Page:Fairy Tales Their Origin and Meaning.djvu/201

VI.] huntsman, and drives winter down to his ice-caves again, and brings the Earth and the Sun back to life. Thus, you see, how closely the most ancient myth is preserved in the nursery tale, and how full of beautiful and hopeful meaning this is when we come to understand it. The same idea is repeated in another story, that of "The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood," where the Maiden is the Morning Dawn, and the young Prince, who awakens her with a kiss, is the Sun which comes to release her from the long sleep of wintry night.

The germ of the story of "Jack and the Bean Stalk" is to be found in old Hindu tales, in which the beans are used as the symbols of abundance, or as meaning the moon, and in which the white cow is the day and the black cow is the night There is also a Russian story in which a bean falls upon the ground and grows up to the sky, and an old man, meaning the sun, climbs up by it to heaven, and sees everything. This comes very near the story of Jack, who sells his cow for a handful of beans, and his mother scatters them in the garden, and throws her apron over her head and weeps, thus figuring the Night and the Rain; and, shielded