Page:Grimm Goblins (1876).djvu/18

xii Lady-bird! Lady-bird! fly away home,
 * Thy horse is a-fire, thy children will roam;
 * List! list! to their cry and bewailing:

The pitiless spider is weaving their doom, Then, Lady-bird! Lady-bird! fly away home;
 * Hark! hark! to thy children's bewailing.

Fly back again, back again. Lady-bird dear! Thy neighbours will merrily welcome thee here,
 * With them shall no perils attend thee;

They'll guard thee so safely from danger or care. They'll gaze on thy beautiful winglets so fair.
 * And comfort, and love, and befriend thee.

The valuable notes and dissertations added by MM. Grimm to their work, have principally for their object to establish the connection between many of these traditions and the ancient mythological fables of the Scandinavian and Teutonic nations. "In these popular stories," they are sanguine enough to believe, "is concealed the pure and primitive mythology of the Teutons, which has been considered as lost for ever; and they are convinced, that if such researches are continued in the different districts of Germany, the traditions of this nature which are now neglected, will change into treasures of incredible worth, and assist in affording a new basis for the study of the origin of their ancient poetical fictions." On these points their illustrations, though sometimes over-strained, are often highly interesting and satisfactory. Perhaps more attention might have been directed to illustrate the singular admixture of Oriental incidents of fairy and romance, with the ruder features of Northern fable; and particularly to inform us how far the well-known vehicles of the lighter Southern fictions were current at an early period in Germany. It often seems difficult to account for the currency, among the peasantry on the shores of the Baltic and the forests of the Hartz, of fictions which would seem to belong to the Entertainments of the Arabians, yet involved in legends referable to the highest Teutonic origin.

But it is curious to observe that this connection between the