a chattee;let us take them with us, they may be useful. " So they tookthem, and went on. Presently they came to an ants' nest. "Here, "said the Deaf Man, "are a number of very fine black ants; let ustake some of them to show our friends. " "Yes, " said the BlindMan, "they will do as presents to our friends. " So the Deaf Mantook out a silver box from his pocket, and put several of theblack ants into it. After a time a terrible storm came on. "Ohdear!" cried the Deaf Man, "how dreadful this lightning is! letus get to some place of shelter. " "I don't see that it'sdreadful at all, " said the Blind Man, "but the thunder isterrible; let us get under shelter. " So they went up to abuilding that looked like a temple, and went in, and took thedonkey and the big pot and the black ants with them. But it wasnot a temple, it was the house of a powerful Rakshas, and theRakshas came home as soon as they had got inside and hadfastened the door. Finding that he couldn't get in, he began tomake a great noise, louder than the thunder, and he beat uponthe door with his great fists. Now the Deaf Man looked through achink, and saw him, and was very frightened, for the Rakshas wasdreadful to look at. But the Blind Man, as he couldn't see, wasvery brave; and he went to the door and called out, "Who areyou? and what do you mean by coming here and battering at thedoor in this way, and at this time of night?" "I'm a Rakshas, "he answered, in a rage; "and this is my house, and if you don'tlet me in I will kill you. " Then the Blind Man called out inreply, "Oh! you're a Rakshas, are you? Well, if you're Rakshas, I'm Bakshas, and Bakshas is as good as Rakshas. " "What nonsenseis this?" cried the monster; "there is no such creature as aBakshas. " "Go away, " replied the Blind Man, "if you make anyfurther disturbance I'll punish you; for know that I _am_Bakshas, and Bakshas is Rakshas' father. " "Heavens and earth!"cried the Rakshas, "I never heard such an extraordinary thing inmy life. But if you are my father, let me see your face, "--forhe began to get puzzled and frightened, as the person inside wasso very positive. Now the Blind Man and the Deaf Man didn'tquite know what to do; but at last they opened the door just alittle, and poked the donkey's nose out. "Bless me, " thought theRakshas, "what a terribly ugly face my father Bakshas has got. "Then he called out again "O! father Bakshas, you have a very bigfierce face, but people have sometimes very big heads and verylittle bodies; let me see you, body and head, before I go away. "Then the Blind Man and the Deaf Man rolled the great iron potacross the floor with a thundering noise; and the Rakshas, whowatched the chink of the door very carefully, said to himself, "He has got a great body as well, so I had better go away. " Buthe was still doubtful; so he said, "Before I go away let me hearyou scream, " for all the tribe of the Rakshas scream dreadfully. Then the Blind Man and the Deaf Man took two of the black antsout of the box, and put one into each of the donkey's ears, andthe ants bit the donkey, and the donkey began to bray and tobellow as loud as he could; and then the Rakshas ran away quitefrightened. 

In the morning the Blind Man and the Deaf Man found that thefloor of the house was covered with heaps of gold, and silver, and precious stones; and they made four great bundles of thetreasure, and took one each, and put the other two on thedonkey, and off they went, But the Rakshas was waiting somedistance off to see what his father Bakshas was like bydaylight; and he was very angry when he saw only a Deaf Man, anda Blind Man, and a big iron pot, and a donkey, all loaded withhis gold and silver. So he ran off and fetched six of hisfriends to help him, and each of the six had hair a yard long, and tusks like an elephant. When the Blind Man and the Deaf Mansaw them coming they went and hid the treasure in the bushes, and then they got up into a lofty betel palm and waited--theDeaf Man, because he could see, getting up first, to be furthestout of harm's way. Now the seven Rakshas were not able to reachthem, and so they said, "Let us get on each other's shouldersand pull them down. " So one Rakshas stooped down, and the secondgot on his shoulders, and the third on his, and the fourth onhis, and the fifth on his, and the sixth on his, and theseventh--the one who had invited the others--was just climbingup, when the Deaf Man got frightened and caught hold of theBlind Man's arm, and as he was sitting quite at ease, notknowing that they were so close, the Blind Man was upset, andtumbled down on the neck of the seventh Rakshas. The Blind Manthought he had fallen into the branches of another tree, andstretching out his hands for something to take hold of, heseized the Rakshas' two great ears and pinched them very hard. This frightened the Rakshas, who lost his balance and fell downto the ground, upsetting the other six of his friends; the BlindMan all the while pinching harder than ever, and the Deaf Mancrying out from the top of the tree--"You're all right, brother, hold on tight, I'm coming down to help you"--though he reallydidn't mean to do anything of the kind. Well, the noise, and thepinching, and all the confusion, so frightened the six Rakshasthat they thought they had had enough of helping their friend, and so they ran away; and the seventh Rakshas, thinking thatbecause they ran there must be great danger, shook off the BlindMan and ran away too. And then the Deaf Man came down from thetree and embraced the Blind Man, and said, "I could not havedone better myself. " Then the Deaf Man divided the treasure; onegreat heap for himself, and one little heap for the Blind Man. But the Blind Man felt his heap and then felt the other, andthen, being angry at the cheat, he gave the Deaf Man a box onthe ear, so tremendous that it made the Deaf Man hear. And theDeaf Man, also being angry, gave the other such a blow in theface that it made the Blind Man see. So they became good friendsdirectly, and divided the treasure into equal shares, and wenthome laughing at the stupid Rakshas. 

From the legends of India we now go on to Persia and Arabia, tolearn something about the Divs and the Peris, and the Jinns. When the ancient Persians separated from the Aryan race fromwhich they sprang, they altered their religion as well aschanged their country. They came to believe in two principalgods, Ormuzd, the spirit of goodness, who sits enthroned in theRealms of Light, with great numbers of angels around him; andAhriman, the spirit of evil, who reigns in the Realms ofDarkness and Fire, and round whose throne are the great sixarch-Divs, and vast numbers of inferior Divs, or evil beings;and these two powers are always at war with each other, and arealways trying to obtain the government of the world. From Ormuzdand Ahriman there came in time, according to popular fancy, thetwo races of the Divs and the Peris, creatures who were likemankind in some things, but who had great powers of magic; whichmade them visible and invisible at pleasure, enabled them tochange their shapes when they pleased, and to move about on theearth or in the air. They dwelt in the land of Jinnestan, in themountains of Kaf. These mountains were supposed to go round theearth like a ring; they were thousands of miles in height, andthey were made of the precious stone called chrysolite, which isof a green colour, and this colour, so the Persian poets say, isreflected in the green which we sometimes see in the sky atsunset. In this land of Jinnestan there are many cities. ThePeris have for their abode the kingdom of Shad-u-Kan, that is, of Pleasure and Delight, with its capital Juber-a-bad, or theJewel City; and the Divs have for their dwelling Ahermambad, orAhriman's city, in which there are enchanted castles andpalaces, guarded by terrible monsters and powerful magicians. The Peris are very beautiful beings, usually represented aswomen with wings, and charming robes of all colours. The Divsare painted as demons of the most frightful kind. One of them, avery famous one named Berkhyas, is described as being a mountainin size, his face black, his body covered with hair, his necklike that of a dragon; two boar's tusks proceed from his mouth, his eyes are wells of blood, his hair bristles like needles, andis so thick and long that pigeons make their nests in it. Between the Peris and the Divs there was always war; but theDivs were too powerful for the Peris, and used to capture themand hang them in iron cages from the tree-tops, where theircompanions came and fed them with perfumes, of which the Perisare very fond, and which the Divs very much dislike, so that thesmell kept the evil spirits away. Sometimes the Peris used tocall in the help of men against the Divs; and in the olderPersian stories there are many tales of the wonders done bythese heroes who fought against the Divs. The most famous ofthese were called Tamuras and Rustem. Tamuras conquered so manyof the evil spirits that he was called the Div-binder. He beganhis fights in this way. He was a great king, whose help bothsides wished to get. So the Peris sent a splendid embassy tohim, and so did the Divs. Tamuras did not know what to do; so hewent to consult a wonderful bird, called the Simurg, who speaksall tongues, and who knows everything that has happened, or thatwill happen. The Simurg told him to fight for the Peris. Thenthe Simurg gave him three feathers from her own breast, and alsothe magic shield of Jan-ibn-Jan, the Suleiman or King of theJinns, and then she carried him on her back into the country ofJinnestan, where he fought with and conquered the king of theDivs. The account of this battle is given at great length in thePersian romance poems. Then Tamuras conquered another Div, namedDemrush, who lived in a gloomy cavern, where he kept in prisonthe Peri Merjan, or the Pearl, a beautiful fairy, whom Tamurasset free. Rustem, however, is the great hero of Persian romance, and the greatest defender of the Peris. His adventures, as toldby the Persian poets, would make a very large book, so that wecannot attempt to describe them. But there are two stories ofhim which may be told. One night, while he lay sleeping under arock, a Div, named Asdiv, took the form of a dragon, and cameupon him suddenly. Rustem's horse, Reksh, who had magic powers, knew the Div in this disguise, and awakened his master twice, atwhich Rustem was angry, and tried to kill the horse fordisturbing him. Reksh, however, awakened him the third time, andthen Rustem saw the Div, and slew him after a fearful combat. The other story is this. There came a wild ass of enormous size, with a skin like the sun, and a black stripe along his back, andthis creature got amongst the king's horses and killed them. Nowthe wild ass was no other than a very powerful Div, named Akvan, who haunted a particular fountain or spring. So Rustem, mountedon his horse Reksh, went to look for him there. Three days hewaited, but saw nothing. On the fourth day the Div appeared, andRustem tried to throw a noose over his head, but the Divsuddenly vanished. Then he reappeared, and Rustem shot an arrowat him, but he vanished again. Rustem then turned his horse tograze, and laid himself down by the spring to sleep. This waswhat the cunning Akvan wanted, and while Rustem was asleep, Akvan seized him, and flew high up into the air with him. ThenRustem awoke, and the Div gave him his choice of being droppedfrom the sky into the sea, or upon the mountains. Rustem knewthat if he fell upon the mountains he would be dashed in pieces, so he secretly chose to fall into the sea; but he did not say soto the Div. On the contrary, he pretended not to know what todo, but he said he feared the sea, because those who weredrowned could not enter into Paradise. On hearing this, the Divat once dropped Rustern into the sea--which was what hewanted--and then went back to his fountain. But when he gotthere, he found that Rustem had got ashore, and was also at thefountain, and then they fought again and the Div was killed. After this Rustem had a son named Zohrab, about whom manywonderful things are told; and it so happened that Rustem andhis son Zohrab came to fight each other without knowing oneanother; and Rustem was killed, and while dying he slew hisson. Now all these stories mean the same thing: they are onlythe old Aryan Sun-myths put into another form by the poets andstory-tellers: the Peris are the rays of the sun, or the morningor evening Aurora; the Divs are the black clouds of night; thehero is the sun who conquers them, and binds them in the realmsof darkness; and the death of Rustem is the sunset--Zohrab, hisson, being either the moon or the rising sun. 

But now we must leave the Peris and the Divs, and look at thejinns, of the Arabian stories. These also dwell in the mysteriouscountry of Jinnestan, and in the wonderful mountains of Kaf;but they likewise spread themselves all through the earth, and they specially liked to live in ruined houses, or intombs; on the sea shore, by the banks of rivers, and at themeeting of cross-roads. Sometimes, too, they were found in deepforests, and many travellers are supposed to find them indesolate mountain places. Even to this day they are firmlybelieved in by Arabs, and also by people in different parts ofPersia and India. In outward form, in their natural shape, theyresembled the Peris and the Divs of the ancient Persians, andthey were divided into good and bad: the good ones verybeautiful and shining; the bad ones deformed, black, and ugly, and sometimes as big as giants. They did not, however, alwaysappear in their own forms, for they could take the shape of anyanimal, especially of serpents, and cats and dogs. They weregoverned by chief spirits or kings; and over all, good and badalike, there were set a succession of powerful monarchs, namedSuleiman, or Solomon, seventy-two in number--the last of whom, and the greatest, Jan-ibn-Jan, is said by Arabian story-tellersto have built the pyramids of Egypt. There is an old traditionthat the shield of Jan-ibn-Jan, which was a talisman of magicpower, was brought from Egypt to King Solomon the Wise, the sonof King David, and that it gave him power over all the tribes ofthe Jinns, and this is why, in the common stories about them, the Jinns are made to call upon the name of Solomon. 

The Jinns, according to Arabian tradition, lived upon the earththousands of years before man was created. They were made, theKoran says, of "the smokeless fire, " that is, the hot breath ofthe desert wind, Simoon. But they became disobedient, andprophets were sent to warn them. They would not obey theprophets, and angels were then sent to punish them. The angelsdrove them out of Jinnestan into the islands of the seas, killedsome, and shut some of them up in prison. Among the prisonerswas a young Jinns, named Iblees, whose name means Despair; andwhen Adam was created, God commanded the angels and the Jinns todo him reverence, and they all obeyed but Iblees, who was thenturned into a Shaitan, or devil, and became the father of allthe Shaitan tribe, the mortal enemies of mankind. Since theirdispersion the Jinns are not immortal; they are to live longerthan man, but they must die before the general resurrection. Some of them are killed by other Jinns, some can be slain byman, and some are destroyed by shooting stars sent from heaven. When they receive a mortal wound, the fire which burns in theirveins breaks forth and burns them into ashes. 

Such are the Arab fancies about the Jinns. The meaning of themis clear, for the Jinns are the winds, derived plainly from theRibhus and the Maruts of the ancient Aryan myths; and they stillsurvive in European folk-lore in the train of Woden, or the WildHuntsman, who sweeps at midnight over the German forests. 

Some of the stories of the Jinns are to be found in the book ofthe Thousand and One Nights. 

One of these stories is that of "the Fisherman and the Genie. " Apoor fisherman, you remember, goes out to cast his nets; but hedraws no fish, but only, at the third cast, a vase of yellowcopper, sealed with a seal of lead. He cuts open the seal, andthen there issues from the vase a thick cloud of smoke, whichrises to the sky, and spreads itself over land and sea. Presently the smoke gathers itself together, and becomes a solidbody, taking the form of a Genie, twice as big as any of thegiants; and the Genie cries out, with a terrible voice, "Solomon, Solomon, great prophet of Allah! Pardon! I will nevermore oppose thy will, but will obey all thy commands. " At firstthe fisherman is very much frightened; but he grows bolder, andtells the Genie that Solomon has been dead these eighteenhundred years, to which the Genie answers that he means to killthe fisherman, and tells him why. I told you just now that theJinns rebelled, and were punished. The Genie tells the fishermanthat he is one of these rebellious spirits, that he was takenprisoner, and brought up for judgment before Solomon himself, and that Solomon confined him in the copper vase, and orderedhim to be thrown into the sea, and that upon the leaden cover ofthe vase he put the impression of the royal seal, upon which thename of God is engraved. 

When he was thrown into the sea the Genie made three vows--eachin a period of a hundred years. I swore, he says, that "if anyman delivered me within the first hundred years, I would makehim rich, even after his death. In the second hundred years Iswore that if any one set me free I would discover to him allthe treasures of the earth; still no help came. In the thirdperiod, I swore to make my deliverer a most powerful monarch, tobe always at his command, and to grant him every day any threerequests he chose to make. Then, being still a prisoner, I sworethat I would without mercy kill any man who set me free, andthat the only favour I would grant him should be the manner ofhis death. " And so the Genie proposed to kill the fisherman. Nowthe fisherman did not like the idea of being killed; and he andthe Genie had a long discourse about it; but the Genie wouldhave his own way, and the poor fisherman was going to be killed, when he thought of a trick he might play upon the Genie. He knewtwo things--first that the Jinns are obliged to answer questionsput to them in the name of Allah, or God; and also that thoughvery powerful, they are very stupid, and do not see when theyare being led into a pitfall. So he said, "I consent to die; butbefore I choose the manner of my death, I conjure thee, by thegreat name of Allah, which is graven upon the seal of theprophet Solomon, the son of David, to answer me truly a questionI am going to put to thee. "

Then the Genie trembled, and said, "Ask, but make haste. "

Now when he knew that the Genie would speak the truth, theFisherman said, "Darest thou swear by the great name of Allahthat thou really wert in that vase?"

"I swear it, by the great name of Allah, " said the Genie. 

But the Fisherman said he would not believe it, unless he saw itwith his own eyes. Then, being too stupid to perceive themeaning of the Fisherman, the Genie fell into the trap. Immediately the form of the Genie began to change into smoke, and to spread itself as before over the shore and the sea, andthen gathering itself together, it began to enter the vase, andcontinued to do so, with a slow and even motion, until nothingremained outside. Then, out of the vase there issued the voiceof the Genie, saying, "Now, thou unbeliever, art thou convincedthat I am in the vase?"

But instead of answering, the Fisherman quickly took up theleaden cover, and put it on the vase; and then he cried out, "O, Genie! it is now thy turn to ask pardon, and to choose the sortof death thou wilt have; or I will again cast thee into the sea, and I will build upon the shore a house where I will live, towarn all fishermen against a Genie so wicked as thou art. "

At this the Genie was very angry. First he tried to get out ofthe vase; but the seal of Solomon kept him fast shut up. Then hepretended that he was but making a jest of the Fisherman when hethreatened to kill him. Then he begged and prayed to bereleased; but the Fisherman only mocked him. Next he promisedthat if set at liberty, he would make the Fisherman rich. Tothis the Fisherman replied by telling him a long story of how aphysician who cured a king was murdered instead of beingrewarded, and of how he revenged himself. And then he preached alittle sermon to the Genie on the sin of ingratitude, which onlycaused the Genie to cry out all the more to be set free. Butstill the Fisherman would not consent, and so to induce him theGenie offered to tell him a story, to which the Fisherman wasquite ready to listen; but the Genie said, "Dost thou think I amin the humour, shut up in this narrow prison, to tell stories? Iwill tell thee as many as thou wilt if thou wilt let me out. "But the Fisherman only answered, "No, I will cast thee into thesea. "

At last they struck a bargain, the Genie swearing by Allah thathe would make the Fisherman rich, and then the Fisherman cut theseal again, and the Genie came out of the vase. The first thinghe did when he got out was to kick the vase into the sea, whichfrightened the Fisherman, who began to beg and pray for hislife. But the Genie kept his word; and took him past the city, over a mountain and over a vast plain, to a little lake betweenfour hills, where he caught four little fish, of differentcolours--white, red, blue, and yellow--which the Genie bade himcarry to the Sultan, who would give him more money than he hadever seen in his life. And then, the story says, he struck hisfoot against the ground, which opened, and he disappeared, theearth closing over him. 

Another story is that of the Genie Maimoun, the son of Dimdim, who took prisoner a young Prince, and conveyed him to anenchanted palace, and changed him into the form of an ape, andthe ape got on board a ship, and was carried to the country of agreat Sultan, and when the Sultan heard that there was an apewho could write beautiful poems, he sent for him to the palace, and they had dinner together, and they played at chess afterwards, the ape behaving in all respects like a man, excepting that hecould not speak. Then the Sultan sent for his daughter, the Queenof Beauty, to see this great wonder. But when the Queen of Beautycame into the room she was very angry with her father for showingher to a man, for the Princess was a great magician, and thus sheknew that it was a man turned into an ape, and she told herfather that the change had been made by a powerful Genie, the sonof the daughter of Eblis. So the Sultan ordered the Queen ofBeauty to disenchant the Prince, and then she should have him forher husband. On this the Queen of Beauty went to her chamber, andcame back with a knife, with Hebrew characters engraved upon theblade. And then she went into the middle of the court and drew alarge circle in it, and in the centre she traced several words inArabic letters, and others in Egyptian letters. Then puttingherself in the middle of the circle, she repeated several versesof the Koran. By degrees the air was darkened, as if night werecoming on, and the whole world seemed to be vanishing. And in themidst of the darkness the Genie, the son of the daughter of Eblis, appeared in the shape of a huge, terrible lion, which ran at thePrincess as if to devour her. But she sprang back, and pluckedout a hair from her head, and then, pronouncing two or threewords, she changed the hair into a sharp scythe, and with thescythe she cut the lion into two pieces through the middle. Thebody of the lion now vanished, and only the head remained. Thischanged itself into a large scorpion. The Princess changed herselfinto a serpent and attacked the scorpion, which then changed intoan eagle, and flew away; and the serpent changed itself into afierce black eagle, larger and more powerful and flew after it. Soon after the eagles had vanished the earth opened, and a greatblack and white cat appeared, mewing and crying out terribly, and with its hairs standing straight on end. A black wolffollowed the cat, and attacked it. Then the cat changed into aworm, which buried itself in a pomegranate that had fallen froma tree over-hanging the tank in the court, and the pomegranatebegan to swell until it became as large as a gourd, which thenrose into the air, rolled backwards and forwards several times, and then fell into the court and broke into a thousand pieces. The wolf now transformed itself into a cock, and ran as fast aspossible, and ate up the pomegranate seeds. But one of them fellinto the tank and changed into a little fish. On this the cockchanged itself into a pike, darted into the water, and pursuedthe little fish. Then comes the end of the story, which is toldby the Prince transformed into the Ape:--"They were both hidhours under water, and we knew not what was become of them, whensuddenly we heard horrible cries that made us tremble. Then wesaw the Princess and the Genie all on fire. They darted flamesagainst each other with their breath, and at last came to aclose attack. Then the fire increased, and all was hidden insmoke and cloud, which rose to a great height. We had othercause for terror. The Genie, breaking away from the Princess, came towards us, and blew his flames all over us. " The Princessfollowed him; but she could not prevent the Sultan from havinghis beard singed and his face scorched; a spark flew into theright eye of the Ape-Prince and blinded him, and the chief ofthe eunuchs was killed on the spot. Then they heard the cry of"Victory! victory!" and the Princess appeared in her own form, and the Genie was reduced to a heap of ashes. Unhappily thePrincess herself was also fatally hurt. If she had swallowed allthe pomegranate seeds she would have conquered the Genie withoutharm to herself; but one seed being lost, she was obliged tofight with flames between earth and heaven, and she had onlyjust time enough to disenchant the ape and to turn him backagain into his human form, when she, too, fell to the earth, burnt to ashes. 

This story is repeated in various forms in the Fairy Tales ofother lands. The hair which the Princess changed into a scytheis like the sword of sharpness which appears in Scandinavianlegends and in the tale of Jack the Giant Killer; thetransformation of the magician reminds us of the changes of theOgre in Puss in Boots; and the death of the Princess by firebecause she failed to eat up the last of the pomegranate seeds, brings to mind the Greek myth of Persephone, who ate pomegranateseeds, and so fell into the power of Aidoneus, the God of thelower regions, and was carried down into Hades to live with himas his wife; and in many German and Russian tales are to befound incidents like those of the terrible battle between thePrincess and the Genie Maimoun. 

------------------------[7] _Old Deccan Days_. Miss and Sir Bartle Frere. 

[8] _Old Deccan Days_. 

CHAPTER IV. 

DWELLERS IN FAIRYLAND: TEUTONIC, AND SCANDINAVIAN. 

Now we come to an entirely new region, in which, however, wefind, under other forms, the same creatures which have alreadybeen described. From the sunny East we pass to the cold andfrozen North. Here the Scandinavian countries--Norway, Sweden, and Denmark--are wonderfully rich in dwarfs, and giants, andtrolls, and necks, and nisses, and other inhabitants ofFairyland; and with these we must also class the Teutonic beingsof the same kind; and likewise the fairy creatures who were oncesupposed to dwell in our islands. The Elves of Scandinavia, withwhom our own Fairies are closely allied, were a very interestingpeople. They were of two kinds, the White and the Black. Thewhite elves dwelt in the air, amongst the leaves of trees, andin the long grass, and at moonlight they came out from theirlurking-places, and danced merrily on the greensward, andplayed all manner of fantastic tricks. The black elves livedunderground, and, like the dwarfs, worked in metals, and heapedup great stores of riches. When they came out amongst men theywere often of a malicious turn of mind; they caused sickness ordeath, stole things from the houses, bewitched the cattle, anddid a great deal of mischief in all ways. The good elves werenot only friendly to man, but they had a great desire to get toheaven; and in the summer nights they were heard singing sweetlybut sadly about themselves, and their hopes of future happiness;and there are many stories of their having spoken to mortals, toask what hope or chance they had of salvation. This feeling isbelieved to have come from the sympathy felt by the firstconverts to Christianity with their heathen forefathers, whosespirits were supposed by them to wander about, in the air or inthe woods, or to sigh within their graves, waiting for the dayof judgment. In one place there is a story that on a hill atGarun people used to hear very beautiful music. This was playedby the elves, or hill folk, and any one who had a fiddle, andwent there, and promised the elves that they should be saved, was taught in a moment how to play; but those who mocked them, and told them they could never be saved, used to hear the poorelves, inside the hill, breaking their fairy fiddles intopieces, and weeping very sadly. There is a particular tune theyplay, called the Elf-King's tune, which, the story-tellers say, some good fiddlers know very well, but never venture to play, because everybody who hears it is obliged to dance, and to go ondancing till somebody comes behind the musician and cuts thefiddle-strings; and out of this tradition we have the story ofthe Pied Piper of Hamelin. Some of the underground elves come upinto the houses built above their dwellings, and are fond ofplaying tricks upon servants; but they like only those who areclean in their habits, and they do not like even these to laughat them. There is a story of a servant-girl whom the elves likedvery much, because she used to carry all dirt and foul wateraway from the house, and so they invited her to an Elf Wedding, at which they made her a present of some chips, which she putinto her pocket. But when the bridegroom and the bride werecoming home there was a straw lying in their way. The bridegroomgot over it; but the bride stumbled, and fell upon her face. Atthis the servant-girl laughed out loud, and then all the elvesvanished, but she found that the chips they had given her werepieces of pure gold. At Odensee another servant was not sofortunate. She was very dirty, and would not clean the cow-housefor them; so they killed all the cows, and took the girl and sether up on the top of a hay-rick. Then they removed from thecow-house into a meadow on the farm; and some people say thatthey were seen going there in little coaches, their king ridingfirst, in a coach much handsomer than the rest. Amongst theDanes there is another kind of elves--the Moon Folk. The man islike an old man with a low-crowned hat upon his head; the womanis very beautiful in front, but behind she is hollow, like adough-trough, and she has a sort of harp on which she plays, andlures young men with it, and then kills them. The man is also anevil being, for if any one comes near him he opens his mouth andbreathes upon them, and his breath causes sickness. It is easyto see what this tradition means: it is the damp marsh wind, laden with foul and dangerous odours; and the woman's harp isthe wind playing across the marsh rushes at nightfall. Sometimesthese elves take the shape of trees, which brings back to mindthe Greek fairy tales of nymphs who live and die with the treesto which they are united. 

These Scandinavian elves were like beings of the same kind whowere once supposed to live in England, Ireland, and Scotland, and who are still believed in by some country people. Scatteredabout in the traditions which have been brought together atdifferent times are many stories of these fanciful beings. Onestory is of some children of a green colour who were found inSuffolk, and who said they had lived in a country where all thepeople were of a green colour, and where they saw no sun, buthad a light like the glow which comes after sunset. They said, also, that while tending their flocks they wandered into a greatcavern, and heard the sound of delightful bells, which theyfollowed, and so came out upon the upper world of the earth. There is a Yorkshire legend of a peasant coming home by night, and hearing the voices of people singing. The noise came from ahill-side, where there was a door, and inside was a greatcompany of little people, feasting. One of them offered the mana cup, out of which he poured the liquor, and then ran off withthe cup, and got safe away. A similar story is told also of aplace in Gloucestershire, and of another in Cumberland, wherethe cup is called "the Luck of Edenhall, " as the owners of itare to be always prosperous, so long as the cup remainsunbroken. Such stories as this are common in the countries ofthe North of Europe, and show the connection between ourElf-land and theirs. 

The Pixies, or the Devonshire fairies, are just like thenorthern elves. The popular idea of them is that they are smallcreatures--pigmies--dressed in green, and are fond of dancing. Some of them live in the mines, where they show the miners therichest veins of metal just like the German dwarfs; others liveon the moors, or under the shelter of rocks; others take uptheir abode in houses, and, like the Danish and Swedish elves, are very cross if the maids do not keep the places clean andtidy others, like the will-o'-the-wisps, lead travellers astray, and then laugh at them. The Pixies are said to be very fond ofpure water. There is a story of two servant-maids at Tavistockwho used to leave them a bucket of water, into which the Pixiesdropped silver pennies. Once it was forgotten, and the Pixiescame up into the girls' bedroom, and made a noise about theneglect. One girl got up and went to put the water in its usualplace, but the other said she would not stir out of bed toplease all the fairies in Devonshire. The girl who filled thewater-bucket found a handful of silver pennies in it nextmorning, and she heard the Pixies debating what to do with theother girl. At last they said they would give her a lame leg forseven years, and that then they would cure her by striking herleg with a herb growing on Dartmoor. So next day Molly foundherself lame, and kept so for seven years, when, as she waspicking mushrooms on Dartmoor, a strange-looking boy started up, struck her leg with a plant he held in his hand, and sent herhome sound again. There is another story of the Pixies which isvery beautiful. An old woman near Tavistock had in her garden afine bed of tulips, of which the Pixies became very fond, andmight be heard at midnight singing their babes to rest amongstthem; and as the old woman would never let any of the tulips beplucked, the Pixies had them all to themselves, and made themsmell like the rose, and bloom more beautifully than any flowersin the place. Well, the old woman died, and the tulip-bed waspulled up and a parsley-bed made in its place. But the Pixiesblighted it, and nothing grew in it; but they kept the grave ofthe old woman quite green, never suffered a weed to grow uponit, and in spring-time they always spangled it with wild-flowers. 

All over the country, in the far North as in the South, we findtraces of elfin beings like the Pixies--the fairies of thecommon traditions and of the poets--some such fairies asShakspeare describes for us in several of his plays, especiallyin "Midsummer-Night's Dream, " "The Merry Wives of Windsor, " "TheTempest, " and "Romeo and Juliet"--fairies who gambol sportively. 

 "On hill, in dale, forest, or mead, By paved fountain, or by rushing brook, Or by the beached margent of the sea, To dance their ringlets to the whistling wind. "

But the Fairy tribe were not the only graceful elves describedby the poets. The Germans had their Kobolds, and the Scotchtheir Brownies, and the English had their Boggarts and RobinGoodfellow and Lubberkin--all of them beings of the samedescription: house and farm spirits, who liked to live amongstmen, and who sometimes did hard, rough work out of good-nature, and sometimes were spiteful and mischievous, especially to thosewho teased them, or spoke of them disrespectfully, or tried tosee them when they did not wish to be seen. To the same familybelongs the Danish Nis, a house spirit of whom many curiouslegends are related. Robin Goodfellow was the original ofShakspeare's Puck: his frolics are related for us in "TheMidsummer Night's Dream, " where a hairy says to him--

 "You are that shrewd and knavish sprite Called Robin Goodfellow. Are you not he That frights the maidens of the villagery, Skims milk, and sometimes labours in the quern, And bootless makes the breathless housewife churn; And sometimes makes the drink to bear no harm, Misleads night wanderers, laughing at their harm? Those that Hob-Goblin call you, and sweet Puck; You do their work, and they shall have good luck. "

In the "Jests of Robin Goodfellow, " first printed in QueenElizabeth's reign, the tricks which this creature is said tohave played are told in plenty. Here is one of them:--Robin wentas fiddler to a wedding. When the candles came he blew them out, and giving the men boxes on the ears he set them fighting. Hekissed the prettiest girls, and pinched the ugly ones, till hemade them scratch one another like cats. When the posset wasbrought he turned himself into a bear, frightened them all away, and had it all to himself. 

The Boggart was another form of Robin Goodfellow. Stories of himare to be found amongst Yorkshire legends, as of a creature--always invisible--who played tricks upon the people in thehouses in which he lived: shaking the bed-curtains, rattlingthe doors, whistling through the keyholes, snatching away thebread-and-butter from the children, playing pranks upon theservants, and doing all kinds of mischief. There is a story of aYorkshire boggart who teased the family so much that the farmermade up his mind to leave the house. So he packed up his goodsand began to move off. Then a neighbour came up, and said, "So, Georgey, you're leaving the old house?" "Yes, " said the farmer, "the boggart torments us so that we must go. " Then a voice cameout of a churn, saying, "Ay, ay, Georgey, _we're_ flitting, yesee. " "Oh!" cried the poor farmer, "if thou'rt with us we'll goback again;" and he went back. --Mr. Tennyson puts this storyinto his poem of "Walking to the Mail. "

 "His house, they say, Was haunted with a jolly ghost, that shook The curtains, whined in lobbies, tapt at doors, And rummaged like a rat: no servant stayed: The farmer, vext, packs up his beds and chairs, And all his household stuff, and with his boy Betwixt his knees, his wife upon the tilt, Sets out, and meets a friend who hails him, 'What! You're flitting!' 'Yes, we're flitting, ' says the ghost (For they had packed the thing among the beds). 'Oh, well, ' says he, 'you flitting with us, too; Jack, turn the horses' heads and home again. '"

The same story is told in Denmark, of a Nis--which is the sameas an English boggart, a Scotch brownie, and a German kobold--who troubled a man very much, so that he took away his goodsto a new house. All but the last load had gone, and when theycame for that, the Nis popped his head out of a tub, and saidto the man, "We're moving, you see. "

The Brownies, though mischievous, like the Boggarts, were morehelpful, for they did a good deal of house-work; and would bake, and brew, and wash, and sweep, but they would never letthemselves be seen; or if any one did manage to see them, ortried to do so, they went away. There are stories of this kindabout them in English folk-lore, in Scotch, Welsh, in the Isleof Man, and in Germany, where they were called Kobolds. OneKobold, of whom many accounts are given, lived in the castle ofHudemuhler, in Luneberg, and used to talk with the people of thehouse, and with visitors, and ate and drank at table, just likeLeander in the story of "The Invisible Prince;" and he used alsoto scour the pots and pans, wash the dishes, and clean the tubs, and he was useful, too, in the stable, where he curried thehorses, and made them quite fat and smooth. In return for thishe had a room to himself, where he made a straw-plaited chair, and had a little round table, and a bed and bedstead, and, wherehe expected every day to find a dish of sweetened milk, withbread crumbs; and if he did not get served in time, or ifanything went wrong, he used to beat the servants with a stick. This Kobold was named Heinzelman, and in Grimm's collection offolklore there is a long history of him drawn up by the ministerof the parish. Another Kobold, named Hodeken, who lived with theBishop of Hildesheim, was usually of a kind and obliging turn ofmind, but he revenged himself on those who offended him. Ascullion in the bishop's kitchen flung dirt upon him, andHodeken found him fast asleep and strangled him, and put him inthe pot on the fire. Then the head cook scolded Hodeken, who inrevenge squeezed toads all over the meat that was being cookedfor the bishop, and then took the cook himself and tumbled himover the drawbridge into the moat. Then the bishop got angry, and took bell, and book, and candle, and banished Hodeken by theform of exorcism provided for evil spirits. 

Now there are a great many other kinds of creatures in theWonderland of all European countries; but I must not stop totell you about them or we shall never have done. But there isone little story of the Danish Nis--who answers to the GermanKobold--which I may tell you, because it is like the story ofHodeken which you have just read, and shows that the creatureswere of the same kind. There was a Nis in Jutland who was verymuch teased by a mischievous boy. When the Nis had done his workhe sat down to have his supper, and he found that the boy hadbeen playing tricks with his porridge and made it unpleasant. Sohe made up his mind to be revenged, and he did it in this way. The boy slept with a servant-man in the loft. The Nis went up tothem and took off the bed-clothes. Then, looking at the littleboy lying beside the tall man, he said, "Long and short don'tmatch, " and he took the boy by the legs and pulled him down tothe man's legs. This was not to his mind, however, so he went tothe head of the bed and looked at them, Then said the Nis--"Short and long don't match, " and he pulled the boy up again;and so he went on all through the night, up and down, down andup, till the boy was punished enough. Another Nis in Jutlandwent with a boy to steal corn for his master's horses. The Niswas moderate, but the boy was covetous, and said, "Oh, takemore; we can rest now and then!" "Rest, " said the Nis, "rest!what is rest?" "Do what I tell you, " replied the boy; "takemore, and we shall find rest when we get out of this. " Sothey took more corn, and when they had got nearly home the boysaid, "Here now is rest;" and so they sat down on a hill-side. "If I had known, " said the Nis, as they were sitting there, "ifI had known that rest was so good I'd have carried off all thatwas in the barn. "

Now we must leave out much more that might be said, and manystories that might be told, about elves, and fairies, and nixes, or water spirits, and swan maidens who become women when theylay aside their swan dresses to bathe; and mermaids and sealmaidens, who used to live in the islands of the North seas. Andwe must leave out also a number of curious Scotch tales andaccounts of Welsh fairies, and stories about the good people ofthe Irish legends, and the Leprechaun, a little old man whomends shoes, and who gives you as much gold as you want if youhold him tight enough; and there are wonderful fairy legends ofBrittany, and some of Spain and Italy, and a great many Russianand Slavonic tales which are well worth telling, if we only hadroom. For the same reason we must omit the fairy tales ofancient Greece, some of which are told so beautifully by Mr. Kingsley in his book about the Heroes; and we must also pass bythe legends of King Arthur, and of romances of the same kindwhich you may read at length in Mr. Ludlow's "Popular Epics ofthe Middle Ages;" and the wonderful tales from the Norse whichare told by Dr. Dasent, and in Mr. Morris's noble poem of"Sigurd the Volsung. "

But before we leave this part of Wonderland we must saysomething about some kinds of beings who have not yet beenmentioned--the Scandinavian Giants and Trolls, and the GermanDwarfs. The Trolls--some of whom were Giants and some Dwarfs--were a very curious people. They lived inside hills ormounds of earth, sometimes alone, and sometimes in greatnumbers. Inside these hills, according to the stories of thecommon folk, are fine houses made of gold and crystal, full ofgold and jewels, which the Trolls amuse themselves by counting. They marry and have families; they bake and brew, and live justlike human beings; and they do not object, sometimes, to comeout and talk to men and women whom they happen to meet on theroad. They are described as being friendly, and quite ready tohelp those to whom they take a fancy--lending them useful orprecious things out of the hill treasures, and giving them richgifts. But, to balance this, they are very mischievous andthievish, and sometimes they carry off women and children. Theydislike noise. This, so the old stories say, is because the godThor used to fling his hammer at them; and since he left offdoing that the Trolls have suffered a great deal from theringing of church bells, which they very much dislike. There aremany stories about this. At a place called Ebeltoft the Trollsused to come and steal food out of the pantries. The peopleconsulted a Saint as to what they were to do, and he told themto hang up a bell in the church steeple, which they did, andthen the Trolls went away. There is another story of the samekind. A Troll lived near the town of Kund, in Sweden, but wasdriven away by the church bells. Then he went over to the islandof Funen and lived in peace. But he meant to be revenged on thepeople of Kund, and he tried to take his revenge in this way: Hemet a man from Kund--a stranger, who did not know him--and askedthe man to take a letter into the town and to throw it into thechurchyard, but he was not to take it out of his pocket until hegot there. The man received the letter, but forgot the message, until he sat down in a meadow to rest, and then he took out theletter to look at it. When he did so, a drop of water fell fromunder the seal, then a little stream, and then quite a torrent, till all the valley was flooded, and the man had hard work toescape. The Troll had shut up a lake in the letter, and withthis he meant to drown the people of Kund. 

Some of the Trolls are very stupid, and there are many storiesas to how they have been outwitted. One of them is very droll. Afarmer ploughed a hill-side field. Out came a Troll and said, "What do you mean by ploughing up the roof of my house?" Thenthe farmer, being frightened, begged his pardon, but said it wasa pity such a fine piece of land should lie idle. The Trollagreed to this, and then they struck a bargain that the farmershould till the land and that each of them should share thecrops. One year the Troll was to have, for his share, what grewabove ground, and the next year what grew underground. So in thefirst year the farmer sowed carrots, and the Troll had the tops;and the next year the farmer sowed wheat, and the Troll had theroots; and the story says he was very well content. 

We can give only one more story of the Trolls. They have powerover human beings until their names are found out, and when theTroll's name is mentioned his power goes from him. One day St. Olaf, a very great Saint, was thinking how he could build a verylarge church without any money, and he didn't quite see his wayto it. Then a Giant Troll met him and they chatted together, andSt. Olaf mentioned his difficulty. So the Troll said he wouldbuild the church, within a year, on condition that if it wasdone in the time he should have for his reward the sun, and themoon, or St. Olaf himself. The church was to be so big thatseven priests could say mass at seven altars in it withouthearing each other; and it was all to be built of flint stoneand to be richly carved. When the time was nearly up the churchwas finished, all but the top of the spire; and St. Olaf was insad trouble about his promise. So he walked out into a wood tothink, and there he heard the Troll's wife hushing her childinside a hill, and saying to it, "To-morrow, Wind and Weather, your father, will come home in the morning, and bring with himthe sun and the moon, or St. Olaf himself. " Then St. Olaf knewwhat to do. He went home, and there was the church, all readyexcept the very top of the weather-cock, and the Troll was justputting the finishing-touch to that. Then St. Olaf called out tohim, "Oh! ho! Wind and Weather, you have set the spire crooked!"And then, with a great noise, the Troll fell down from thesteeple and broke into pieces, and every piece was a flint-stone. 

The same thing is told in the German story of Rumpelstiltskin. Amaiden is ordered by a King to spin a roomful of straw intogold, or else she is to die. A Dwarf appears, she promises himher necklace, and he does the task for her. Next day she has tospin a larger roomful of straw into gold. She gives the Dwarfthe ring off her finger, and he does this task also. Next dayshe is set to work at a larger room, and then, when the Dwarfcomes, she has nothing to give him. Then he says, "If you becomeQueen, give me your first-born child. " Now the girl is only amiller's daughter, and thinks she never can be Queen, so shemakes the promise, and the Dwarf spins the straw into gold. Butshe does become Queen, for the King marries her because of thegold; and she forgets the Dwarf, and is very happy, especiallywhen her little baby comes. Directly it is born the Dwarfappears also, and claims the child, because it was promised tohim. The Queen offers him anything he likes besides; but he willhave that, and that only. Then she cries and prays, and theDwarf says that if she can tell him his name she may keep thebaby; and he feels quite safe in saying this, because nobodyknows his name, only himself. So the Queen calls him by allkinds of strange names, but none of them is the right one. Thenshe begs for three days to find out the name, and sends peopleeverywhere to see if they can hear it. But all of them comeback, unable to find any name that is likely, excepting one, whosays, "I have not found a name, but as I came to a high mountainnear the edge of a forest, where the foxes and the hares say'good-night' to each other, I saw a little house, and before thedoor a fire was burning, and round the fire a little man wasdancing on one leg, and singing:--

 "To-day I stew, and then I'll bake, To-morrow shall I the Queen's child take. How glad I am that nobody knows That my name is Rumpelstiltskin. "

Then the Dwarf came again, and the Queen said to him, "Is yourname Hans?" "No, " said the Dwarf, with an ugly leer, and he heldout his hands for the baby. "Is it Conrade?" asked the Queen. "No, " cried the Dwarf, "give me the child. " "Then, " said theQueen, "is it Rumpelstiltskin?" "A witch has told you that!"cried the Dwarf; and then he stamped his right foot so hard uponthe ground that it sank quite in, and he could not draw it outagain. Then he took hold of his left leg with both his hands andpulled so hard that his right leg came off, and he hopped awayhowling, and nobody ever saw him again. 

The Giant in the story of St. Olaf, as we have seen, was arather stupid giant, and easily tricked; and indeed most of thegiants seem to have been dull people, from the great GreekKyklops, Polyphemos the One-Eyed, downwards to the, ogres inPuss in Boots, and Jack and the Bean Stalk, and the giants inJack the Giant Killer. The old northern giants were no wiser. There was one in the island of Rugen, a very mighty giant, namedBalderich. He wanted to go from his island, dry-footed, to themainland. So he got a great apron made, and filled it withearth, and set off to make a causeway from Rugen to Pomerania. But there was a hole in the apron, and the clay that fell outformed a chain of nine hills. The giant stopped the hole andwent on, but another hole tore in the apron, and thirteen morehills fell out. Then he got to the sea-side, and poured the restof the load into the water; but it didn't quite reach themainland, which made giant Balderich so angry that he fell downand died; and so his work has never been finished. But a giantmaiden thought she would try to make another causeway from themainland to an island, so that she might not wet her slippers ingoing over. So she filled her apron with sand, and ran down tothe sea-side. But a hole came in the apron, and the sand whichran out formed a hill at Sagard. The giant maiden said, "Ah! nowmy mother will scold me!" Then she stopped the hole with herhand and ran on again. But the giant mother looked over thewood, and cried, "You nasty child! what are you about? Comehere, and you'll get a good whipping. " The daughter in a frightlet go her apron, and all the sand ran out, and made the barrenhills near Litzow, which the white and brown dwarfs took fortheir dwelling-place. 

There are many other stories of the same kind. One of them tellsof a Troll Giant who wanted to punish a farmer; so he filled oneof his gloves with sand, and poured it out over the farmer'shouse, which it quite covered up; and with what was left in thefingers he made a row of little sand hillocks to mark the spot. 

The Giants had their day, and died out, and their places weretaken by the Dwarfs. Some of the most wonderful dwarf storiesare those which are told in the island of Rugen, in the BalticSea. These stories are of three kinds of dwarfs: the White, andthe Brown, and the Black, who live in the sand-hills. The whitedwarfs, in the spring and summer, dance and frolic all theirtime in sunshine and starlight, and climb up into the flowersand trees, and sit amongst the leaves and blossoms, andsometimes they take the form of bright little birds, or whitedoves, or butterflies, and are very kind to good people. In thewinter, when the snow falls, they go underground, and spendtheir time in making the most beautiful ornaments of silver andgold. The brown dwarfs arc stronger and rougher than the white;they wear little brown coats and brown caps, and when theydance--which they are fond of doing--they wear little glassshoes; and in dress and appearance they are very handsome. Theirdisposition is good, with one exception--that they carry offchildren into their underground dwellings; and those who gothere have to serve them for fifty years. They can changethemselves into any shape, and can go through key-holes, so thatthey enter any house they please, and sometimes they bring giftsfor the children, like the good Santa Klaus in the Germanstories; but they also play sad tricks, and frighten people withbad dreams. Like the white dwarfs, the brown ones work ingold and silver, and the gifts they bring are of their ownworkmanship. The black dwarfs are very bad people, and are uglyin looks and malicious in temper; they never dance or sing, butkeep underground, or, when they come up, they sit in theelder-trees, and screech horribly like owls, or mew like cats. They, too, are great metal-workers, especially in steel; and inold days they used to make arms and armour for the gods andheroes: shirts of mail as fine as cobwebs, yet so strong that nosword could go through them; and swords that would bend likerushes, and yet were as hard as diamonds, and would cut throughany helmet, however thick. 

So long as they keep their caps on their heads the dwarfs areinvisible; but if any one can get possession of a dwarf's cap hecan see them, and becomes their master. This is the foundationof one of the best of the dwarf stories--the story of JohnDietrich, who went out to the sandhills at Ramfin, in the isleof Rugen, on the eve of St. John, a very, very long time ago, and managed to strike off the cap from the head of one of thebrown dwarfs, and went down with them into their undergrounddwelling-place. This was quite a little town, where the roomswere decorated with diamonds and rubies, and the dwarf peoplehad gold and silver and crystal table-services, and there wereartificial birds that flew about like real ones, and the mostbeautiful flowers and fruits; and the dwarfs, who were thousandsin number, had great feasts, where the tables, ready spread, came up through the floor, and cleared themselves away at theringing of a bell, and left the rooms free for dancing to thestrains of the loveliest music. And in the city there werefields and gardens, and lakes and rivers; and instead of the sunand the moon to give light, there were large carbuncles anddiamonds which supplied all that was wanted. John Dietrich, who was very well treated, liked it very much, all but onething--which was that the servants who waited upon thedwarfs were earth children, whom they had stolen and carriedunderground; and amongst them was Elizabeth Krabbin, once aplaymate of his own, and who was a lovely girl, with clear blueeyes and ringlets of fair hair. John Dietrich of course fell inlove with Elizabeth, and determined to get her out of the dwarfpeople's hands, and with her all the earth children they heldcaptive. And when he had been ten years underground, and he andElizabeth were grown up, he demanded leave to depart, and totake Elizabeth. But the dwarfs, though they could not hinder himfrom going, would not let her go, and no threats or entreatiescould move them. Then John Dietrich remembered that the littlepeople cannot bear an evil smell; and one day he happened tobreak a large stone, out of which jumped a toad, which gave himpower to do what he pleased with the dwarfs, for the sight orsmell of a toad causes them pain beyond all bearing. So he sentfor the chiefs of the dwarfs, and bade them let Elizabeth go. But they refused; and then he went and fetched the toad. Thenthe story goes on in this way:--

"He was hardly come within a hundred paces of them when they allfell to the ground as if struck with a thunderbolt, and began tohowl and whimper, and to writhe as if suffering the mostexcruciating pain. The dwarfs stretched out their hands, andcried, 'Have mercy, have mercy! we feel that you have a toad, and there is no escape for us. Take the odious beast away, andwe will do all you require. ' He let them kneel a few secondslonger, and then took the toad away. They then stood up, andfelt no more pain. John let all depart but the six chiefpersons, to whom he said, 'This night, between twelve and one, Elizabeth and I will depart, Load for me three waggons withgold, silver, and precious stones. I might, you know, take allthat is in the hill; but I will be merciful. Further, you mustput into two waggons all the furniture of my chamber (which wascovered with emeralds and other precious stones, and in theceiling was a diamond as big as a nine-pin bowl), and get readyfor me the handsomest travelling carriage that is in the hill, with six black horses. Moreover, you must set at liberty all theservants who have been so long here that on earth they would betwenty years old and upwards, and you must give them as muchsilver and gold as will make them rich for life; and you mustmake a law that no one shall be kept here longer than histwentieth year. '

"The six took the oath, and went away quite melancholy, andJohn buried his toad deep in the ground. The little peoplelaboured hard and prepared everything, and at midnight John andElizabeth, and their companions, and all their treasures, weredrawn up out of the hill. It was then one o'clock, and it wasmidsummer--the very time that, twelve years before, John hadgone down into the hill. Music sounded around them, and they sawthe glass hill open, and the rays of the light of heaven shineon them after so many years; and when they got out they saw thefirst streaks of dawn already in the East. Crowds of theunderground people were around them, busied about the waggons. John bid them a last farewell, waved his brown cap in the air, and then flung it among them. And at the same moment he ceasedto see them; he beheld nothing but a green hill, and thewell-known bushes and fields, and heard the church clock ofRamfin strike two. When all was still, save a few larks, whowere tuning their morning song, they all fell upon their kneesand worshipped God, resolving henceforth to lead a pious andChristian life. " And then John married Elizabeth, and was made acount, and built several churches, and presented to them some ofthe precious cups and plates made by the underground people, andkept his own and Elizabeth's glass shoes, in memory of what hadbefallen them in their youth. "And they were all taken away, "the story says, "in the time of the great Charles the Twelfth ofSweden, when the Russians came on the island, and the Cossacksplundered even the churches, and took away everything. "

Now there is much more to be told about the dwarfs, if only wehad space--how there were thousands of them in German lands, inthe Saxon mines, and the Black Forest, and the Harz mountainsand in other places, and in Switzerland, and indeed everywherealmost--how they gave gifts to good men, and borrowed of them, and paid honestly; how they punished those who injured them; howthey moved about from country to country; how they helped greatkings and nobles, and showed themselves to wandering travellersand to simple country folk. But all this must be left for you toread for yourselves in Grimm's stories, and in the legends ofnorthern lands, and in many collections of ancient poems, andromances, and popular tales. And in these, and in other bookswhich deal with such subjects, you will find out that all thesedwellers in Wonderland, and the tales that are told about them, and the stories of the gods and heroes, all come from the onesource of which we read something in the first chapter--thetradition's of the ancient Aryan people, from whom all of ushave sprung--and how they all mean the same things; the conflictbetween light and darkness, the succession of day and night, thechanges of the seasons, the blue and bright summer skies, therain-clouds, the storm-winds, the thunder and the lightning, andall the varied and infinite forms of Nature in her moods of calmand storm, peace and tempest, brightness and gloom, sweet andpleasant and hopeful life and stern and cold death, which causesall brightness to fade and moulder away. 

CHAPTER V. 

DWELLERS IN FAIRYLAND: WEST HIGHLAND STORIES. 

In a very delightful book which has already been mentioned, Campbell's "Popular Tales of the West Highlands, " there are manycurious stories of fairy folk and other creatures of the likekind, described in the traditions of the west of Scotland, andwhich are still believed in by many of the country people. Thereare Brownies, for instance, the farm spirits. One of these, sothe story goes, inhabited the island of Inch, and looked afterthe cattle of the Mac Dougalls; but if the dairymaid neglectedto leave a portion of milk for him at night, one of the cattlewould be sure to fall over the rocks. Another kind of Brownie, called the Bocan, haunted a place called Moran, opposite theIsle of Skye, and protected the family of the Macdonalds ofMoran, but was very savage to other people, whom he beat orkilled. At last Big John, the son of M'Leod of Raasay, went andfought the creature in the dark, and tucked him under his arm, to carry him to the nearest light and see what he was like. Butthe Brownies hate to be seen, and this one begged hard to be letoff, promising that he would never come back. So Big John lethim off, and he flew away singing:--

 "Far from me is the hill of Ben Hederin; Far from me is the Pass of Murmuring;"

and the common story says that the tune is still remembered andsung by the people of that country. It is also told of a farmer, named Callum Mohr MacIntosh, near Loch Traig, in Lochaber, thathe had a fight with a Bocan, and in the fight he lost a charmedhandkerchief. When he went back to get it again, he found theBocan rubbing the handkerchief hard on a flat stone, and theBocan said, "It is well for you that you are back, for if I hadrubbed a hole in this you were a dead man. " This Bocan becamevery friendly with MacIntosh, and used to bring him peats forfire in the deep winter snows; and when MacIntosh moved toanother farm, and left a hogshead of hides behind him byaccident, the Bocan carried it to his new house next morning, over paths that only a goat could have crossed. 

Another creature of the same kind is a mischievous spirit, aGoblin or Brownie, who is called in the Manx language, theGlashan, and who appears under various names in Highlandstories: sometimes as a hairy man, and sometimes as a water-horse turned into a man. He usually attacks lonely women, who outwit him, and throw hot peats or scalding water at him, and then he flies off howling. One feature is common to thestories about him. He asks the woman what her name is, and shealways replies "Myself. " So when the companions of the Glashanask who burned or scalded him, he says "Myself, " and then theylaugh at him. This answer marks the connection between thesetales and those of other countries. Polyphemos asks Odysseus hisname, and is told that it is Outis, or "Nobody. " So whenOdysseus blinds Polyphemos, and the other Kyklopes ask themonster who did it, he says, "Nobody did it. " There is aSlavonian story, also, in which a cunning smith puts out theeyes of the Devil, and says that his name is Issi, "myself;" andwhen the tortured demon is asked who hurt him, he says, "Issidid it;" and then his companions ridicule him. 

Among other Highland fairy monsters are the water-horses (likethe Scandinavian and Teutonic Kelpies) and the water-bulls, which inhabit lonely lochs. The water-bulls are described asbeing friendly to man; the water-horses are dangerous--when menget upon their backs they are carried off and drowned. Sometimesthe water-horse takes the shape of a man. Here is a story ofthis kind from the island of Islay: There was a farmer who had agreat many cattle. Once a strange-looking bull-calf was bornamongst them, and an old woman who saw it knew it for awater-bull, and ordered it to be kept in a house by itself forseven years, and fed on the milk of three cows. When the timewas up, a servant-maid went to watch the cattle graze on theside of a loch. In a little while a man came to her and askedher to dress or comb his hair. So he laid his head upon herknees, and she began to arrange his hair. Presently she got agreat fright, for amongst the hair she found a great quantity ofwater-weed; and she knew that it was a transformed water-horse. Like a brave girl she did not cry out, but went on dressing theman's hair until he fell asleep. Then she slid her apron off herknees, and ran home as fast as she could, and when she gotnearly home, the creature was pursuing her in the shape of ahorse. Then the old woman cried out to them to open the door ofthe wild bull's house, and out sprang the bull and rushed at thehorse, and they never stopped fighting until they drove eachother out into the sea. "Next day, " says the story, "the body ofthe bull was found on the shore all torn and spoilt, but thehorse was never more seen at all. "

Sometimes the water-spirit appears in the shape of a great bird, which the West Highlanders called the Boobrie, who has a longneck, great webbed feet with tremendous claws, a powerful billhooked like an eagle's, and a voice like the roar of an angrybull. The lochs, according to popular fancy, are also inhabitedby water-spirits. In Sutherlandshire this kind of creature iscalled the Fuath; there are, Mr. Campbell says, males andfemales; they have web-feet, yellow hair, green dresses, tails, manes, and no noses; they marry human beings, are killed bylight, are hurt by steel weapons, and in crossing a stream theybecome restless. These spirits resemble mermen and mermaids, andare also like the Kelpies, and they have also been somehowconfused with the kind of spirit known in Ireland as theBanshee. Many stories are told of them. A shepherd found one, anold woman seemingly crippled, at the edge of a bog. He offeredto carry her over on his back. In going over, he saw that shewas webfooted; so he threw her down, and ran for his life. Bythe side of Loch Middle a woman saw one--"about three yearsago, " she told the narrator--she sat on a stone, quiet, anddressed in green silk, the sleeves of the dress curiously puffedfrom the wrists to the shoulder; her hair was yellow, like ripecorn; but on a nearer view, she had no nose. A man at Tubernanmade a bet that he would seize the Fuath or Kelpie who hauntedthe loch at Moulin na Fouah. So he took a brown right-sidedmaned horse, and a brown black-muzzled dog, and with the help ofthe dog he captured the Fuath, and tied her on the horse behindhim. She was very fierce, but he pinned her down with an awl anda needle. Crossing the burn or brook near Loch Migdal she grewvery restless, and the man stuck the awl and the needle into herwith great force. Then she cried, "Pierce me with the awl, butkeep that slender hair-like slave (the needle) out of me. " Whenthe man reached an inn at Inveran, he called his friends to comeout and look at the Fuath. They came out with lights, and whenthe light fell upon her she dropped off the horse, and fell tothe earth like a small lump of jelly. 

The Fairies of the West Highlands in some degree resembledthe Scandinavian Dwarfs. They milked the deer; they livedunderground, and worked at trades, especially metal-working andweaving. They had hammers and anvils, but had to steal wool andto borrow looms; and they had great hoards of treasure hidden intheir dwelling places. Sometimes they helped the people whomthey liked, but at other times they were spiteful and evilminded; and according to tradition all over the Highlands, theyenticed men and women into their dwellings in the hills, andkept them there sometimes for years, always dancing withoutstopping. There are many stories of this kind; and there arealso many about the fondness of the Fairies for carrying offhuman children, and leaving Imps of their own in their places--these Imps being generally old men disguised as children. Someof these tales are very curious, and are like others that arefound amongst the folk-lore of Celtic peoples elsewhere. Hereis the substance of one told in Islay:--

Years ago there lived in Crossbrig a smith named MacEachern, whohad an only son, about fourteen; a strong, healthy, cheerfulboy. All of a sudden he fell ill, took to his bed, and moped fordays, getting thin, and odd-looking, and yellow, and wastingaway fast, so that they thought he must die. Now a "wise" oldman, who knew about Fairies, came to see the smith at work, andthe poor man told him all about his trouble. The old man said, "It is not your son you have got; the boy has been carried offby the Dacorie Sith (the Fairies), and they have left asibhreach (changeling) in his place. " Then the old man told himwhat to do. "Take as many egg-shells as you can get, go withthem into the room, spread them out before him, then draw waterwith them, carrying them two and two in your hands as if theywere a great weight, and when they are full, range them roundthe fire. " The smith did as he was told; and he had not beenlong at work before there came from the bed a great shout oflaughter, and the supposed boy cried out, "I am eight hundredyears old, and I never saw the like of _that_ before. " Then thesmith knew that it was not his own son. The wise man advised himagain. "Your son, " he said, "is in a green round hill where theFairies live; get rid of this creature, and then go and look forhim. " So the smith lit a fire in front of the bed. "What is thatfor?" asked the supposed boy. "You will see presently, " said thesmith; and then he took him and threw him into the middle of it;and the sibhreach gave an awful yell, and flew up through theroof, where a hole was left to let the smoke out. Now the oldman said that on a certain night the green round hill, where theFairies kept the smith's boy, would be open. The father was totake a Bible, a dirk, and a crowing cock, and go there. He wouldhear singing, and dancing, and much merriment, but he was to goboldly in. The Bible would protect him against the Fairies, andhe was to stick the dirk into the threshold, to prevent the hillclosing upon him. Then he would see a grand room, and there, working at a forge, he would find his own son; and when theFairies questioned him he was to say that he had come for hisboy, and would not go away without him. So the smith went, anddid what the old man told him. He heard the music, found thehill open, went in, stuck the dirk in the threshold, carried theBible on his breast, and took the cock in his hand. Then theFairies angrily asked what he wanted, and he said, "I want myson whom I see down there, and I will not go without him. " Uponthis the whole company of the Fairies gave a loud laugh, whichwoke up the cock, and he leaped on the smith's shoulders, clapped his wings, and crowed lustily. Then the Fairies took thesmith and his son, put them out of the hill, flung the dirkafter them, and the hill-side closed up again. For a year and aday after he got home the boy never did any work, and scarcelyspoke a word; but at last one day sitting by his father, andseeing him finish a sword for the chieftain, he suddenly said, "That's not the way to do it, " and he took the tools, andfashioned a sword the like of which was never seen in thatcountry before; and from that day he worked and lived as usual. 

Here is another story. A woman was going through a wild glen inStrath Carron, in Sutherland--the Glen Garaig--carrying herinfant child wrapped in her plaid. Below the path, overhung withtrees, ran a very deep ravine, called Glen Odhar, or the dunglen. The child, not a year old, suddenly spoke, and said:--

 "Many a dun hummel cow, With a calf below her, Have I seen milking In that dun glen yonder, Without dog, without man, Without woman, without gillie, But one man; and he hoary. "

Then the woman knew that it was a fairy changeling she wascarrying, and she flung down the child and the plaid, and ranhome, where her own baby lay smiling in the cradle. 

A tailor went to a farm-house to work, and just as he was goingin, somebody put into his hands a child of a month old, which alittle lady dressed in green seemed to be waiting to receive. The tailor ran home and gave the child to his wife. When he gotback to the farm-house he found the farmer's child crying andyelping, and disturbing everybody. It was a fairy changelingwhich the nurse had taken in, meaning to give the farmer's ownchild to the fairy in exchange; but nobody knew this but thetailor. When they were all gone out he began to talk to thechild. "Hae ye your pipes?" said the Tailor. "They're below myhead, " said the Changeling. "Play me a spring, " said the Tailor. Out sprang the little man and played the bagpipes round theroom. Then there was a noise outside, and the Elf said, "Its myfolk wanting me, " and away he went up the chimney; and then theyfetched back the farmer's child from the tailor's house. 

One more story: it is told by the Sutherland-shire folk. A smallfarmer had a boy who was so cross that nothing could be donewith him. One day the farmer and his wife went out, and put thechild to bed in the kitchen; and they bid the farm lad to go andlook at it now and then, and to thrash out the straw in thebarn. The lad went to look at the child, and the Child said tohim in a sharp voice, "What are you going to do?" "Thrash out apickle of straw, " said the Lad, "lie still and don't grin, likea good bairn. " But the little Imp of out of bed, and said, "Goeast, Donald, and when ye come to the big brae (or brow of thehill), rap three times, and when _they_ come, say ye are seekingJohnnie's flail. " Donald did so, and out came a little fairyman, and gave him a flail. Then Johnnie took the flail, thrashedaway at the straw, finished it, sent the flail back, and went tobed again. When the parents came back, Donald told them allabout it; and so they took the Imp out of the cradle, put it ina basket, and set the basket on the fire. No sooner did thecreature feel the fire than he vanished up the chimney. Thenthere was a low crying noise at the door, and when they openedit, a pretty little lad, whom the mother knew to be her own, stood shivering outside. 

A few notes about West Highland giants must end this account ofwonder creatures in this region. There was a giant in Glen Eiti, a terrible being, who comes into a wild strange story, too longto be told here. He is described as having one hand only, comingout of the middle of his chest, one leg coming out of hishaunch, and one eye in the middle of his face. And in the samestory there is another giant called the Fachan, and the storysays, "Ugly was the make of the Fachan; there was one hand outof the ridge of his chest, and one tuft out of the top of hishead; it were easier to take a mountain from the root than tobend that tuft. " Usually, the Highland giants were not suchdreadful creatures as this. Like giants in all stories, theywere very stupid, and were easily outwitted by cunning men. "TheGaelic giants (Mr. Campbell says)[9] are very like those ofNorse and German tales, but they are much nearer to real menthan the giants of Germany and Scandinavia and Greece and Rome, who are almost, if not quite, equal to the gods. Their world isgenerally, though not always, underground; it has castles, andparks, and pasture, and all that is found above on the earth. Gold, and silver, and copper abound in the giants' land, jewelsare seldom mentioned, but cattle, and horses, and spoil ofdresses, and arms, and armour, combs, and basins, apples, shields, bows, spears, and horses are all to be gained by afight with the giants. Still, now and then a giant does somefeat quite beyond the power of man, such as a giant in Barra, who fished up a hero, boat and all, with his fishing-rod, from arock and threw him over his head, as little boys do 'cuddies'from the pier end. So the giants may be degraded gods, afterall. " In the story of Connal, told by Kenneth MacLennan of PoolEwe, there is a giant who was beaten by the hero of the tale. Connal was the son of King Cruachan, of Eirinn, and he set outon his adventures. He met a giant who had a great treasure ofsilver and gold, in a cave at the bottom of a rock, and thegiant used to promise a bag of gold to anybody who would allowhimself to be let down in a creel or basket, and send some of itup. Many people were lost in trying it, for when the giant hadlet them down, and they had filled the creel, the giant used todraw up the creel of gold, and then he would not let it downagain, and so those who had gone down for it were left to perishin the deep cavern. Now Connal agreed to go down, and the giantserved him in the same way that he had done the rest, and Connalwas left in the cave among the dead men and the gold. Now thegiant could not get anybody else to go down, and as he wantedmore gold, he let his own son down in the creel, and gave himthe sword of light, so that he might see his way before him. When the young giant got into the cave, Connal took the sword oflight very quickly, and cut off the young giant's head, ThenConnal put gold into the bottom of the creel, and got inhimself, and covered himself over with gold, and gave a pull atthe rope, and the giant drew up the creel, and when he did notsee his son, he threw the creel over the back of his head; andConnal took the sword of light, and cut off the giant's head, and went away home with the sword and the gold. 

There was a King of Lochlin, who had three daughters, and threegiants stole them, and carried them down under the earth; and awise man told the King that the only way to get them back was tomake a ship that would sail over land or sea. So the King saidthat anybody who would make such a ship should marry his eldestdaughter. There was a widow who had three sons, and the eldestof them said he would go into the forest and cut wood, and makethe ship; and his mother gave him a large bannock (oat cake), and away he went. Then a Fairy came out of the river, and askedfor a bit of the bannock, but he would not give her a morsel; sohe began cutting the wood, but as fast as he cut them down, thetrees grew up again, and he went home sorrowful. Then the nextbrother did the same, and he failed also. Then the youngestbrother went, and he took a little bannock, instead of a bigone, and the Fairy came again, and he gave her a share of thebannock; and she told him to meet her there in a year and a day, and the ship should be ready. And it was ready, and the youngestson sailed away in it. Then he came to a man who was drinking upa river; and the youngest son hired him for a servant. After atime, he found a man who was eating a whole ox, and he hired himtoo. Then he saw another man, with his ear to the earth, and hesaid he was hearing the grass grow; so he hired him also. Thenthey got to a great cave, and the last man listened, and said itwas where the three giants kept the King's three daughters, andthey went down into the cave, and up to the house of the biggestgiant. "Ha! ha!" said the Giant, "you are seeking the King'sdaughter, but thou wilt not have her, unless thou hast a man whowill drink as much water as I. " Then the river-drinker set towork, and so did the giant, and before the man was halfsatisfied, the giant burst. Then they went to where the secondgiant was. "Ho! ho!" said the Giant, "thou art seeking theKing's daughter, but thou wilt not get her, if thou hast not aman who will eat as much flesh as I. " Then the ox-eater began, and so did the giant; but before the man was half satisfied, thegiant burst. Then they went on to the third Giant; and the Giantsaid to the youngest son that he should have the King's daughterif he would stay with him for a year and a day as a slave. Thenthey sent up the King's three daughters, and the three men outof the cave; and the youngest son stayed with the giant for ayear and a day. When the time was up the youngest son said, "NowI am going. " Then the Giant said, "I have an eagle that willtake thee up;" and he put him on the eagle's back, and fifteenoxen for the eagle to eat on her way up; but before the eaglehad got half way up she had eaten all the oxen, and came backagain. So the youngest son had to stay with the giant foranother year and a day. When the time was up, the Giant put himon the eagle again, and thirty oxen to last her for food; butbefore she got to the top she ate them all, and so went backagain; and the young man had to stay another year and a day withthe giant. At the end of the third year and a day, the Giant puthim on the eagle's back a third time, and gave her three scoreof oxen to eat; and just when they got to the mouth of the cave, where the earth began, all the oxen were eaten, and the eaglewas going back again. But the young man cut a piece out of hisown thigh, and gave it to the eagle, and with one spring she wason the surface of the earth. Then the Eagle said to him, "Anyhard lot that comes to thee, whistle, and I will be at thyside. " Now the youngest son went to the town where the King ofLochlin lived with the daughters he had got back from thegiants; and he hired himself to work at blowing the bellows fora smith. And the King's oldest daughter ordered the smith tomake her a golden crown like that she had when she was with thegiant, or she would cut off his head. The bellows-blower said hewould do it. So the smith gave him the gold, and he shut himselfup, and broke the gold into splinters, and threw it out of thewindow, and people picked it up. Then he whistled for the Eagle, and she came, and he ordered her to fetch the gold crown thatbelonged to the biggest giant; and the Eagle fetched it, and thesmith took it to the King's daughter, who was quite satisfied. Then the King's second daughter wanted a silver crown like thatshe had when she was with the second giant; and the King'syoungest daughter wanted a copper crown, like that she had whenshe was with the third Giant; and the Eagle fetched them bothfor the young man, and the smith took them to the King'sdaughters. Then the King asked the smith how he did all this;and the smith said it was his bellows-blower who did it. So theKing sent a coach and four horses for the bellows-blower, andthe servants took him, all dirty as he was, and threw him intothe coach like a dog. But on the way he called the eagle, whotook him out of the coach, and filled it with stones, and whenthe King opened the door, the stones fell out upon him, andnearly killed him; and then, the story says, "There was catchingof the horse gillies, and hanging them for giving such anaffront to the King. " Then the King sent a second time, andthese messengers also were very rude to the bellows-blower, sohe made the eagle fill the coach with dirt, which fell about theKing's ears, and the second set of servants were punished. Thethird time the King sent his trusty servant, who was very civil, and asked the bellows-blower to wash himself, and he did so, andthe eagle brought a gold and silver dress that had belonged tothe biggest giant, and when the King opened the coach door therewas sitting inside the very finest man he ever saw. And theyoung man told the King all that had happened, and they gave himthe King's eldest daughter for his wife, and the wedding lastedtwenty days and twenty nights. 

One story more, of how a Giant was outwitted by a maiden. It istold in the island of Islay. There was a widow, who had threedaughters, who went out to seek their fortunes. The two elderones did not want the youngest, and they tied her in turns to arock, a peat-stack, and a tree, but she got loose and came afterthem. They got to the house of a Giant, and had leave to stopfor the night, and were put to bed with the Giant's daughters. The Giant came home and said, "The smell of strange girls ishere, " and he ordered his gillie to kill them; and the gilliewas to know them from the Giant's daughters by these havingtwists of amber beads round their necks, and the others havingtwists of horse-hair. Now Maol o Chliobain, the youngest of thewidow's daughters, heard this, and she changed the necklaces, and so the gillie came and killed the Giant's daughters, andMaol o Chliobain took the golden cloth that was on the bed, andran away with her sisters. But the cloth was an enchanted cloth, and it cried out to the Giant, who pursued them till they cameto a river, and then Maol plucked out a hair of her head, andmade a bridge of it; but the Giant could not get over; so hecalled out to Maol, "And when wilt thou come again?" "I willcome when my business brings me, " she said; and then he wenthome again. They got to a farmer's house, and told him theirhistory. Said the Farmer, who had three sons, "I will give myeldest son to thy eldest sister; get for me the fine comb ofgold and the coarse comb of silver that the Giant has. " So shewent and fetched the combs, and the Giant followed her till theycame to the river, which the Giant could not get over; so hewent back again. Then the farmer said he would marry his secondson to the second sister, if Maol would get him the sword oflight that the Giant had. So she went to the Giant's house, andgot up into a tree that was over the well; and when the Giant'sgillie came to draw water, she came down and pushed him into thewell, and carried away the sword of light that he had with him. Then the Giant followed her again, and again the river stoppedhim; and he went back. Now the farmer said he would give hisyoungest son to Maol o Chliobain herself, if she would bring himthe buck the Giant had. So she went, but when she had caught thebuck, the Giant caught her. And he said, "Thou least killed mythree daughters, and stolen my combs of gold and silver; whatwouldst thou do to me if I had done as much harm to thee as thouto me?" She said, "I would make thee burst thyself with milkporridge, I would then put thee in a sack, I would hang thee tothe roof-tree, I would set fire under thee, and I would lay onthee with clubs till thou shouldst fall as a faggot of witheredsticks on the floor. " So the Giant made milk porridge and forcedher to drink it, and she lay down as if she were dead. Then theGiant put her in a sack, and hung her to the roof tree, and hewent away to the forest to get wood to burn her, and he left hisold mother to watch till he came back. When the Giant was goneMaol o Chliobain began to cry out, "I am in the light; I am inthe city of gold. " "Wilt thou let me in?" said the Giant'smother. "I will not let thee in, " said Maol o Chliobain. Thenthe Giant's mother let the sack down, and Maol o Chliobain gotout, and she put into the sack the Giant's mother, and the cat, and the calf, and the cream-dish; and then she took the buck andwent away. When the Giant came back he began beating the sackwith clubs, and his Mother cried out, "Tis I myself that am init. " "I know that thyself is in it, " said the Giant, and he laidon all the harder. Then the sack fell down like a bundle ofwithered sticks, and the Giant found that he had killed hismother. So he knew that Maol o Chliobain had played him a trick, and he went after her, and got up to her just as she leaped overthe river. "Thou art over there, Maol o Chliobain" said theGiant. "I am over, " she said. "Thou killedst my three bald browndaughters?" "I killed them, though it is hard for thee. " "Thoustolest my golden comb, and my silver comb?" "I stole them. ""Thou killedst my bald rough-skinned gillie?" "I killed him. ""Thou stolest my glaive (sword) of light?" "I stole it. " "Thoukilledst my mother?" "I killed her, though it is hard for thee. ""Thou stolest my buck?" "I stole it. " "When wilt thou comeagain?" "I will come when my business brings me. " "If thou wertover here, and I yonder, " said the Giant, "what wouldst thou doto follow me?" "I would kneel down, " she said, "and I woulddrink till I should dry the river. " Then the poor foolish Giantknelt down, and he drank till he burst; and then Maol oChliobain went off with the buck and married the youngest son ofthe farmer. 

------------------------[9] _Popular Tales of the West Highlands_, vol. I. , Introduction, p. C. 

CHAPTER VI. 

CONCLUSION: SOME POPULAR TALES EXPLAINED. 

This brings us towards the end--that is, to show how some of ourown familiar stories connect themselves with the old Aryanmyths, and also to show something of what they mean. There arefour stories which we know best--Cinderella, and Little RedRiding Hood, and Jack the Giant Killer, and Jack and the BeanStalk--and the last two of these belong especially to Englishfairy lore. 

Now about the story of Cinderella. We saw something of her inthe first chapter: How she is Ushas, the Dawn Maiden of theAryans, and the Aurora of the Greeks; and how the Prince is theSun, ever seeking to make the Dawn his bride, and how theenvious stepmother and sisters are the Clouds and the Night, which strive to keep the Dawn and the Sun apart. The story ofLittle Red Riding Hood, as we call her, or Little Red Cap, asshe is called in the German tales, also comes from the samesource, and refers to the Sun and the Night. You all know thestory so well that I need not repeat it: how Little Red RidingHood goes with nice cakes and a pat of butter to her poor oldgrandmother; how she meets on the way with a wolf, and gets intotalk with him, and tells him where she is going; how the wolfruns off to the cottage to get there first, and eats up the poorgrandmother, and puts on her clothes, and lies down in her bed;how Little Red Riding hood, knowing nothing of what the wickedwolf has done, comes to the cottage, and gets ready to go to bedto her grandmother, and how the story goes on in this way:--

"Grandmother, " (says Little Red Riding Hood), "what great armsyou have got!"

"That is to hug you the better, my dear. "

"Grandmother, what, great ears you have got!"

That is to hear you the better, my dear. "

"Grandmother, what great eyes you have got!"

"That is to see you the better, my dear. "

"Grandmother, what a great mouth you have got!"

"That is to eat you up!" cried the wicked wolf; and then heleaped out of bed, and fell upon poor Little Red Riding Hood, and ate her up in a moment. 

This is the English version of the story, and here it stops; butin the German story there is another ending to it. After thewolf has eaten up Little Red Riding Hood he lies down in bedagain, and begins to snore very loudly. A huntsman, who is goingby, thinks it is the old grandmother snoring, and he says, "Howloudly the old woman snores; I must see if she wants anything. "So he stepped into the cottage, and when he came to the bed hefound the wolf lying in it. "What! do I find you here, you oldsinner?" cried the huntsman; and then, taking aim with his gun, he shot the wolf quite dead. 

Now this ending helps us to see the full meaning of the story. One of the fancies in the most ancient Aryan or Hindu storieswas that there was a great dragon that was trying to devour thesun, and to prevent him from shining upon the earth and fillingit with brightness and life and beauty, and that Indra, thesun-god, killed the dragon. Now this is the meaning of LittleRed Riding Hood, as it is told in our nursery tales. Little RedRiding Hood is the evening sun, which is always described as redor golden; the old Grandmother is the earth, to whom the rays ofthe sun bring warmth and comfort. The Wolf--which is a well-knownfigure for the clouds and blackness of night--is the dragon inanother form; first he devours the grandmother, that is, he wrapsthe earth in thick clouds, which the evening sun is not strongenough to pierce through. Then, with the darkness of night heswallows up the evening sun itself, and all is dark and desolate. Then, as in the German tale, the night-thunder and the stormwinds are represented by the loud snoring of the Wolf; andthen the Huntsman, the morning sun, comes in all his strengthand majesty, and chases away the night-clouds and kills theWolf, and revives old Grandmother Earth, and brings Little RedRiding Hood to life again. Or another explanation may be thatthe Wolf is the dark and dreary winter that kills the earthwith frost, and hides the sun with fog and mist; and then theSpring comes, with the huntsman, and drives winter down to hisice-caves again, and brings the Earth and the Sun back to life. Thus, you see, how closely the most ancient myth is preserved inthe nursery tale, and how full of beautiful and hopeful meaningthis is when we come to understand it. The same idea is repeatedin another story, that of "The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, "where the Maiden is the Morning Dawn, and the young Prince, whoawakens her with a kiss, is the Sun which comes to release herfrom the long sleep of wintry night. 

The germ of the story of "Jack and the Bean Stalk" is to befound in old Hindu tales, in which the beans are used as thesymbols of abundance, or as meaning the moon, and in which thewhite cow is the clay and the black cow is the night. There isalso a Russian story in which a bean falls upon the ground andgrows up to the sky, and an old man, meaning the sun, climbs upby it to heaven, and sees everything. This comes very near thestory of Jack, who sells his cow for a handful of beans, and hismother scatters them in the garden, and throws her apron overher head and weeps, thus figuring the Night and the Rain; and, shielded by the night and watered by the rain, the bean grows upto the sky, and Jack climbs to the Ogre's land, and carries offthe bags of gold, and the wonderful hen that lays a golden eggevery day, and the golden harp that plays tunes by itself. It isalso possible that the bean-stalk which grows from earth toheaven is a remembrance, brought by the Norsemen, of the greattree, Ygdrassil, which, in the Norse mythology, has its roots inhell and its top in heaven; and the evil Demons dwell in theroots, and the earth is placed in the middle, and the Gods livein the branches. And there is another explanation given, namely, that "the Ogre in the land above the skies, who was once theAll-father, possessed three treasures: a harp which played ofitself enchanting music, bags of gold and diamonds, and a henwhich daily laid a golden egg. The harp is the wind, the bagsare the clouds dropping the sparkling rain, and the golden egglaid every day by the red hen is the dawn-produced sun. "[10]Thus, in the story of "Jack and the Bean Stalk" we find repeatedthe same idea which appears in Northern and Eastern fairy tales, and in Greek legends; and so we are carried back to the ancientHindu traditions, and to the myths of Nature-worship amongst theold Aryan race. 

It is the same with the story of "Jack the Giant Killer, " whichalso has its connection with the legends of various countriesand all ages, and has also its inner meaning, drawn from thebeliefs and traditions of the ancient past. There is no need totell you the adventures of Jack the Giant Killer; how he killsthe Cornish giant Cormoran by tumbling him into a pit andstriking him on the head with a pick-axe; how he strangles GiantBlunderbore and his friend by throwing ropes over their headsand drawing the nooses fast until they are choked; how he cheatsthe Welsh giant by putting a block of wood into his own bed forthe giant to hammer at and by slipping the hasty-pudding into aleathern bag, and then ripping it up, to induce the giant to dothe same with his own stomach, which he does, and so killshimself; or how he frightens the giant with three heads, and sogets the coat of darkness, the cap of knowledge, the shoes ofswiftness, and the sword of sharpness, and uses these to escapefrom other and more terrible masters, and to kill them; and getsthe duke's daughter for his wife, and lives honoured and happyever after. 

Now Jack the Giant Killer is really one of the very oldest andmost widely-known characters in Wonderland. He is the hero who, in all countries and ages, fights with monsters and overcomesthem; like Indra, the ancient Hindu sun-god, whose thunderboltsslew the demons of drought in the far East; or Perseus, who, inGreek story, delivers the maiden from the sea-monster; orOdysseus, who tricks the giant Polyphemus, and causes him tothrow himself into the sea; or Thor, whose hammer beats down thefrost-giants of the North. The gifts bestowed upon Jack arefound in Tartar stories, in Hindu tales, in German legends, andin the fables of Scandinavia. The cloak is the cloud cloak ofAlberich, king of the old Teutonic dwarfs, the cap is found inmany tales of Fairyland, the shoes are like the sandals ofHermes, the sword is like Arthur's Excalibur, or like the swordforged for Sigurd, or that which was made by the horse-smith, Velent, the original of Wayland Smith, of old English legends. This sword was so sharp, that when Velent smote his adversary itseemed only as if cold water had glided down him. "Shakethyself, " said Velent; and he shook himself, and fell dead intwo halves. The trick which Jack played upon the Welsh giant isrelated in the legend of the god Thor and the giant Skrimner. The giant laid himself down to sleep under an oak, and Thorstruck him with his mighty hammer. "Hath a leaf fallen upon mefrom the tree?" said the giant. Thor struck him again on theforehead. "What is the matter, " said Skrimner, "hath an acornfallen upon my head?" A third time Thor struck his tremendousblow. Skrimner rubbed his cheek and said, "Methinks some mosshas fallen upon my face. " The giant had done what Jack did: heput a great rock upon the place where Thor supposed him to besleeping, and the rock received all the blows. The whole storyprobably means no more than this: Jack the Giant Killer is theWind and the Light which disperses the mists and overthrows thecloud giants; and popular fancy, ages ago, dressed him out as aperson combating real giants of flesh and blood, just as in allages and all countries the forces of nature have taken personalshape, and have given us these tales of miraculous gifts, ofgreat deeds done, and of monsters destroyed by men with thecourage and the strength of heroes. 

Now our task is done. We have seen that the Fairy Stories camefrom Asia, where they were made, ages and ages ago, by a peoplewho spread themselves over our Western world, and formed thenations which dwell in it, and brought their myths and legendswith them; and we have seen, too, how the ancient meanings arestill to be found in the tales that are put now into children'sbooks, and are told by nurses at the fireside. And we have seensomething of the lessons they teach us, and which are taught byall the famous tales of Wonderland; lessons of kindness to thefeeble and the old, and to birds, and beasts, and all dumbcreatures; lessons of courtesy, courage, and truth-speaking; andabove all, the first and noblest lesson believed in by those whowere the founders of our race, that God is very near to us, andis about us always; and that now, as in all times, He helps andcomforts those who live good and honest lives, and do whateverduty lies clear before them. 

------------------------[10] Baring-Gould, _Myths of the Middle Ages. _