Page:Fairy Tales Their Origin and Meaning.djvu/21

I.] with another, and of one period with another, we find out how they have come to be so much alike, and yet in some things so different. We see that there must have been one origin for all these stories, that they must have been invented by one people, that this people must have been afterwards divided, and that each part or division of it must have brought into its new home the legends once common to them all, and must, have shaped and altered these according to the kind of places in which they came to live: those of the North being sterner and more terrible, those of the South softer and fuller of light and colour, and adorned with touches of more delicate fancy.

And this, indeed, is really the case. All the chief stories and legends are alike, because they were first made by one people; and all the nations in which they are now told in one form or another tell them because they are all descended from this one common stock. If you travel amongst them, or talk to them, or read their history, and learn their languages, the nations of Europe seem to be altogether unlike each other; they have different speech and manners, and ways of thinking, and forms of