Page:The Allies Fairy Book.djvu/25

 balance of mind and delicate apprehension colour even their fairy-tales, which have not the crudity and violence of other folk-lore; and Lang was happily inspired when he remarked of the French elves that “a little grain of French common sense ballasts these light minions of the Moon.”

The fairy-tales of all nations seem to agree in depending for their effects upon magic and witchcraft. Sir James Frazer and the other mythologists have heaped up evidence to show that man in a primitive condition delights in seven-leagued boots, enchanted cows, caps of darkness, and waters of life and death. Ravens that prophesy, horses that are swifter than light, werwolves, and, above all, malignant witches play a preponderating part in peasant imagination. A difference, however, has been discerned in the manner in which the arts of wizardry are introduced, a difference which doubtless is due to the contrasts of national temperament. In Celtic tales, and especially those of the Western Highlands, all is shadowy, illusive, and dim. This is seen in the enchanting collections of Campbell, where the incidents seem to be drowned in a mist, such as turns, on summer afternoons, the grey of a Hebridean archipelago to purple and violet. On the other hand, the Slav tells his monstrous story of witches’ coffins and magic sticks with the utmost lucidity and calm. “The Russian peasant likes a clear statement of facts,” and he eschews any trace of that mystery and symbolism dear to the Highlander or the Breton. He tells about squealing vampires and fire-birds which live on golden apples in the same plain language with which he describes that he has walked into the town and bought a piece of calico.

It must be remembered that the Slav has an extraordinary gift for telling a story. Ralston, who wandered a great deal over Russia when intellectual intercourse with that country was in its infancy, used to say that the “skazkas,” as the folk-tales are called, gave him the impression, when