and their successors in this field, have reduced to written form the tales of nearly all nations, revealing the same characters and incidents under countless names and shapes. The method used by them has been to take down the tales from the recitals of the common people, -generally of the old women who have been the chief conservers of stories,— exactly as given, rough or uncouth as the narrative may be. For in some apparently absurd feature may be a survival of ancient custom or myth of great historic interest; and the germs of these universal stories, in becoming part of a nation's folk-lore, take a local form and so become valuable to the ethnologist. Thus the beautiful myths of the South in the Northern forms, where winter's rigor alters the conditions of life, have an entirely different setting. We must include in the comparison of stories the Greek myths; as the Odyssey is now conceded to be a mass of popular tales (Gerland's 'Altgriechische Märchen in der Odyssee,'-'Old Greek Tales in the Odyssey.') To these we must add the tales of ancient Egypt; those narrated by Herodotus, and other travelers and historians; the beautiful story of 'Cupid and Psyche, given by Apuleius in his 'Metamorphoses' of the second century A. D., which also was taken from a popular myth, as we shall see, very widely distributed. Spreading all these before us, with the wealth of Eastern lore, and that gathered recently from every European nation, and from the savage or barbarian tribes of Asia, Africa, America, and Polynesia, we shall find running through them all the same germ, either in varying form, or simply in detached features, to our astonishment and dedelight. We shall examine in detail the most familiar of the popular fairy-tales, noting the principal variants or recurring incidents, what survival of nature-myth they contain, what ancient custom religious rite, and their possible links with Oriental literary collections; showing thus in a limited way the basis on which the before-mentioned theories of their origin rest. Taking Perrault's (Tales as the best versions, we shall find that actual fairies appear but seldom, as is the case generally in traditional fairy stories; in 'Cinderella' and "The Sleeping Beauty' the fairies are of the genuine traditional type, but in other tales we find merely the magical key or

or

the fairy Seven-League Boots.' Yet the fairies have so identified themselves with popular tales by giving them their titles, that we may find it interesting to look up their origin. The derivation of the word is given from fatare, to enchant, faé or fé, meaning enchanted, and running into the varying forms of fée, fata, hada, feen, fay, and fairy; or with more probability from fatum, what is spoken, and Fata, the Fates, who speak, Faunus or Fatuus, the god, and his sister of wife Fatua. This points to the primi tive personification of natural phenomena: all localities and objects were believed to be inhabited by spirits. Similar beings are found in the legend-lore of all nations; as the Nereids of Greece, the Apsaras of India, the Slavonic Wilis, the Melanesian Vius, the Scotch fairies or Good Ladies-as they are termed, just as the daughter of Faunus was not known by her real name, but as the Good Goddess ("Bona Dea »). mediæval connection with the netherworld and the dead may possibly point to their origin as ancestral ghosts. We shall find that "the story of the heroes of Teutonic and Hindu folk-lore, the stories of Boots and Cinderella,' of Logedas Rajah and Surya Bai, are the story also of Achilleus and Oidipous, of Perseus and Theseus, of Helen and Odysseus, of Baldur and Rustem and Sigurd. Everywhere there is the search for the bright maiden who has been stolen away, everywhere the long struggle to reclaim her.» (Cox.)

Their

SLEEPING BEAUTY.-This story is regarded by mythologists as a naturemyth, founded on nature's long sleep in winter. The Earth-goddess pricked by winter's dart falls into a deep sleep, from which she is aroused by the prince, the Sun, who searches far for her. We may find a slight parallel in Demeter's search for her lost daughter, Proserpine in the Greek myth; but a much more evident resemblance is seen in the sleep of Brynhild, stung to her sleep by the sleep-thorn. The Two Brothers,' found in an Egyptian papyrus of the Nineteenth Dynasty,- the time of Seti II., - had several incidents similar to those of The Sleeping Beauty.' The Hathors who pronounce the fate of the prince correspond to the old fairy, and both tales show the impossibility of escaping fate. The spindle whose prick causes the long slumber is a counterpart of the

arrow that wounds Achilles, the thorn that pricks Sigurd, and the mistletoe fatal to Baldur. In 'Surya Bai' (from 'Old Deccan Days') the mischief is done by the poisoned nail of a demon. In the Greek myth of Orpheus, Eurydice is stung by the serpent of darkness. The hedge that surrounds the palace appears in the flames encircling Brynhild on the Glittering Heath, and the seven coils of the dragon; also in the Hindu tale of Panch Phul Ranee,' in which the heroine is surrounded by seven ditches, surmounted by seven hedges of spears. In the northern form of the story an interesting feature is the presence of the ivy, the one plant that can endure the winter's numbing touch. In a Transylvanian variant a maiden spins her golden hair in a cavern, from which she is rescued by a man who undergoes an hour of torture for three nights. The awakening by a kiss corresponds to Sigurd's rousing Brynhild by his magic sword; but the kiss may be a survival of an ancient form of worship, thus suggesting that the princess in the earlier forms of the tradition may have been a local goddess, which would support the anthropological theory. The version most closely resembling Perrault's is Grimm's 'Little Briar Rose,' which is however without the other's ending about the cruel mother-in-law. A few incidents are found in the Pentamerone,' and a beautiful modern version is found in Tennyson's Day-Dream.'

LITTLE RED RIDING-HOOD.- In this story we may detect a myth of day and night. Red Riding-Hood, the Evening Sun, goes to see her grandmother, the Earth, who is the first to be swallowed by the wolf of Night or Darkness. The red cloak is the twilight glow. In the German versions the wolf is cut open by the hunter, and both set free; here the hunter may stand for the rising sun that rescues all from night. The Russian version in the tale of (Vasihassa› hints at a nature-myth in the incident of the white, red, and black horses, representing the changing day. The German version contains a widely spread incident,the restoration of persons from monsters who have swallowed them. We find parallels in the Aryan story of the dragon swallowing the sun, and killed by the sun-god Indra; here it is interesting to note that the Sanskrit word for evening means "mouth of night." The

incident occurs in the myth of Kronos swallowing his children; in the Maori legend in which Ihani, the New Zealand cosmic hero, tries to creep through his ancestress, Great-Woman or Night; in a Zulu version a princess is swallowed by a monster which becomes in a Karen tale a snake. We find it also in the Algonkin legend repeated in 'Hiawatha '; among the Bushmen, Kaffirs, Zulus; and in Melanesia, where the monster is night, showing quite plainly a savage naturemyth. The story has been compared to the Sanskrit Vartika, rescued by the Açvins (the Vedic Dioscuri) from the wolf's throat. Vartika is the Quail, the bird that returns at evening; and the Greek word for quail is ortyx, allied possibly to Ortygia, the old name for Delos, birthplace of Apollo.

BLUEBEARD.-This tale had been regarded by some as partly historic, of which the original was Gilles de Laval, Baron de Retz, who was burned in 1440 for his cruelty to children. It is, however, really a märchen, and the leading idea of curiosity punished is world-wide. The forbidden chamber is a counterpart of the treasure-house of Ixion, on entering which the intruder was destroyed, or betrayed by the gold or blood that clung to him; also of Pandora's box, as well as of Proserpine's pyx that Psyche opened in spite of the prohibition. There are several parallels among the German fairy-tales collected by Grimm; and one feature at least is found in the Kaffir tale of the Ox (Callaway's 'Nursery Tales of the Zulus'). Variants are found in Russia, and among Gaelic popular tales; and in the Sanskrit collection 'Katha Sarit Sagara,' the hero Saktideva breaks the taboo, and like Bluebeard's wife, is confronted with the horrible sight of dead women. Possibly in the punishment following the breaking of the taboo may be a survival of some ancient religious prohibition: among the Australians, Greeks, and Labrador Indians, such an error was regarded as the means by which death came into the world.

Marquis of Carabas. In a Sicilian version is found the first hint of a moral which is lacking in the above-mentioned tales; that is, the ingratitude of the man. This moral appears more plainly in a popular French version, where man's ingratitude is contrasted with the gratitude of a beast. This occurs likewise in the versions of the Avars and the Russians. Cosguin imagined from the moral that its origin was Buddhistic, for the story could only have arisen in a comparatively civilized community; but the only Hindoo version, the Match-Making Jackal, which was not discovered until about 1884 in Bengal, has no moral at all.

The most complete moral is found in Zanzibar, in the Swahili tale of 'Sultan Darai,' in which the beneficent beast is a gazelle: the ingratitude of the man is punished by the loss of all that he had gained; the gazelle, which dies of neglect, is honored by a public funeral. An Arab tribe honors all dead gazelles with public mourning; from which may be inferred a primitive idea that the tribal origin was from a gazelle stock,— a hint of totemism. Variants of Puss in Boots' are found among the Finns, Bulgarians, Scotch, Siberians, and in modern Hindustani stories; and some features are found in Grimm, and in the adventures of the Zulu hero Uhlakanyana.

TOADS AND DIAMONDS.-This story of the good sister who was rewarded, and the bad who was punished, is found in many forms. Several variants are met in Grimm's tales; it is found in the collection of Mademoiselle L'Heritier dating from 1696; and again is met among the Zulus, Kaffirs, Norse, and Scotch. many cases the story runs into the tale of the substituted bride,-an example of the curious combinations of the limited number of incidents in popular lore.

In

CINDERELLA.-This fairy-tale, in the majority of the variants, contains several incidents which may be perhaps the remains of totemism and of a very old social custom. The position of Cinderella in most versions as a stepchild may without much difficulty be supposed to have been that of the youngest, who by "junior's right" would have been the heir; the myth of ill-treatment would be natural if it arose when the custom was slipping away. By that older law of inheritance, the hearth-place was the share of the youngest; so that Cinder

59

ella's position by it, and her consequent blackened condition, would be quite in keeping with this theory. This right of the youngest is met in Hesiod, who makes Zeus the youngest child of Kronos; it is also found in Hungary, among Slavic communities, in Central Asia, in parts of China, in Germany and Celtic lands; and it is alluded to in the Edda. A similar custom among the Zulus is shown in one of Callaway's (Zulu Nursery Tales. The fragment of totemism is shown in the cases when the agent is a friendly beast or tree, which has some mystic connection with the heroine's dead mother. The most striking instance occurs in the Russian tale of The Wonderful Birch,' in which the mother is changed by a witch into a sheep, killed and buried by the daughter, and becomes a tree, that confers the magical gifts. The two features of a beast and a tree are found in the old Egyptian tale Two Brothers'; and the beast alone is seen in Servian, Modern Greek, Gaelic, and Lowland Scotch variants. In two versions of barbarous tribes, The Wonderful Horns of the Kaffirs, and a tale of the Santals, a hilltribe of India, the girl's place is taken by a boy whose adventures are similar to Cinderella's, but the agents are an ox and a cow. In Perrault's tale, the more refined fairy godmother takes the place of these beasts, which are in every case domesticated animals. The slipper is a feature that is found in the whole cycle of tales. In the Greek myth of 'Rhodopê,' the slipper is carried off by an eagle, and dropped in the lap of the King of Egypt, who seeks and marries the owner. In the Hindu tale, the Rajah's daughter loses her slipper in a forest, where it is found by a prince, on whom it makes the usual impression. Here we find the false bride, which is usually a part of these tales, but is omitted by Perrault; and in most cases the warning is given by a bird. In several instances the recognition is effected by a lock of hair, which acts the part of the glass slipper-which should be fur (vair) according to some authorities; this is found in the Egyptian tale of the Two Brothers,' and reappears in the Santal version and in the popular tales of Bengal. It occurs likewise in an entirely different cycle, in the lock of Iseult's hair which a swallow carries to King Mark of Cornwall. We can

also trace a slight resemblance in the search of Orpheus for Eurydice, and the Vedic myth of Mitra, the Sun-god, as well as the beautiful Deccan tale of (Sodewa Bai.' If we search for indications of a nature-myth in the story of Cinderella, we shall find that it belongs to the myths of the Sun and the Dawn. The maiden is the Dawn, dull and gray, away from the brightness of the Sun; the sisters are the clouds, that screen and overshadow the Dawn, and the stepmother takes the part of Night. The Dawn fades away from the Sun, the prince, who after a long search finds her at last in her glorious robes of sunset. Max Müller gives the same meaning to the Vedic myth of Urvasi,' whose name ("great-desires") seems to imply a search for something lost.

HOP O' MY THUMB.-A mythic theory of this tale has been given, by which the forest represents the night; the pebbles, the stars; and the ogre, the devouring sun. The idea of cannibalism which it contains may possibly be a survival of an early savage state; and thus the story very obligingly supports two of the schools of mythic interpretation. It contains traces of very great antiquity, and the main features are frequently met with. We find them, for instance, in the Indian story of Surya Bai,' where a handful of grain is scattered; in the German counterpart, Hänsel and Gretel"; in the Kaffir tale, in which the girl drops ashes; and that is found again in a story in the Pentamerone.' The incident of the ogre's keen scent is found in a Namaqua tale, in which the elephant takes the part. In a Zulu story an ogress smells the hero Uzembeni, and the same feature is seen in Polynesian myths, and even among the Canadian Indians. In Perrault's tale Hop o' My Thumb makes the ogre kill his own children; but in many forms the captor is either cooked, or forced to eat some of his relatives, by means generally of some trick. The substitution of the ogre's daughters is suggested by the story of Athamas and Themisto, whose children are dressed by her orders in white, while those of her rival are clad in black; then by a reversal of the plan, she murders her own. In most variants the flight of the brothers is magically helped; but Perrault uses only the SevenLeague Boots, which are no doubt identical with the sandals of Hermes and Loki's magic shoes.

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.-This ancient story is very evidently a myth of the Sun and the Dawn. In all the variants the hero and the heroine cannot behold each other without misfortune. Generally the bride is forbidden to look upon her husband, who is enchanted under the form of a monster. The breaking of the taboo results in separation, but they are finally reunited after many adventures. The anthropological school of myth interpreters see in this feature a primitive marriage custom, which still exists among many savage races of the present day. One of the earliest forms of the story is the Vedic myth of Urvasî and Purûravas. Another is the Sanskrit Bhekî, who marries on condition she shall never see water; thus typifying the dawn, vanishing in the clouds of sunset. Müller gives an interesting philological explanation of this myth. Bhekî means frog, and stands for the rising or setting sun, which like amphibious creatures appears to pass from clouds or water. But in its Greek form Bhekî means seaweed which is red, thus giving dark red; and the Latin for toad means "the red one," hence the term represents the dawn-glow or gloaming, which is quenched in water. In Greek myths we find a resemblance in some features of Orpheus and Eurydice'; and the name of Orpheus in its Sanskrit form of Arbhu, meaning the sun, hints quite plainly at a solar origin of this cycle of tales. A more marked likeness exists in the myth of Eros and Psyche by Apuleius, and in the Scandinavian tale of the Land East of the Sun and West of the Moon. More or less striking parallels are seen in the Celtic Battle of the Birds'; in the 'Soaring Lark,' by Grimm; in the Kaffir Story of Five Heads'; in Gaelic, Sicilian, and Bengal folk-lore; and even in as remote a quarter as Chili. The investigation of minor fairy-tales, nursery rhymes, and detached features running through many myths, will yield an abundance of interesting information. For instance, the swan-maidens and werewolves, the beanstalk (which is probably a form of the sacred ash of the Eddas, Yggdrasil, the heaven-tree of many myths), can be found in ever-varying combinations.

(1856), and 'Chips from a German Workshop (1867-75); by Sir G. W. Cox in 'Mythology of the Aryan Nations' (1870), 'Introduction to the Science of Comparative Mythology and Folk-Lore' (1881), and 'Popular Romances of the Middle Ages'; by Grimm in his 'Teutonic Mythology' ('Deutsche Mythologie.' translated by Stallybrass) (1880-88); by A. Kuhn in his Teutonic Mythology,' and the 'Descent of Fire' (1872); and by W. Schwartz in Origin of Myths' (Ursprung der Mythe'; 1860).

The most important works on the basis of the anthropological theory are E. B. Tylor's Primitive Culture' (1871); Andrew Lang's 'Custom and Myth' (1885); his Myth Ritual and Religion' (1887); and John Fiske's 'Myths and Myth-Makers (1872); as well as J. G. Frazer's "Golden Bough' (1890). W. A. Clouston in Popular Tales and Fictions (1887) supports the Indian theory. The best works directly bearing on Fairy Tales are J. Ritson's 'Fairy Tales' (1831); T. Keightley's Fairy Mythology' (1833), both somewhat antiquated; J. T. Bunce's 'Fairy Tales, their Origin and Meaning' (1878); J. O. Halliwell-Phillips's 'Popular Rhymes and Nursery Tales' (1849); R. Koehler's 'European Popular Tales' (1865), and his Essays on Fairy Tales and Popular Songs' (1894); E. S. Hartland's 'Science of Fairy Tales) (1891); Andrew Lang's Edition of 'Perrault's Popular Tales' (1888); W. Adlington's 'Most Pleasant and Delectable Tale of the Marriage of Cupid and Psyche,' with 'Discourse on Fable' by A. Lang (1887); and Joseph Bedier's Fables' ('Les Fabliaux') (1893).

The most noteworthy collections of the folk-tales of individual nations are Dasent's Popular Norse Tales' (1862); Campbell's Tales of the West Highlands'; Frere's Old Deccan Days'; Steel and Temple's 'Wide-Awake Stories' (1884); L. B. Day's 'Folk Tales of Bengal' (1883); Callaway's 'Zulu Nursery Tales' (1866); Theal's 'Kaffir Folk Lore'; Cosguin's 'Popular Tales of Lorraine' (1886); Maspero's Tales of Ancient Egypt,' 2d ed. (1889).

Physiologus (The Naturalist). A very

remarkable book of animal allegories, some fifty or sixty in number, produced originally in Greek at Alexandria, as early probably as the final completion of the New Testament, or before

200 A. D., and in circulation for many centuries, in many languages, as a kind of natural Bible of the common people; more universally known, and more popularly regarded, than the Bible even, because so familiar in the memories of the masses, and not dependent upon written copies.

So entirely was it a book of tales and traditions of the uneducated mass, more often told to hearers than copied out and read, that any one who made a written copy varied the text at will, enlarging or abridging, and inserting new ideas or Scripture quotations at pleasure. It was in this respect a reflection of the literary method of the Græco-Hebrew writers of the time of Christ, and of the Greek Christians of the New Testament age, 50-150 A. D. It was the lesson only of the story, not its exact text, which was regarded; facts were of less account than the truth meant to be conveyed. Some of the animals of the stories were imaginary; and with animals were included the diamond, the magnet, the fire-flint, the carbuncle, the Indian stone, and such trees as the sycamore and one called peridexion. The facts in each story were not those of science, given by Aristotle or any other authority; but those of folk-lore, of popular tradition and fable, and of frequent touches of the imagination. It mattered little as to the facts, if they were of startling interest: the important thing was the spiritual lesson. Thus the one horn of the unicorn signifies that Christ is one with the Father; the wonderfully sweet odor of the panther's breath, attracting all other animals except the serpent, signifies Christ drawing all unto him except the Devil. The riot of legend and fable, which ran under "Physiologus says," took the popular fancy in proportion as it was wild; and credulity thus stimu lated was the strongest belief. The ideas thus taught passed into all the literatures of Europe, and found incessant expression in art, and in emblems carved upon churches and even upon furniture.

The Greek text of Physiologus,' and versions in great variety, have been printed; and in the (Geschichte des Physiologus,' by F. Lauchert, 1889, a full account of the origin, character, and diffusion of the work is given, with the Greek original and a German translation.