Page:Primitive Culture Vol 1.djvu/403

Rh that they will be born tailless. There seems no evidence to connect the occasional occurrence of tail-like projections by malformation with the stories of tailed human tribes.

Anthropology, until modern times, classified among its facts the particulars of monstrous human tribes, gigantic or dwarfish, mouthless or headless, one-eyed or one-legged, and so forth. The works of ancient geographers and naturalists abound in descriptions of these strange creatures; writers such as Isidore of Seville and Roger Bacon collected them, and sent them into fresh and wider circulation in the middle ages, and the popular belief of uncivilized nations retains them still. It was not till the real world had been so thoroughly explored as to leave little room in it for the monsters, that about the beginning of the present century science banished them to the ideal world of mythology. Having had to glance here at two of the principal species in this amazing semi-human menagerie, it may be worth while to look among the rest for more hints as to the sources of mythic fancy.

That some of the myths of giants and dwarfs are connected with traditions of real indigenous or hostile tribes is settled beyond question by the evidence brought forward by Grimm, Nilsson, and Hanusch. With all the difficulty of analyzing the mixed nature of the dwarfs of European folklore, and judging how far they are elves, or gnomes, or such like nature-spirits, and how far human beings in mythic aspect, it is impossible not to recognize the element derived