Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 14, 1903.djvu/39

Rh from the introduction he wrote for us to Mr. Oliver Elton's translation of Saxo Grammaticus: "Man makes his gods in his own image Man is a finite animal; he has a limited number of types of legend; these legends, as long as they live and exist, are excessively prehensile; like the opossum, they can swing from tree to tree without falling; as one tree dies out of memory they pass on to another. When they are scared away by what is called exact intelligence from the tall forest of great personalities, they continue to live humbly clinging to such bare sticks and poles as enable them to find a precarious perch."

32. May we not then conclude that all the good stories were told, and all the good jokes made, while the world was very young?