Page:Fairy Tales Their Origin and Meaning.djvu/170

158 dwarfs, if only we had space—how there were thousands of them in German lands, in the Saxon mines, and the Black Forest, and the Harz mountains and in other places, and in Switzerland, and indeed everywhere almost—how they gave gifts to good men, and borrowed of them, and paid honestly; how they punished those who injured them; how they moved about from country to country; how they helped great kings and nobles, and showed themselves to wandering travellers and to simple country folk. But all this must be left for you to read for yourselves in Grimm's stories, and in the legends of northern lands, and in many collections of ancient poems, and romances, and popular tales. And in these, and in other books which deal with such subjects, you will find out that all these dwellers in Wonderland, and the tales that are told about them, and the stones of the gods and heroes, all come from the one source of which we read something in the first chapter—the traditions of the ancient Aryan people, from whom all of us have sprung—and how they all mean the same things; the conflict between light and darkness, the succession of day and night, the changes of the seasons, the blue and