Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/240

 228 Everyone who has studied the various sets of beings, more or less supernatural, in which humanity has believed, is aware that a large number of characteristics is common to all. They have their own personality and name, they are quite distinct from each other, yet many things attributed to one set are attributed to others. So much so that it would almost seem as if, from very far-distant times, a stock of incidents existed which could be assigned indifferently to various denizens of the world of fancy, just as certain stories are told, now of this, now of the other, outstanding personality. Most of the matters alleged regarding witches can be found in savage sorcery and this shows that the roots of classical, mediaeval, and later witchcraft go deep into the soil of humanity. To savage spirits and demons of all kinds, Arabian Jinn, Greek Nereids, the spirit foxes of Japan and China, to ghosts, fairies, and dwarfs, can be applied now this, now that incident, or manner of acting, or characteristic. We need not be surprised, then, when we find that many similar things are told both of fairies and watches. Their origin is widely different. Witchcraft is rooted in primitive magic and in the human rapport with spirits of a kind with which the average man has always thought the less he had to do the better. The fairy belief is formed of many strands—the belief in divinities, in nature spirits, in ghosts, and, as far as dwarfs are concerned, in dim memories of older races, probably of a pigmy kind; while dream-experiences, hallucinations, and human fancy and imagination have aided in creating it.

Widely separate in origin and personality as fairies and witches may be, nevertheless the beliefs regarding both are often altogether or nearly the same, and are also often ascribed to other groups of beings. The supernatural