Page:Myth, Ritual, and Religion (Volume 2).djvu/300

286 Algonkin white hare. Animals frequently take parts assigned to men and women in European märchen.

(2.) In the second place, we have the märchen, or contes, or household tales of the modern European, Asiatic, and Indian peasantry, the tales collected by the Grimms, by Afanasief, by Yon Hahn, by Miss Frere, by Miss Maivé Stokes, by M. Sébillot, by Campbell of Islay, and by so many others. Every reader of these delightful collections knows that the characteristics, the machinery, all that excites wonder, are the same as in the savage heroic tales just described. But it is a peculiarity of the popular tales of the peasantry that the places are seldom named; the story is not localised, and the characters are anonymous. Occasionally our Lord and his saints appear, and Satan is pretty frequently present, always to be defeated and disgraced; but, as a rule, the hero is "a boy," "a poor man," "a fiddler," "a soldier," and so forth, no names being given.

(3.) Thirdly, we have in epic poetry and legend the romantic and heroic tales of the great civilised races, or races which have proved capable of civilisation. These are the Indians, the Greeks, Romans, Celts, Scandinavians, and Germans. These have won their way into the national literatures and the region of epic. We find them in the Odyssey, the Edda, the Celtic poems, the Ramayana, and they even appear in the Veda. They occur in the legends and pedigrees of the royal heroes of Greece and Germany. They attach themselves to the dim beginnings of actual history, and to real personages like Charlemagne.