Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/245

 Rh peasant with his fowls and eggs, the pilgrim from the Holy Land, and the hawker, the Gipsy, all and each came and conversed and told tales. When a circle was formed, sometimes in the garden, often before the gate in the twilight of the setting sun, they would gather and listen attentively. At times one of those present would interrupt the speaker to remind him of an incident he had forgotten; and not seldom would the audience follow the recital with vivid and strong expressions of approval or dismay. When one had finished, others would follow, thus exchanging and communicating, spreading and developing the tale; and assisting it in its travels through many lands.

One bond united them, and this has hitherto not been sufficiently recognized, viz.: the belief in the reality of the tale. There was not one who for one moment would doubt the reality of such a courageous prince and a supernatural beauty; the speaking of animals, and their power of assistance; the qualities of living and dead water; the drakos and his mighty club, the vampire, the sun and moon as persons,—why it would have been rank heresy to doubt their existence. It would with one blow have destroyed that world of hope and delight, that ideal conception of things that may at any time fall to the share of mortals, pourtrayed in the tale. The tale would lose its attraction, and would speedily die. This is the reason why the school with its dogmatism and with nicely-balanced programmes, with mathematics and natural science, has proved the deadly enemy of the fairy world. It has destroyed the belief in the supernatural, the fantastic, and irrational, if you like, and it has left the children poorer than they were of yore, at any rate as far as the poetry of life is concerned. They are stranded high and dry upon the rock of exact sciences.

The element of religious belief, and I take this expression in the widest sense, is one of the most important features in the history of the origin and spread of fairy tales. And