Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/31

 Rh have collected from time to time tales and legends, ballads and songs, superstitions, charms, riddles, and games, all branches of our studies and chapters in our great book of Folklore. Thus far we had fine collections, detached limbs, without any internal connection, beautiful in themselves, but still closed books. The real study on a scientific basis was started by the brothers Grimm, in their interpretation of the fairy tales which they had collected with so much love and published in their simplicity and with so much accuracy. They tried to show that what was now a fairy tale was nothing else but a late form of some ancient legend, or an ancient saga of the gods or heroes of the Valhalla of the northern nations of Europe; that Christianity had been a kind of superficial veneer, and had never penetrated down to the lowest masses of the people, who had retained with remarkable tenacity the customs and the religious practices of old; that, in fact, the fairies and hobgoblins, the animals and plants, and the heroes and heroines appearing in the fairy tales were ancient gods in disguise; nay, that even many local saints and local customs connected with special days were nothing else but ancient heathen gods and heathen practices. This explanation so struck popular imagination and so much fascinated scholars that, independently of their beauty or of their charm, tales were collected solely or mostly for a scientific purpose. The work was taken up almost simultaneously in many parts of Europe, and also in some parts of Asia and America. Its development reads almost like a romance.

A remarkable result ensued! It was found that the very same tales occurred amongst the most diverse nations scattered throughout Europe and Asia; that a tale told, e.g. in the North of Scotland, found its counterpart in Sicily or Greece, another one in Russia, and a third a parallel in India, while also among the savage races similar tales were discovered. Thus, for instance,